The grandson, his dad and I arrived yesterday night. Perth to Melbourne to Santiago to Rio, without any real sleep.

Note: Now we know where they get all the cocaine from

Feels like I have just come off a week of night shift.

My wife has been in Brasil since May catching with family. She was not expecting me and I only just decided a couple weeks ago to come with the grandson and dad. We managed to keep it a secret, made sure was not in any photos. My wife was very surprised.

The tourists itinerary

Ipanema (3 days)

Wife found this neat old apartment one street back from the beach. No family, just us tourists, recover from jet lag and adjust to the culture shock. 

Fish Farm - Pinheiral

Most of the brothers and sisters live in or close by. The eldest brother has a Fish Farm and we will stay there. The Fish Farm is a strange concept, it needs it’s own post.

Back to the roots

Family farm in the “bush”, lots animals and kids for the grandson

Ipanema 

Love it so much, they decided today to stay in the apartment again for the final leg.

Day One 

First stop is Sugar Loaf mountain.

We travel everywhere by Uber. 

• have long legs so I get to sit up front
• taking me awhile to stop trying to get in the drivers door each time. They drive on the wrong side of the road here
• the cars are micro
• the coast road is between the beach and high rise apartment, it is very wide, there are servo’s in the medium strip
• there are Polícia Militar everywhere being a tourist area. Polícia Militar role is to maintain public order and prevent crime. They are classed as reserve troops and ancillary forces of the Brasilian Army. Polícia Civil solve the crimes.
• in traffic, the micro car did not yield an inch, a bus tries to change lanes, the micro car just keeps going
• every one gives way to the motor cycles and scooters, who travel the white line at speed and toot to let you know not to change lanes on them
• despite the mayhem it seems to work, every one obeys the unwritten rules and only saw one car with a ding in its rear end. Back home 

Rubbish and recycling

• it was rubbish collection day outside my window this morning, a pile of black plastic bags waiting by the power pole
• a street person was busy emptying them onto the footpath, retrieving the refundable items and anything thing of value
• rubbish truck arrives, 3 men jump off the back, lay a plastic sheet, sweep the rubbish onto it and carefully throw the rubbish in the disposal.
• despite the obvious inefficiency, it works and every one makes a living
• at Sugar Loaf mountain there was 3 rubbish bins, general rubbish, recycling and coconuts
• on Ipanema beach there was no recycling. Last night we went for a beach walk before bed. Found a large plastic bags with some rubbish in it. Grabbed the bag and started to pick up mainly plastic bottles and cups. As you do. Quickly filled it up and went to find a rubbish bins
• only ones I found were padlocked 🤷
• once again the system seems to work, all the rubbish was from that day, some one must pick it up the next morning. My sense of environmental outrage was just depriving some one of a chance to earn a living

Toilet adventures 

• the plumbing is very narrow
• the soiled toilet paper goes in a waste paper bin
• couple times had to pick it out of the toilet bowl
• you really don’t want to be the guy who blocks the plumbing
• our apartment has 4 toilets, one is in the kitchen 🤷 and another by the front door, both bedrooms have en suites

Lunch

• walked round corner to local eatery, sat outside to watch the world pass by
• ordered meat and what I thought was vegetable stew and mashed potatoes (fatigue was kicking in)
• stew was an offal mixture and not sure what the mash was
• everything way to salty for my taste, had forgotten how much Brasilians like salt and sugar. Only took a few mouthfuls out of politeness.
• put plate to one side
• young man came up and asked me something about the plate. Had to refer him to my resident translator.
• he wanted to know if it was spare
• ”go for it mate”
• he took it inside to get it put in a takeaway container
• every one had a win, the street person had a meal, I was saved my embarrassment of letting the owner know I couldn’t eat his meal, the street person provided a service for the owner WIN-WIN-WIN

DISCLAIMER: I promise no AI was harmed in the researching, editing and publishing of this (as much as I might have wanted to). But lots of CO2 was produced, doing my bit to make planet earth green.

Support Your Local Bloggers Grandson Stacking Sats

Solpick.io offers their faucet, surveys and gaming. You can level up by earning from surveys or wagering. Been using for over a year and had no problem withdrawing to exchanges or the Ledger Nano. Allows 5 free withdrawals per day, minimum of 0.00250000 SOL per withdrawal. 

https://solpick.io/?ref=VEH2024

The other Solana faucet we use daily is

https://solfaucet.togatech.org/   

This the “first-ever Solana mainnet faucet”. 0.00001 SOL paid each day to your wallet, no strings attached. Only pays to wallets that have the minimum rent-exempt balance of 0.00089088 SOL (does that count as an attached string?)