The Real Adventure....
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| Buzios |
-Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
I'm not big on booking a bunch of tours before going on a vacation. It seems too structured, too easy, and most of the time it's better to try and see some place on your own (no time limitations). However, someone I work with had told me about the town of Buzios, a resort town popular for weekend getaways (or second homes a la the Hamptons - but smaller) with Argentinians and Brazilians (there are only 24,000 year round residents). It's roughly 3 hours away from Rio and I knew time would be limited so I went ahead and booked a day tour. I had emailed the company and they informed me to call 2 days beforehand to confirm - which I did. The woman informed me that we would be picked up at 8:25 from a local hotel down the street.
Yesterday morning we arrived around 8:15...8:25 came and went...then 8:30...8:45. We decided to call, the man on the other end of the line informed me the pickup time was 7:25, not 8:25. His tone indicated he couldn't possibly understand how I didn't know this, Buzios was too far for an 8:25 pickup he informed me. I explained I understood what he was saying but this was not the time given to me. He apologized and said I could try and get my money back (I booked the tour through a third party online agency - who I have used many times and never had any issues). I asked if there was any way to still catch the bus - no.
After getting off the phone, feeling dejected and irritated I asked the concierge if there was any other way to get to Buzios. She said we could take a bus, but the station was downtown and it takes 3 hours to get there (a huge inconvenience based off her tone). We thought about it for 10 minutes, more like sulked for 10 minutes, but then quickly decided we were going to do it. We got a cab for the bus station, arrived to what looked and felt like Penn station, and looked for bus 1001 (the concierge had given us the name of the line that went to Buzios). It wasn't hard to spot, when we got up there we asked if anyone spoke English (someone did), and we went about booking our roundtrip bus tickets. Our bus was leaving in 1 hour so we found coffee and some food and discussed the confusion over a 7 and an 8.
The bus was clean, air conditioned, and we had assigned seats. It wasn't quite full so you didn't feel crammed in (think more charter bus than greyhound bus for comfort and quality). We began the 3 hour journey by first passing over the 8.25 mile Rio-Niteroi Bridge, amazing views of the port and the city. We passed the slums. The first inclination is to look away, but this is real life and it's important to understand what people experience (in Brazil's rural areas poverty affects roughly 51% of the region*).
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| The Port |
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| The view from the Rio-Niteroi bridge |
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| Slums |
The trip was roughly uneventful and we arrived in Buzios hungry and excited to look around. We had passed a quaint looking restaurant on our way in - looked a bit like a secret garden. We decided to walk back that way, driving it didn't seem far, the walk took about an hour though (there were no sidewalks so this added to the time it took to navigate the streets). It ended up being the best meal we ate in Brazil. The menu was entirely in Portuguese so we asked if anyone spoke English, a lovely woman appeared informing us it was her restaurant. She guided us in ordering traditional shrimp empanadas, a leafy green salad with hearts of palm and plump cherry tomatoes, grilled fish served with rice and shrimp and a creamy banana puree, and finally Caipirinha's - Brazil's national cocktail made with cachaca (sugar cane hard liquor), sugar, and lime. It tasted like a cross between a mojito and the best lemonade you've ever tasted. Delicious (we ordered two). She asked how we found the place since mostly it's locals or people who have weekend homes who frequent her restaurant. I told her we passed it on the way in and the foliage surrounding the entrance intrigued me. Restaurant Gisele - the best thing we almost never knew about. |
| Caipirinha |
After lunch we took a taxi back to the main part of town and just roamed around. There are tons of little shops, more places to eat, several hair salons, etc. We found our way to the beach and just sat, watched the sunset, the lighting in the distance signaling the coming storm. There was a man paddle boarding and another man throwing a stick to his dog on the beach. If Norman Rockwell had painted the perfect Brazilian life it's hard to imagine this not being it. It was peaceful and idyllic.
If we had taken the tour we would have ended up with less time in Buzios (roughly 4 hours instead of 6), we would have missed the best meal in Brazil (the tour didn't go this far out of the town center), and we wouldn't have enjoyed a solitary sunset on one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. Same as with the cab, things will always go wrong - sometimes big things. It can be scary or frustrating, but recognize there is always another option. Try it. It just might be the best mistake ever.....
*www.ruralpovertyportal.org