Praia de Boa Viagem

I am fortunate enough to live across the street from one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen in my life. It is called A Praia de Boa Viagem. Here are some pictures and stories from some of my experiences so far at the beach.

Watching a beautiful moon and some kids playing soccer on the beach. I loved soaking up the beauty and the culture this night.

Nick and I with our host Raphael on the same evening.

The apartment building that we are staying at is one of the high rise buildings right behind us. At the beach when it's nice out like this you normally get bombarded by vendors trying to sell you anything from bagged nuts to illegal Cd's to blow up float toys. The best part of the beach here though is that the ocean water is warm! It is much better than the freezing cold water Camilia and I had to endure in Southern California in January (though her company was much better than Nick's; sorry brother!). 

Recife is known to be a place with a lot of shark attacks. Fortunately I have been safe so far. I was a little nervous the other day after we played football and I entered the ocean with a bloody knee, but it looks like I made it alive to tell the story. One of the funny things is the translations that they try to do, if you look close you can see that we have been advised to "Avoid Sea Baths". Maybe I can find future employment in Brazil as a beach-warning-sign-translator-guy.

Nothing like a little agua de coco (coconut water) to stay hydrated and cool off on a hot day. 

A fun story for the kids back home:

A couple of days ago on the beach we ran into some teenage kids that had an American football that they were throwing around. They didn’t know how to throw the ball very well, and they certainly didn’t know how to play football. We went over there (when I saw we I am referring to Nick, myself, and the other four guys-Logan, Brian (who served in my mission with me) Jacob and Jarom- that are staying in Fernanda and Raphael’s house, as well as Raphael). We introduced ourselves, and asked them if they wanted to learn how to play American football. They said they did, so we started to play. We started off with U.S.A. versus Brazil, and after they couldn’t score against us we split up the teams a little bit. After some football, we turned to their sport, soccer (or futebol). This time it was us against them, and believe it or not we beat them 5 goals to 0! We showed them that “gringos” can play some futebol after all! More than anything though, it was a blast to play some soccer and hang out with these kids. They were a lot of fun and really liked hanging out and getting to know us. This is definitely something that I never did on the mission, which is play soccer on the beach with local kids, so I had a lot of fun.

Nick and I have enjoyed the chance to work out on the beach at night (and sometimes in the mornings before class, this is a little more rare though). The equipment there is simple but nice, a few pull up and push up bars. Tiago has some weights that we usually bring with us as well. The best part though, obviously, is the beautiful view we have as we are working out.

A few days ago I was awakened early in the morning from a mosquito bite that would not stop itching! I looked out the window and saw the sun rising (about 5:45) and couldn't pass up the opportunity to snap a picture of it's beauty.

In this picture the tide is really high, so you can see the rocks and tide pools that are in front of our house too. It is these rocks that protect us from the sharks that Recife is famous for, which allow us to safely swim in the ocean when there is more water without worrying about attacks. 

The view of the beach from the balcony of our apartment building.