BRAZILIAN BIKINI BOOT CAMP
Oi! Oi, pronounced "oy" is hi in Portugese - picture all of these Gisele look alikes slapping around in Havianas and teeny bathing suits all sounding like little old Jewish ladies when they greet each other. And they're all living in a beautiful country: Brazil's coast is just one big undulation of deep green ric-rac. Forests full of giant ferns, palms, ficus trees, cycads. And tons of butterflies. Big yellow ones the size of your fist, even bigger bright blue ones, little red and yellow ones. Canaries and hummingbirds, too (the Portugese word for hummingbird translates literally to "flower kisser"), and, seemingly, flowering fragrant everything.
But enough about all of that. To answer your burning question: IT WAS GREAT (in a butt-kicking, extremely sweaty, climbing-over-trees-while-hiking sort of way). Happily, I have indeed achieved my goal of becoming lightly browned and buff (lost 5 lbs). The people were amazingly nice, the food was surprisingly good (I am wondering if my new found fondness for flax seed will last...) and the accommodations really great (every room had its own porch complete w/hammock: nirvana).
Masochistic Moment of the Week: Coming to the reluctant conclusion on one particular hike that the best option really *was* hiking in a bikini (and hiking boots, complete with SmartWools) for two hours. The first hour of the hike was to a waterfall in the jungle where we all went swimming (and hopefully did not fall victim to a prolific freshwater parasite that the Travel Clinic is constantly warning travelers about...), and then the next hour was the hike to the beach where we hung out for a few hours & ate lunch. It just didn't seem to make sense to do a whole lot of changing in & out of shorts/bathing suit, hence the ridiculous decision (and, no, I was not the only one in our group to hike this way).
Fortunately, bathing suits were just not an option for our final hike of the week. We hiked up 3000 vertical feet through the jungle in 2.5 hrs. Lots of trees to climb over, roots to walk on and monkey dung to avoid. What's that you say? Monkey poop? Yes indeed-y. Just when I thought I'd heard it all, we're walking through the forest and we hear a pack of howler monkeys going nuts. Totally whooping it up - big time monkey partying. And then our guide casually drops the fact that when they get pissed off, they often hurl their dung at folks hiking below.
Alright-y then, *most* excellent.
Naturally, I felt compelled to inquire re. the kinds of activities which might upset said monkeys. Unfortunately, our guide was kind of vague about it, and I was left to ponder this as we climbed up and up and up past scads and scads of monkey mounds. "Damn", I thought to myself, "these monkeys are prolific!", and they appeared to be the geese of the mammalian world. I spent quite a bit of time pondering (as I climbed, sweated and hiked up and up and up) what in heaven's name they must eat, why we weren't warned to hike with some sort of umbrella for protection, etc., only to learn later that what I thought were acres of monkey dung were actually the leavings of.....GIANT EARTHWORMS. Seriously. They get to be, like, um, 2 feet long.
Happily, we were neither pelted with monkey dung, nor tripped over giant earthworms nor stumbled across any venomous snakes. A successful hike! Not to mention the views from the top while we ate our tofu with grilled veggies. We had a beautiful clear day and we could see for miles (although not all the way to Rio, which apparently is possible on extremely clear days).
In between those two hikes we did a heck of lot of sea kayaking (21.5 miles in 4 days, with the longest being 10.5 miles), hiking (37 miles worth) and Sun Salutations (I am convinced that there must be a "Roadkill" pose in yoga. After all, there's a "Dead Bug" pose and a "Corpse" pose.). We also had a massage at the end of each day to get us back in fighting shape for the next day's activities.
It was AWESOME. And they offered me a job :)
Stay tuned and happy spring!