Day 50: SUP’ing, Snorkeling and More Surfing at This Funny Brazilian Family Resort
Day 50!! It’s flying by and also moving nice and slowly. Glad we’ve got more than 300 to go.
Today we started out with school again — and after yesterday’s rock-bottom reckoning with Willa, we had a fabulous/productive morning of school.
Midday we went on a snorkeling excursion. Took a boat about 15 minutes away.
The water was waist-deep where we anchored, and we tooled around on the brink of a reef. Willa and James were only semi-intro it. Those masks and snorkels take time to get used to.
Eventually James threw in the towel and waited on the boat. Willa was in and out.
My fear of fish was alive and well but thankfully this was snorkeling lite, with limited tiny fish who kept their distance.
One of the boat guys looked like a Brazilian Jared Lee. He found the kids some urchin shells. Love seeing foreign doppelgangers.
We ate lunch on the beach outside of the hotel at a nearby local fish shack, literally. It was delicious! The tables were surfboards with old blankets draped on them — not in a design-mag cool way, but in a dudes-who-didn’t-know-better way, and it was perfect. Had langoustines and beers in our bathing suits.
I left the group to do a stand-up paddleboard sesh on the river. I had a solo excursion with Emerson, a teenage SUP Bahia champion with big Olympic hopes and dreams. We paddled for an hour together, chatting the entire time in our only shared language: broken Spanish. It was the first time my crash courses in Spanish back in NYC last fall came in really handy.
Meanwhile Willa surfed again and had even more fun. The waves are more like ripples, but still. Impressive.
The sunset was pink and perfect.
We video chatted with the Peuns and I also got to talk to Camille which was fun — loved catching up.
James and Willa are officially obsessed with foosball.
That night at dinner we ate solo since our German buddies had left.
Thoughts/color:
The Tivoli Praia do Forte where we’re staying is so funny. It’s a tennis and water sports resort for vacationing Brazilians, not unlike the Florida destinations of my childhood spring breaks. It’s not some sophisticated, jetset spot, nor is it some charming, rustic surf shack. Just straight up spring break resort for yuppies on break for Carnaval.
250 rooms, golf carts shuttling sunburned families from pool to buffet, bingo, spa, gym and….babies. Lots and lots of babies. Which means lots and lots of parents who all share the same thousand-yard stare like, Why did we think it was a good idea to bring our new baby here? There’s an endless parade of staff nannies in pink scrubs pushing strollers around the grounds and a constant din of crying. As Teddy commented, no one here seems to be having fun. Ha!
We wanted to have a “vacation” at the end of our South America stint and this place came across our radar. We are def among the only Americans who’ve ever come here (barely anyone speaks English).
A small part of us is pained by the Tampa-ness of it, but then again, we wanted to have a lot of different experiences, and it feels like we’ve snuck in to a real-life Brazilian vacay. And the kids are obviously loving the family-friendly amenities: 8 pools, never-ending fruit juice, water activities, music, and not just a breakfast buffet, but a DINNER buffet too.
