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The Good, The Bad And The Adventurous

Feliz Ano Novo! Happy New Year!
It’s a tough time of year to be away from friends and family, regardless of the adventures we try to fill our days with. But we made the best of it, and we’ve certainly never had a Christmas or New Years like these.

Christmas, honestly, felt like just another hot day in Brazil. Having been wowed by the winter wonderlands of Salvador and Palmas, we had high hopes for Natal, the city of Christmas. I’d pictured a winter wonderland, streets laden with decorations, Christmas markets, and an abundance of fairy lights. In reality, our corner of Natal, Ponte Negra beach was 100% decoration free. I was gutted!

On the big day itself, we started Christmas as traditionally as possible, with a breakfast of toast and chocolate from a Brazilian version of a selection box. We wacked the aircon all the way up, kept the curtains closed to give the illusion of a cold, grey day outside, and watched a Christmas movie. We then did as the Brazilians do and headed to the beach. It was heaving! And unlike the Christmas day beach photos I’m sure we’ve all see on the internet, we didn’t spot even one person wearing a Santa hat or anything identifiably ‘Christmassy’.

Falling back on tradition, can you celebrate Christmas without a game or 2 with the family, we enjoyed a zoom call quiz with Aiden’s family. Lastly, for our big Christmas dinner, lacking an oven to roast anything, we ate steak and veg with cheap packet noodles. Followed by a dessert of toasted panettone, a Brazilian must. All in all, it was a very different but not terrible way to spend Christmas, though we’ll stick to our roast and mince pies next year.

Between Christmas and New Years, we’d planned to explore Natal and Manaus, but Aiden was plagued with the dreaded travellers tummy, and a rather nasty cold. So instead we spent our days resting, getting organised and trying to keep Aiden’s fever at bay. We would of course experience our first long power cut the night Aiden’s fever peaked, so without aircon he spent most of the night laying under the cold shower.

As for New Year, we’d expected to let it pass this year without much of a hurrah, given that we would be spending it miles deep in the Amazon Rainforest, and probably fast asleep after a hard day adventuring. It was a wonderful surprise, when the family who run the lodge we were staying in, invited us to join their New Years celebrations. I ended up spending most of my evening in the company of the family cat. Cannot say I minded too much, especially as Aiden kept my drinks topped up.

Having 4 time zones in Brazil, celebrations started at 11pm when the first time zone hit midnight. Streaming the countdown and fireworks on a big TV, very much like back home, we all raised glasses of delicious, refreshing apple ‘champagne’, before tucking into a veritable feast. The most memorable of which, was a dessert which apparently translated to ‘blue cup’, and tasted like a fruity semi-frozen sorbet/yoghurt mix, adorned with chocolate wafers. Not Aiden’s cup of tea, but I rather liked it.

There was something very familiar about watching the family celebrate New Years, but like a pair of distant cousins, welcome but not comfortable enough to join in, we slipped out around 12:30, and left them to their celebrations.

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