Brazil the final instalment .....the outpouring of my wandering mind

We are back from Brazil, and I must apologise for the late drop of our final blog from there, it's three months since our return. I did write some of this back then, but now we are away again, this time in Grenada, I got time to finish it off.

As my blog is a loose documentation of our retirement, it's probably the point to bring you up to date with that long term adventure too. I need to go back six months to start that process.

We lost a very important family member in September 25. That coloured the end of 2025 and does continue to do so. Mrs NHSontheRun has some additional home bound responsibilities that mean we've shelved extended trip travel plans for a short while.

We have an old dog to look after, and Reggie isn't getting any younger either. Sorry Tony I couldn't resist.

I'm also preoccupied with my own creative endeavour, which is a writing challenge I embarked upon a year ago. That has taken much of my journaling or blogging time, meaning that NHSOTR is adopting a back seat right now.

You are up to speed.

So we've been to Brazil. Now I'm sunning myself in Grenada. This intermediate phase of life, between full on work and full on retirement is turning out to be the most incredible stage.

My guess, we shall see, is that full retirement will be quieter?

What this intermediate phase seems to offer is the financial security, the creative headspace, the physical ability, and the desire to explore, experience and learn.

Since our return from Brazil friends and family indulged us by asking about the trip. I've found I can spin the tale two ways. The perfect Instagram story, or a fun but incredibly frantic travel story punctuated with inevitable disappointments and balanced by highlights that will stay with me forever.

The latter version is the truth.

This set me thinking that travel experiences can be totally subjective. If you want something to have been perfect, your own memory will now happily Instagram it for you. This was not always the case. Back in the day, as we old folks say, we consciously acknowledged the bad bits. We set them against the good bits, and life balanced.

Here is a travel story by way of example.

I remember a single holiday with my parents to Venice in 1973 like it was yesterday. The hotel was a white painted prison block on the beach of the Lido de Jesolo. Actually some miles north (I think) of Venice, but nonetheless we called it Venice. Venice Italy by the way.

Mum applied self tanning cream to me and my brother, rather than sun tan lotion, and then sent us out onto the beach. We were there for eight hours exploring. Both myself and my brother developed an allergic response to the cream, got severely sunburned, and got lost. When we found the hotel we were both red raw from scratching and spent two days in cell block H recovering.

My dad bought an inflatable dingy and we went out to sea. The dingy capsized repeatedly, and my dad lost his super high prescription glasses into the sea. He was rendered effectively blind. We spent a day at the opticians while they made him an emergency pair of fishbowl glasses so he could drive. He described the experience with the new specs as akin to walking uphill through a hall of mirrors.

We went on a trip to the Grand Parade in Venice on the grand canal. We got stranded in a queue of boats in a stinking side canal for 6 hours with no food or drink or shade while the other families on our trip unpacked glorious looking picnics around us. We never saw the Parade.

It was my parents 25th wedding anniversary and they took us to a restaurant, which was a massive treat. They ordered fish which arrived smothered in Italian sauces and garlic which were totally alien to us and neither of us boys could eat. I ordered spaghetti which the buxom waitress insisted she taught me how to eat by squeezing my blushing 12 year old head between her massive bosom and encouraging me to twist the spaghetti onto my fork rather than slurp at dish level. My brother enjoyed my discomfort fully.

Our parents gave us some money to go shopping on our own and my brother returned wearing a Make Love Not War necklace and bearing a flick knife which created the biggest family row I can remember.

Driving back to our home in Germany we stopped in a beautiful mountain village and went walking, where we came across an unexploded war time landmine. We spent several hours in the local police station

We laughed and complained about our holiday. We had had a terrible time. We learned the anecdotes, and we listened for the next 45 years to mum telling us that the sun burn was not her fault. That the fish was wonderful. That my dad driving home in his new specs was the worst drive of her life. True family folklore.

You can argue with me, but I think things have changed too much. This is an inevitable consequence of aging I do understand. But here is my theory. We have learned to avoid reality and paint life in the terms we can post on TikTok.

You cannot give a "like" to a story that ends in the police station explaining in broken German where the bomb is!

I do not think this is particularly great for our mental health. This mismatch between reality, the truth that we cannot share and our new need for "likes". As a result no one's holidays are portrayed as the mixed bag of good and bad that experiences always are.

Im sure this explains the five star reviews that many pretty average travel experiences get. We have found increasingly that Trip Advisor, travel blogs, The Lonely Planets Guide, and even Google reviews are subject to this effect. And it leaves us struggling to reconcile our experience with the expectation generated by our extensive pre-trip planning.

As the fourth instalment of our Brazil trip, I can wrap it up pretty quickly.

Street art São Paulo

We had been absolutely flat out since arrival in Rio. The time flew until we dropped anchor in Paraty. A wonderful coastal town an overnight bus journey from Sao Paulo.

Hole in the wall Japanese Cocktail Bar Sao Paulo

The bus journey was taken entirely in homage to Race Across the World. We wanted a night on a bus, presumably just to say we did it. Because it certainly isn't the most comfortable way to travel.

Yes - I got the big chap behind me !

Our travel night coincided with Black Conciousness weekend and was an excuse for anyone 40 years younger than us to turn up at Sao Paulo bus station at midnight.

Breathless and sweating profusely we arrived. We counted 68 bus departure platforms, none correctly labelled. All packed with people asking where their bus left from. Desperation had set in by 3 minutes after our intended departure time of midnight We found the platform and saw the bus to Paraty. We muscled our way to the doors. Not our bus. Our bus was still stuck in traffic, this was the 11pm and no we couldn't get on.

When the slo-bus to paradise did eventually arrive it was 01.15am. We arrived in Paraty at 8.30am. However much fun you think it might be, don't be tempted to think of the overnight bus journey as something to aspire to.

We arrived, and thankfully Paraty and our accommodation at Casa Luz were definitely to aspire to. Paraty is a classic heavily Portuguese influenced seaside town. It's bars and boutiques and homely restaurants were filled with Bossa Nova and Samba beats and we chilled instantly.

I won't dwell on this phase of our Brazilian experience, save for a sketch of our memories. We took a private boat tour to surrounding islands. Beautiful. We did yoga. We sat in bars and soaked up the atmosphere. Our cliff side room was a pod set down quite near sea level with spectacular ocean views and no need to close the blinds. We woke to the stunning sunrise . We attended an inland village fiesta and drank too many Caiparinha's while enjoying an impromptu Samba circle concert. We chilled and eventually reconciled our frantic trip around Brazil into some sort of order.

We returned by shared transport to Rio for our final night in the upmarket and uphill suburb of Santa Teresa. Twenty minutes drive and a world away from frantic Ipanema where we started three weeks before.

So Brazil, its huge. It's colourful. It's musical and sweaty and diverse. It's natural wonders are awe inspiring. A few words of Portuguese goes a long way. It's snarling, violent and scary. It's soft and friendly like a carnival hug. But most importantly there is a mix of good and bad. Like everything in life. We loved it. Just exactly as much as we hated it.