Brazil Beckons

Brazil is a powerful force. There can be no more attractive beach idea than that of Northern Brazil, land of legendary music and white sand, where beautiful brown people dance in the sun, shaking impressive tushes all over the place.

That's the idea anyway. These photos are of Buzios, a beach peninsula an hour + outside of Rio de Janeiro. I was there a year ago during carnaval with an Argentine friend who had never been on a plane. I spent too much of my time working online in the hotel but I did get to see what's here for a couple of days and it was beautiful.

I wanted to post these then but it was winter, there was a major recession, and it just didn't seem right. But now it's spring in the Northern Hemisphere and here it's autumn. I've just had surgery to remove what threatened to take away any baby-making possibilities for the future. It was scary, my middle hurts, and Brazil is going to make it all better. If anything can, that tushy shaking dream sounds like a safe bet, right?






On the north coast of Brazil, between Natal and Salvador, near Recife, there's a beach town famous for surfing where dolphins swim right up to you. I'd heard of Pipa before Toni told me that's where she and her Brazilian-Italian husband would be for the month of April. They spent this year riding a BMW motorcycle from New York City down to Antarctica and back up to Pipa. They've gone penguin.

"You should come, there's plenty of room," she said. So I am. I'm leaving and going to a town full of Italians on a white sand beach in Brazil. To look for monkeys and dolphins.