We had a short two and a half hour drive east along the Brazilian coast to get to Buzios, an odd rocky peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic with many little coves and inlets. There seems to be small beaches everywhere you look, and each of them have at least two purveyors of beach chairs, umbrellas and fruity drinks. As we pulled into town we stopped at a local beach Praia da Ferradura, as we were not allowed to check into to our place until 4. The beach was like pulling into our own slice of heaven. The kids played in the silty sand and Maddy and I enjoyed some free beach chairs and some sunny weather.
We finally pulled into our Airbnb rental around 5pm and unpacked our stuff before heading out to dinner. The new place was a two story condo with three bedrooms and a shared pool. It was very comfortable and close to town. The area around Buzios was heavily influenced by tourism, lots of fancy places over looking the water. Apparently in the 50’s the French actress Brigitte Bardot came here with her Brazilian boyfriend, how scandalous. Anyway she made it famous and lots of other stars have followed in her footsteps. We took pictures with her statue but then found out she was a bit of a racist and anti-immigrant, so we are not big fans.
The next day we school, pool beach in that order. We attempted to go to an isolated natural beach but the walk seemed to daunting to the girls so we decided on Praia Joao Ferrandes. There was not too much beach available as it was high tide, but the waves were very small so it was perfect. We notice lots of what we thought were islands in the distance but they ended up being coastline, enhancing the already beautiful scenery. We didn’t realize that we were looking back at the coast, which made sense with the small waves.
After watching the kids play in the sand for a couple of hours, I notice a scuba pop up dive shop and wandered over to inquire. They did a short dive looking at statues in the water which didn’t interest me too much but it got me thinking about an actual dive. So later that night I headed into town and talked to Buzios Divers and signed up for two dives the next day.
Travel-Trotter 