THE GRAND FINALE - A Van Life Review of Brazil
this morning we woke up in a gas station parking lot 10 minutes from the border between Brazil and Argentina today is the day we've been dreading because we have to leave the beautiful country of Brazil which it is no secret we fell in love with we got an early start we pulled up to the border around 10 minutes after 8 everything went smooth we checked out the van and us and everything from Brazil and we checked back in into Argentina to be honest with you guys it is a Bittersweet moment we are going to miss Brazil but we're happy to be back in Argentina our second home home away from home yeah this is where I went through all of my heart issues and my surgeries and the intensive care so Argentina is also very special to us now what normally happens when we cross the border is we just turn the cameras off chill relax and talk talk about the country we just left kind of like a debriefing and what we thought we would do this time is something a little different right Kurt leave the cameras on we're going to leave the cameras on as we debrief about our Brazil visit one thing I want to make sure you guys know if you're new to our channel is this is not our first time in Brazil we were actually here last year for a month and a half we crossed over from through and D drove down towards the pantol with the sole intention of seeing the Jaguars and hitting it at the perfect time for dry season the pentanol yeah so we stayed in Brazil for 6 weeks last year before we left and went down toward Argentina and Chile and then we returned back into Brazil this time where we stayed for 4 months so guys we've been in Brazil for a total of really close to 6 months 5 months and 3 weeks total time spent in Brazil and we're going to break it down and we're going to let you guys stay along for [Music] that so one of the first things we always talk about is what shocked us the most about this country for me it was the size and the diversity I don't know if you guys know this but Brazil is really the same size as the US minus Alaska it's a huge country it's got 26 States I think we ended up making to about 12 of them 12 of them I think but the West is like you know wide openen Farmland Everglades tons of wildlife beautiful and then you have the mountains towards the east and then the beautiful beaches of Brazil but it is a huge country with all sorts of different yeah I think to properly explore Brazil in a van and see everything there is to see you need a minimum of two years and I'm not exaggerating there was it was huge there's so many beautiful different things to see and the diversity here it's not just the wildlife the floor the F the cultures everything I mean wow it is a surprising country in general now for me mine's more like one single topic because as we were preparing to go to Brazil we were worried a little bit about not speaking Portuguese and everyone told us oh if you speak a little Spanish you'll be absolutely fine in Brazil Portuguese and Spanish are basically the same language not no but absolutely not and now I will say that if you're just just reading it it's fairly easy to piece together the words because they are similar but they sound completely different the accent the pronunciation everything about it is different if you're going to spend a bit of time in Brazil the most shocking thing to me is Spanish will not help you any more than English did especially if you're Spanish is Spanish it's Spanglish so anyway we got by the Brazilians were so helpful and a lot there's a lot of English speakers here too so it's not a bad thing about but it was shocking yeah it was shocking we really went in there thinking that Spanish and Portuguese were almost the same language and that is not the case and we had a lot of amazing food in Brazil but snow what was your favorite without a doubt hands down the banana cinnamon pastel which are these little deep fried which I know is bad for me but they're so good deep fried little what are they called they're like empanadas yeah they're like little pastries and the one I love had bananas and cinnamon and the best ones they'd sprinkle a little cinnamon sugar on the top when it right when it came out of the grease I could eat those for breakfast lunch and dinner every single day now one thing you need to know is you're only going to find these in the south of Brazil you go you try to order them someplace to the north and they look at you like you're crazy so what about you favorite well I got to be honest with you the Brazilian buffets are magical for a lot of reasons now I didn't say healthy you can really overdo it on these things but first of all they have a lot of Brazilian traditional sides so you get to try all those and pick the ones you like and then they have the trasco on the side and Brazil is which is basically a big fire grill off to the like a meat man go get your meat at the end he all sorts of ribs steaks be sausage now when we first entered Brazil way back when we came in from Peru sometime last year we crossed the border we'd been there about an hour we were hungry we came up on our first restaurant we stopped and we went in and it was one of these buffets where they weigh your food no idea you you go up and we're like where do we pay how do we do this and everybody thought we were crazy but you fill your plate up and then you try to go sit down and they're like no no no no here they literally weigh your food and that's how you pay by how much you bought at the it's hilarious it's great we get laughed at a lot guys we're kind of used to it it's not just that type of stuff that understanding the culture the restaurants but also obviously our uh language but if you laugh at yourself you're going to be fine in Brazil now we we could not leave the food topic without mentioning the infamous dessert meat this was a fancy Buffet similar to some of the ones that we have the Brazilian buffets we have in the US this was fancy think Texas Day Brazil type fall good H but in event the dessert meat had like strawberries cream it was steak it was a piece of steak that they put on your plate and then they put like a yogurt sauce and a fresh made strawberry jam and a fresh strawberry right on top so it was steak with strawberry jelly it was so good it was so good so maybe that should have been the most shocking thing it'ser meat but anyway so the food in Brazil will blow you away and if you're here you need to be courageous and try everything we do travel by a van so campsites are incredibly important to us whenever we leave a country always like we always like to talk about our favorite campsite now this doesn't mean it was the most beautiful most magical had the best view was right next to the coolest activity it's just an overall favorite campsite and for me it was easy to pick this one because as we were traveling through Brazil we started to get a bit of Travelers burnout which happens when you travel full-time sometimes you need a vacation from traveling which may sound weird but think about being on a vacation for 4 years and uh you get a little worn out so we needed a place to just stop decompress and chill and we found the most peaceful beautiful filled with colorful bir Birds campsite about 10 miles north of parache really close to the coast we pulled in there we were going to stay one night we ended up spending a total of like 10 nights there and totally reset to get ready for the rest of our travels so without a doubt this is my favorite camp yeah and you know mine was party Beach guys go figure party but we just both absolutely L Flor andopolis the island and we did a lot of beach hopping there but at this one particular place we were able to park the beach right in the front row sort of a busy commercial Beach area right in front of the restaurant where they pop up The Umbrellas right basically in the middle uh everything yeah in my opinion one of the best beaches we had just delicious food there were some amazing hikes there was beautiful River with a nice fishing culture Surfers families everything it had a little bit of everything and uh and it was free and it was free every in the middle so it was a little noisy at night so it wasn't perfect but we have I have that was that was my fa doesn't have to be perfect to be our favorite that's kind of part of it but yeah so for Brazil there are tons of beautiful wonderful campsites one of the most asked questions you get is what is your favorite thing what was your favorite thing on the journey what's been your favorite thing so far what was your favorite thing about this country or that country and quite honestly it's usually a very hard question to answer and Brazil is no different mainly because of brail Brazil's diversity there's so many amazing places is tough this is not a fair question no it's never a fair question but we're going to try to answer it the best we can what was our favorite thing in Brazil and for me well we have two let's just go ahead and tell we have two things and the first one these these are not individual these are our favorites yeah yeah so the first one was the beaches of Santa Catarina and if you followed our journey you you already know we have determined that that is a place where we could come back one day when this journey around the world is over and live we were very comfortable there it's beautiful the people are kind there was a lot of beautiful beaches hik everywhere hikes how the mountains clash with the beautiful ocean and the Blue Waters and the trees it's a lot of birds there was monkeys there two cans all it was the people the people the people were our favorite I can't believe it took us so long to say that so anyway Santa Cat Arena beaches we can't even narrow it down to one we actually went we we hopped them on the way North and then on our return trip we went back there and spent more time and we got to see the whales which is also always a bucket list for anytime we get to see those for us right so the beaches of Santa Catarina of course I have a special place in our heart that is no secret but the other one if I had to pick between the two which we decided we weren't going to do we were going to have a tie but if there was a tie breaker it would probably be this next one because it is it's the panol and the surrounding area it is the amazing wildlife of Brazil uh so many rare animals there that you can't see anywhere else in the world and when you're just traveling by van and you can drive down these roads at the slowest pace and just look out your window and see amazing animal after amazing animal and a lot of cool birds and a lot of this stuff you don't see anywhere else on the planet and we had the opportunity to see an abundance of different creatures and unique experience it was magical absolutely love love love also the adventure of those crazy bridges yeah it was a cool cool place I think a way to separate these two I don't know why we didn't think about this when we were kind of getting our notes together here is my favorite place to visit for a short amount of time is the panol I don't think I would want to live in the panol it's not developed and all that kind of stuff and then my favorite place that I could stay for a long long time beaches of Santa Catarina yeah but what about fasu Iguazu Falls those were pretty magical those are like waterfalls in the world I mean that was pretty crazy it's true it's true all right so speaking of that let's go to our scariest moment in Brazil now when we were headed to Brazil we thought we were going to just be inundated with scary moments you would think from the media and from people warning us that we were going to get robbed at least 10 times and well let's just back up first of all since we started this journey it's always the case that if you're from Canada oh don't go to the US it's very dangerous there if you're from the US don't go to Mexico it's very dangerous there if you're from Mexico don't go to Guatemala and so on and so forth every country has another country that more dangerous that you shouldn't go to so we hear that a lot yes but even inside of Brazil inside of Brazil we were told don't go here don't go to Rio we almost did not go to Rio De Janeiro which would have been a huge mistake so quite honestly we expected to have a lot of scary moments in Brazil and we didn't have any Earth shattering moments that were to blame on Brazil now when I was thinking through this in my mind I had an incredibly scary moment and when it was happening I didn't even really share it with Kurt and it goes back to Iguazu Falls so we went down and we rode the boat ride up underneath the waterfall one of the most amazing things ever we had been in the country maybe a month or so and we had come from Peru and I had had in Peru now we know I had had a heart attack but I thought I had had a really bad flu or something and just wasn't getting over it but I was slowly getting sicker and sicker and when it was time to walk up those very steep long stairs from the river back up to the top of the waterfall I literally almost didn't make it I couldn't I couldn't breathe and right then is when I knew something was very very wrong with me I managed to hold it together but I'm sure if you looked at me I probably looked like a deer in headlights I was very scared and when we got to the van I told Kurt it was time to just go ahead and get to buos series because uh I knew that there would be a hospital there I could go to so I think that is my scariest moment in Brazil when I knew something was very very wrong with me help boys yeah that probably qualifies as scary the scariest moment in her life but I would add that when we were leaving Brazil we didn't have really aside from that which incidentally that was when we were leaving Brazil the first time so it's only when we're leaving Brazil we have these events because we didn't we didn't feel scared threatened anything in Brazil the whole entire time before he tells you this one I have a disclaimer he's going to say it was my fault I'm going to say it was his fault so carry on so we we're we're driving to the Border un fortunately we left uh a day before we planned that Crossing so we had a little bit of extra time but we're headed to the border and all of a sudden the road's closed we have to take this detour and we end up driving on this muddy Road through the pastures and it was actually kind of adventurous but then we get to this place and you look over at the intersection there's a vehicle stuck over there in the mud and so the only option is to go up on this bank and go around well I asked the guy if it was okay if it was safe and he said sure So snow is the driver I was the videoer No No he was the pointer to tell me where to go or yeah and anyway the van almost flipped over yeah snow took the wrong approach the almost skipped over while CT was telling me exactly where to drive the van seriously guys I just had actually I was filming and I got so shocked when the wheel popped off I actually accidentally hit the stop button but I thought it was going over yeah no the front wheel up here I could feel it and I didn't know what to do Kurt was mad because I didn't stop and for me I thought I got to keep going so it comes back down but anyway the van did not turn over but the front left wheel was clearly 18 in off the ground I didn't think you should stop I thought you should go on the and stop it however it worked anyway the van did not turn over it was scary yeah and when your vehicle is your house it's even more scary but yeah and your only Transportation you're a foreign country yeah those things can all add to the so that was pretty scary but nothing that is specific to Brazil yeah we felt very safe here and we do know every country has their issues and we're not trying to downplay play those We Just sh we're just sharing our experience and that was it all right we're going to wind this video down with it doesn't have to be a location a place thing anything but our favorite moment in time from Brazil you want to go first you want me to uh well what I would say is at anytime I would answer this question it would always be in the nature and like everything else there's multiple answers but we came out of the the pentanol and we were looking for giant ante eaters and we saw one run across the road and we had a short little glimpse of it and we knew that ahead in the next couple days we were going down anti eater roads literally called Ant Eater road so we're driving down these like literally total rural bumpy dirty roads nobody else in the world would go down to we're scouring for wildlife we're seeing a lot of it and lo and behold at the end of the day we see an antier off of the field and of course I running out in the field and we get some good shots and come back and tell snow about it and then the next day we're still at ant over can our Junior journey and then right at the end of the day we spot two an eaters and like snow they right by the road I got to get close snow got to have a really a really personal experience with them but that wasn't enough it was like 10 15 minutes before Darkness I'm like let's just park here by the anater she says we still haven't found the tape here yeah we need we need to go for a little bit more and I he's like we can't drive at night it's getting dark I'm like we're not done we have 10 more minutes of sunlight and sure enough 15 minutes up the road we saw some wild hogs with which led us to a very short cap de spotting 10 seconds but those an eaters in that experience were just Absol that whole evening how the timing of me saying no I'm not ready to stop and then we spotted it that was a good moment that was now for me it's also over in the wildlife area over there by the pantol actually right in the middle of the pantol the reason we went there was to go on a boat tour on the river to hopefully see Jaguars our first day we saw a couple of glimpses of them but quite honestly we had a guide that wasn't the best he was just young nothing against him but it was a long day and we we were a little bummed out after that first day the second day we went back for a half day because we're on a budget we couldn't do another full day and we got a more seasoned guide and he had put us on a couple of them but still not the Epic shot of actually seeing a Jaguar like you like you imagine glimpse of them but if you can picture this they're just kind of hunting along the river and River so it's hard to spot these things and if you do sometimes you just get a little Glimpse yeah which we had gotten and we were thankful for we were thankful yeah we had saw them and we had been able to film them a little bit to show you but we were almost back to the dock we were headed back to the dock we were across the river from the dock yeah we were two or three minutes from being done with our tour when all of a sudden this gigantic beautiful Majestic male Jaguar just comes completely Out of the Woods saunters along theer Shore right in front of us for like 20 or 30 seconds just right there of course we're like Scramble with our cameras and you're on a bouncy boat and all that but it's like the Jaguar new that these guys love the nature they're here to see me their time's almost up they're let's give some good karma back to them they seem like good good people and he just came out put on the show so many amazing things the people here here the food the floor the Fawn of the mountains the beaches everything just an incredible beautiful country and thank you to all you people from Brazil for being such wonderful host we had a lot of people you know say hey go to gado you know nobody International tourists don't know about gado but it's one of our favorite places and a lot of other places and you know I would just add if there's one thing that I am the most absolutely disappointed about in Brazil is that we did not get to see more of it yeah we really really really were we're bummed about that but a world the world's a big place I got a real strong suspicion Brazil we'll be back all right guys with that we're going to wind this video down we'll see you in a few days cheers guys cheers if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our Channel and hit that notification Bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos cheers guys
2023-11-11 06:55
