Friday, March 16, 2007

Guaraja...beach of the Monsoon!

So the pictures I have for this post are the before pictures, I have to wait for Garrett to download his pictures before I can put up the after pictures of us all beyond drenched in what can only be described as Brazils version of a monsoon!

The day started out beautiful enough, we headed out to Guaraja to go to the beach with everyone and it was gorgeous...'was' being the operative word here. We hung out, chatted, played in the sand and about 2 hours in the lightening started and behind us dark clouds were gathering, still we didn't worry too much because the wind was against us and hopefully blowing the clouds away from the beach..ha ha silly americains. So we headed up to the mall area to grab some lunch and it started sprinkling, we dinked around for abit then headed back to the beach. There was an artesian market nearby to Barbara and I walked over to check out the goods and I actually found some neat stuff.

Then it started raining, harder, and harder...the boys were still out in the ocean in the rain swimming and our bright green umbrella was still a beacon from the shops so we figured, no big deal, we'll hang out at the covered market til the rain dies down...ah...wishful naive thinking indeed--apparently I've never been in a tropical storm in Brazil, you think I'd have a clue given I was raised in Hawaii where it does this sometimes too. So it doesn't let up and eventually Jeremy (Barbara's husband) comes up to us saying we gotta go, we gotta go. So we head back to the car keys in hand while Jeremy goes to get the now soaked stuff on the beach and the guys. So me, Barbara, Kerry, and Shelley book it to the car which is several blocks away running through what can only be described as a waterfall of water! There's damp, there's wet, there's soaked, then there's just god awful bloated with water and that's what we were by the time we made it back to the car! We took refuge in her car til we saw everyone else then split into the two cars and headed off.

The entire city was flooded with water, it was insane, people were having to get off their bikes to wade through the water deluge. A couple accidents happened in front of us so it took us awhile to get to the freeway. It was insane. And hot, so you mix soaked as all heck with the heat of 8 bodies in a metal box we call the faithful VW van we were in and we might as well have stayed in the rain outside because it would've been cooler and drier! It was quite the experience...and actually a lot of fun. I wish I had deluge pictures to post, but another time! We made it back, wrung ourselves out and ate/napped before heading off the youth club to hang out with the kids.

Tomorrow I am on a quest to find postcards to send out! Until tomorrow then..Tchau!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great work.