Apr 2007

Finally got around to doing this thang!

27.04.2007 28 °C

Hello again, yes we are still alive...just.
It's been so long since we've done this, the thought of doing this blog entry is quite intimidating, there's so much to be said and so many photos to be shown. Prepare for a rocky ride of adventure and excitement. If you need to go to the toilet, go now cos here we go!

Well we arrived in Florianopolis as clueless as ever, we knew about a good hostel called Backpackers, but didn't know where it was when we got there. Popped in a cab and got to a beach that we believed it was near and asked a hotel owner where it was. He said it was 15 minutes max to get there, so we walked up hill and down dale with backpacks strapped tight like proper trekkers. After an hour of walking in the blazing heat, dripping with sweat, we found the hostel in Barra da Lagoa. Only one problem...there was a river seperating us and the hostel with a bridge that had been torn down to make way for a new one. A quaint little fishing town, the government paid local fisherman to ferry people across the water in tiny fishing boats. After a sketchy trip across the water we could finally set our bags down in the hostel for our (what we thought was going to be) 2 week stay. Here's a few pictures of the town and hostel including the bridge that took many days to build (we woz well naughty and crossed it before it was finished too!).

As you can see it was in such an awesome location, right next to the beach and as the hostel rented us surfboards for free then we could surf to our hearts delight.
It was so laid back at this place, the people who owned it were all really young and fun. All the other staff who worked there were all wicked aswell and so easy to get on with. The way things work in the hostel is that there is a big blackboard, and whenever you go to get a beer out of the fridge, you just have to mark a B on the board then you pay later. This was so good for us, but also very dangerous! Every night its like a competition to see how many Bs you can get on the board. We dominated. Of course.

B = Beer
V = Vodka
1 = Water
2 = Soft drink
F = Fags
D = Doritos

Look how tanned even Shortbread is!

We surfed every day for the first week, so we thought we would try something different. We turned up at a beach called Joaquina ready for a bit of sand boarding.

sandboarding was awesome. everyone got the hang of it pretty quickly , so we decided to have a race. everyone got involved including mona and an awesome guy called Ian. Alex pulled it out of the bag and won the race (we think it was because he is short and his mohawk cut through the wind, this definately aided his victory) which earned him a free cocktails from each of his competitors at a fun beach bar.

Many days of surfing, drinking and partying went by and we even managed to make it up in time for breakfast and a morning surf. Wake up time was 8am most days (this made us proud). Finally bday rolled around and everyone in the hostel was looking forward to kierans birthday. We woke up and 8am and went for our morning surf, we then came back for some breakfast. we decided that going sea kayaking would be fun so kieran, mark, paul and henry (another leg end from backpackers ) set off in their taped up kayaks ray mears style. we fought through the current of the ever flowing river and made it out into the open water. Unfortunately mark had taken on alot of water by now so we headed towards the nearest beach. After arriving at the beach we looked back to find mark and all we could see was a little head in the water towing what seemed to be a half sunken kayak behind him. when he arrived it took at least 20 mins to get all the water out, in this time kieran and henry spotted some dolphins in the distance and jumped back into their vessels and paddled out towards them. kieran used his best mating call and got within 5 metres of them, one of which jumped almost over the front of his kayak and caught a fish mid air. Awesome!
The evening festivities started( actually afternoon) around 3pm. This started with 3 shots of tequila. yummy. Such an amazing night, everyone will have good memorys. there was a bbq and birthday cake and loads of alcohol (of course).

We finally made it out of the hostel and to the club which was called el divino, kieran unfortunately didnt make it becuase of massive alcohol intake. no problems the boyz still carried on strong celebrating his birthday for him.

After the festivities of kierans birthday and a massive hangover we decided to go to a beach called joaquina for lunch with a few of our brazilian friends.

more modelling shots for the portfolio, tarts!

This is fun!!!!!

Here is one of us trying this liquid, some people call it beer, must be a delicacy in brazil.

Here is some pics of us at our local surf spot, and a zapper for the lads

Here's some fitty checking DaBoyz out (of course)

We were invited to a lunch at our friend Luanas house, where we met our friends Mel, Natalia, Gili, Juliana, and Bruna. we had a splendid meal and we all got completely trashed (of course). The fun fire extinguisher was filled with alcohol (of course)

Alex "badboy" Brownjohn got totally smashed and wandered off one night with some mental brazilians, the next morning he arrived tatted to the tits.

SORRY MUM

Kierans surfing made such an impact on the local village that they erected a massive statue of him by praia mole(the main surf beach), yessss

Kieran and alex decided to go for a trip to praia mole to check it out
1. for girls
2. scenery(girls)
3. more girls

They decided to go walking on the rocks, to get a better view of the "scenery"

In the picture below you see a poor little boy sitting on the sand below the rocks. This is infact Alex.

He decided that he would go and check out the rock pools below and jumped down off the rocks onto "soft sand" this turned out to be 'solid as a rock' sand. Alex "braindead" Brownjohn could no longer walk. He ended up in hospital the next day, and had to wait for 7 hours for the doctor to tell him that he had to pay them for some silly tablets. gutted.

Meanwhile back at the bat cave......

Due to short funds and big egos, mark and paul were challenged by junior the owner of the hostel to smash the record of beers drunk in 24 hours. The record was 40 so mark and paul decided to go 10 better each and hit 50 beers aka 100 between them. If doing this there would be 2 nights free at the hostel for daboyz and the beers would be free.
let the games commence, heyoooo!

This is their crowning achievement that will go down in Backpackers history (Mark wrote the 60 himself the same day until Kieran took over for the rest of it).

Pictures tell 1000 words. Yeh, they smashed the granny out of it.

This is another couple of random fun nights we had at the hostel. This first event was a samba night, barbecue and a live samba band. Paul 'the sleaze' Sumner got some sexy samba down with the mental chambermaid Claudia. Lucky lad!

Next on the bill was a rave night inside the hostel. The owner Junior rented some sound equipment from a 12 year old ghetto kid and we reached for the lasers all night long. Party only stopped when the armed police arrived at 11 in the morning, damn those pigs eh Andrew?! Mark and Paul were chuffed because they got a chance to don their new rave hats (good work Rach n big D!).

A cheeky little shot of Mark, Shortbread, Bart and Backpackers owner Junior (our brother from another mother).

A load of Junior's friends from Porto Alegre came up to Florianopolis to see him, and we all (apart from Shortbread and his bad feet) went up to Lagoa de L'oueste. We took a bus ride for an hour drinking beer on the way (of course), when we reached the destination, there was a qwirky bar filled with random messages from everyone that ate there.

This was followed by a drunk 2 hour trek through the jungle. Nobody really knew the way, but since when did that ever stop alcohol-fuelled morons?

After a long trek to the top of a hill the view was incredible.

We decided to get a pleasant group shot combining the team and the scenery. Big mouth Mark called out to everyone to get them all together whilst stepping backwards saying "Hey everyone, get together for aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!" and fell through the one single missing plank in the decking. what a fool. This caused mass bruising and mass hilarity. The girls were all freaking out asking if he was ok, but the guys made him get back in the hole for a photo!

By the time we got to the beach, it was raining but that didnt stop bodysurfing Paul.

Finally a month after arriving, it was time to depart backpackers. With many friends made and sorrow in our hearts, we left the beach and headed for the long winding road towards Iguacu falls.
Anybody who stayed over 2 weeks got to put their hands on the wall.
Mark and Paul got theirs a while back, so here is Kieran's and Alex's.

The Iguacu falls

Well, this little critter is one of the 88 butterflies. One of MANY hanging around...friendly little bunch, they fly right up to you and land on you (more of that later).

DaBoyz...chillin' on da Brazilian side. What a view! (the waterfall looks pretty good too eh?)

A better shot of the falls...without our ugly mugs

A toucan just hanging around in a tree there.

We're all here in Brazil so even though it's wet and cold, we still felt the need to get our shirts off for a fun photo.

Whilst we were there, Mark and Paul nearly got raped by a metal man with a big hat. Luckily Alex and Kieran were at hand to shoo him off.

Here's us on our boat trip that took us all through the valleys and then right underneath the waterfalls. The next shot shows another boat doing what we did without Kieran getting his camera wet.