13/3 – The Ultimate 5 – The Rio version.

Wake up at 6.45 am without alarm clock.
Go for a morning paddle on the lake.
Yoghurt and fresh fruit for breakfast on the balcony.
Phone calls to near and dear ones back home.
Kite surfing until sunset.
Svinto hair from salt water.
Sore shoulders and back from kayaking.
Sore legs from kite surfing.
Hands full of blisters.
Feet cut up from fish bones.
Nice long shower.
Cup of tea on the balcony.
Spectacular thunderstorm to watch with lightning striking all around.

Next – bed.

Tomorrow – the same perhaps?

Not much missing today to define a Rio summer version of the Ultimate 5 Activities for a perfect winter day in Northern Sweden.

9/3 – One small step for mankind, a giant leap for Caroline.

Somehow, the cooking enthusiasm wasn’t as great as usual last Saturday and the going out for dinner option would have included a combined shower and wading mission comparable to Noah and his fellows’. Instead we decided to try out the delivery pizza quality of Rio. After a 15 min phone call, in something that should sound like Portuguese, and mainly consisting of repeating numbers for some reason, I had completed my biggest language mission in Brazil so far. And it was successful - the pizzas did arrive, on time, at the right flat, with the right toppings and in exchange of the expected amount of money. Sometimes, that’s a difficult enough achievement at home even. Learning new languages is great.
Another thing I like with living and working abroad is all the knowledge you constantly gain about life in that city or country. The learnings are always good for the understanding of the every day life in that particular place, but sometimes you also come across scary things. In this case I don’t have a “taxi ride scary” thing in mind but something which is scary on a different plane. Every day, between 7 pm and 8 pm, all the radio stations broadcast politics. The same show on every station, public or commercial and every day! Just feels wrong…

You also become an expert in making acquaintances when you move around and never stay too long in the same place. Meeting lots and lots of nice and interesting people all the time, who you perhaps will meet up with again, somewhere else, another time. Hopefully, you also become reasonably good at keeping in touch with your oldest and dearest friends, even if they most of the time seem to be located on the other side of the world from you. If I ever start drifting into the dark side of keeping in touch with, or appreciating, my friends, please remind me of last week. Thanks Pontus, Anders and Marcus for being such good friends and for the best week in Rio by far, miss your company already.

8/3 – Fish forgotten about and wake boarding challenges.

Apparently, there have been some major headlines in Europe about some 80 tons of dead fish at Copacabana. That sensational story would easily have passed my head if it wasn’t for my bad habit of reading mainly Swedish news, even though I haven’t lived there many months during the last six years or so. Unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, it all happened while I was trying to arrange some wake board sessions in Buzios together with Huey, Dewey & Louie, so missed that hole fish thing. And to be a bit of a Besserwisser (as always some would claim), the fish was not blocking Copacabana, but instead it filled up Lagoa - the lake I normally run around on Sunday afternoons fighting prams and families in four wheeled bikes on the walk way. So the legendary, touristy beaches were never really threatened. On Friday afternoon, everything was back to normal again though, the kids from the nearby favela were playing in the water and jumping from the dock and no traces whatsoever to be seen from the fish incident. I guess we all just have to hope that some algae going amok really caused it, and nothing else.

The attempts to arrange some wake boarding in Buzios proved to be an excellent example of the Brazilian organizing skills and the slightly modified Spanish mãnana mentality. Here, no one bothers to claim it’s going to happen tomorrow though, but instead everything will happen today. A bit more ambitious in other words.
According to our solid source of information, the wake boarding guys did not have any phones or ways to be contacted to set something up in advance. But no need to worry at all, they were there every day, on the same beach, every morning at 10 am and running wakeboard sessions. Every day, with the same boat, every morning from 10 am. Sweet. At 9.45 am we got off the VW minibus which we’ve managed to re-route all the way to the beach, totally confident that this day was going to bring some nice wake boarding. Perfect conditions, perfect location and almost not tired from the previous night’s escapades. First reply we got was that one of the boats was broken…but the other one (or two…a bit of confusion there about how many boats would normally run the wake board sessions) should definitely be operating. However, that guy wasn’t going to show up until an hour later or so. Still no worries, an hour at the beach is nothing to complain about so found a shady spot under a chestnut tree and relaxed. Time passed and one broken boat turned into two broken boats and later on into no boats at all…and no boat drivers at all. Last comment we got was that there wasn’t going to be any wake boarding at all that particular day, exactly why was a bit hard to get a grasp of, but didn’t really matter either.

For some reason, I am quite sure we were the only four downtown Buzios paying attention to the Swedish curling ladies winning versus Canada at the bar on the waterfront. Perhaps not the most ideal bar sport but a gold is always a gold and we made sure to cheer as much as 10 times the amount of people would have done.