Sao Miguel do Gostoso

We found a beautiful beach house to rent with some friends, so we decided to play hooky from school and work for a week and relax and play. The house was in Sao Joao do Gostoso, a cute little town up in the north east corner of Brazil. It's draw is it's massive beaches with few people. And we had so much fun playing with the Costa Family.

So, before we arrived at the house we had to make the 4 or 5 hour drive. So we decided to stop in beautiful Natal along the way. It was our first time being in Natal and I was surprised by the massive sand dunes surrounding the city. They looked like mountains. It gave the beaches a very different feel than Joao Pessoa. Anyway, we drove by the beaches and then visited the aquarium/zoo there. It was a lot of fun. They had lots of great fish from the ocean and Amazon river. They also had a zoo with hippos, monkeys, wild cats, maned wolves, and more. It was a lot of fun.

The house was as good as expected. We had a beautiful view of the MASSIVE beach (I mean a huge white sand beach that went for miles), a pool, and a great yard. Our first evening we just settled in and relaxed.

Our second day we spent exploring the area. We headed over to Dunas Douradas de Lagoa de Sol (the Golden Dunes of Salt Lake). It's a big group of sand dunes resting between a lake and the ocean. We tried our hand at sledding down them on cardboard boxes, but found out that cardboard sticks to sand. So we decided to roll down them and "death run" down the steep ones.

After the sand dunes we headed over to Calcanhar Lighthouse, which we, unfortunately, found out is not open to the public. So we had to view it from a distance.

Then after a delicious lunch we headed over to Praia de Tourinhos (beach of little towers). It was a beautiful beach where the waves had created little pillars in a cliff face. We had fun hiding and exploring all the little pockets in the "towers" area. Then we played at the beach until sunset, which was beautiful.

The next two days we didn't even leave the house/beach are near our house. We had fun swimming in the pool, having a churrasco(bbq Brazillian style) and seeing some of the local wildlife (snails, large toads, bats, huge grasshoppers, lizards, and geckos). And we enjoyed the beach.

The last full day was also Louis's birthday. We celebrated by having a mini olympic games (tigers vs panthers). Having another churrasco and eating cake.

The day we drove home we decided to stop in Natal again. This time stopping in Fortaleza dos Reis Magos (Fort of the Three Wise Men) which was built in 1598. It was really well preserved and well worth the visit.

We were so glad to have this fun week with Jessica, Kleber, Nick and Benicio. And it was great to find such a beautiful beach town.