Sunset

Yesterday was a hot day, as most days are now. In the evening it started raining and the sky turned a lot of nice colours. I suppose the pictures would have been nicer if I would have gone to some place without a big building in front, but it was raining a lot and the pictures are still nice.

Mangabeiras

A little while ago, I went to Mangabeiras, which is a place in the south of Belo Horizonte. Mangabeiras  is located quite high up, so it is easy to get a view over a big part of the city.

As you can see, there are buildings, buildings and even more buildings.

There is also a park in Mangabeiras. There were plenty of animals looking like raccoons, but I have never seen any raccoon in the wild before so correct me if I'm wrong.

There were also a lot of small monkeys. 

Circuito do sol

Today I got up at 5 am, on a Sunday! I did this in order to run a 10 km race, which started at 8 am. It was quite tough to start that early, but it did make sense since it's not as hot in the morning as during the day. I saw a thermometer saying 27 degrees, so it could have been worse.

I have only been training about 10 times since November and even less before that, so I didn't have much hope for this race. It did go better than expected, I finished in 48.5 min, which got me into the top 100 of everyone and top 10 of my age group! Maybe I should also mention that not more than approximately 600 people participated. There was also a 5 km race, which about 900 people ran.

Florianopolis - oysters

They produce a lot of oysters in this region of Brazil. There were a lot of oyster farms around some parts of the island, you can see some in the pictures below.

This was a perfect opportunity to try some really fresh oysters. So I went to a restaurant, which was located just a few metres away from the oyster farms. I tried a couple of natural (or raw), a couple of steamed and couple of gratinated oysters. The natural oysters are eaten with lime. The oysters move and contract when you squeeze the lime juice on them. All of the oysters were quite tasty, but the gratinated ones mainly tasted of cheese.

However, there is always a small risk that you get a bad oyster. It feels like this risk should be decreased when you eat just next to the farm, but somehow I managed to eat a bad one. This left me imprisoned in the bathroom for about two days, which was not very nice. In order to be sure that there was nothing really bad with me, I went to a small local hospital. The nurse in the reception had one important question for me. Do you think she asked me how I was doing? Did she ask questions to make sure I was ill due to a bad oyster? Did she tell me to eat, drink or behave in any particular way? No, she asked me whether I was from the area or if I was a tourist. When hearing that I was a tourist, she said that all the tourist spots were taken and that I could try to come back a few hours later and hope that they had time then. This did obviously not feel to good, so I went to the pharmacy instead, thinking that they should be used to people eating bad oysters since everyone wants to try some when they come here. The pharmacist was way more helpful and gave me some hydration powder, which had an interesting taste. I did recover nicely, but I'm not sure if the taste of oysters is worth the (tiny) risk of a two day sentence to the bathroom.

Florianopolis - beaches

I traveled around on the island Florianopolis and visited many beaches. I stayed in Barra da Lagoa and lived in a hostel where each room had a small place outside with a hammock. Breakfast was delivered to the door every morning in a basket.

Here follows several pictures of the beaches close to where I was staying. There was one really long beach, where most people went. Well, most people went to the end closest to the village, where it therefore was packed with people. It was almost empty further away on the same beach.

The girl in the picture above walked along the beach and sold barbecued cheese. The guy below had a bigger business where he sold beverages and nice fruit. I saw some people drinking chimarrão on the beach, which seemed a bit strange to me as I would not want to drink hot tea in such hot weather.

There was also a small trail that led to the beaches you can see below.

 I heard people saying that Leonardo DiCaprio celebrated New Year's Eve in the restaurant/club below. I don't know if it's true that he was there, but he did have a Brazilian girlfriend a few years ago. I also heard that it cost around £400 to celebrate New Year's Eve there. That price was for guys, women only paid around half of that apparently.

The statue above was looking out over Mole beach, which was also known as the beach of the beautiful people. I found the fish below laying on a beach (not the beach of the beautiful people though).

If you would get a tattoo or a piercing, would you go to a place called "House of pain"?

The guy above was fishing in a canal close to Barra da Lagoa. Below is a view of the village.

If you have an old toilet and don't know what to do with it, you can find a suggestion below.

What were you doing on the 2nd of January this year? Here you can see what I was doing (in the picture above, that is...). Below is a picture of a guy showing the beach fashion in Brazil. Most Brazilians seem to think that kilts are very gay, but what do you think of their "traditional" clothes? Maybe I should also add that most women were wearing way less fabric than this guy was, but to see that you have to come here and visit...

Florianopolis

I spent New Year's Eve in Florianopolis, which is a city in the south of Brazil. The city is really nice with a few streets only for pedestrians in the centre and the whole city feels very safe (compared to the rest of Brazil). The city is located on an island with two bridges connecting to the mainland. 

The bridge above is the old bridge, called Hercilio Luz, which is no longer in use. The city tries to restore it every now and then, but the cost is too high so it is never returned to use. The bridge to the left in the picture below is used instead for easy access to the mainland.

Since the city is located on an island it naturally has a lot of water around it. The pictures below are from Beira-mar in Floripa, as the city's name is commonly shortened to.

One of the parks contains an old fig tree, which is highlighted with nice lights in the evenings.

I spent New Years Eve in the hotel restaurant, which was located on the top floor. It was possible to see a big part of the city from up there.

There was plenty of delicious food during the whole night, and an open bar... 

I liked how they turned a melon into a fruit bowl.

It is very common to dress in white in Brazil during New Year's Eve. Some people dress up in fancy white clothes, whereas others wear simple white shorts and a t-shirt. It also seemed like it was very common that women dressed up, whereas men just came in whatever they were wearing, see the couple in the picture below.

No one buys fireworks to shoot off on New Year's Eve, but the city had organised a lot of fireworks to go off at midnight, which was really good.