Mussulo Island

After the new year, we ventured out with some friends (Brian and his two kids Callen and Kera) to a beach about a half hour away called Mussulo Island.  It’s a quiet bay with calm water and nice sand and space to spread out and breathe.  You can actually drive there so it’s not actually an island, but an easier way to get to this specific beach is by boat.  There are locals with their sketchy looking boats waiting on the shores to carry you across.  Of course they quoted $10 round-trip per person when we first started talking, which we expected from talking to other Americans that had been to Mussulo.  But then once the boat arrived and we were getting ready to get in, they changed their tune and said that it was going to be $20 per person round-trip.  So Bri with his Portuguese and large stature made sure that they understood that we were going to pay $10 per person or we’d find another captain.  They consented. :) We paid half when we arrived at the beach.  It was only about a 10 minute ride but fun all the same.  This was the first time our kids had ever been on a boat in life-jackets!  They loved it as we expected.

The beach was perfect.  The water was wonderfully refreshing, especially after throwing a frisbee around and working up a sweat.  And we found a number of unique, beautifully colored sand dollars.  We had never seen the one-sided, finger-like eroded edges on them before, growing up near the California and Oregon coasts, or the pastel green and blue colors of them.  So we had fun collecting and examining them to see their differences.  We also found a few nautilus-like shells and mussels.

Swimming in the Southern Atlantic Ocean.  Smallish waves compared to California beaches that I'm used to, but enough to have fun with and keep the kids happy and entertained.

Rhea and Kera dancing around in the shade covering and then settling down to play teacher. :)  I told Rhea not to bring any of her teaching things because I didn't think there would be a need for extra entertainment nor did I want her things to possibly get wet and ruined.  She pulled the toys out though and very quickly said with a hug, "I'm sorry I disobeyed you by bringing my teaching stuff."  Then bounced away happily to play with them.

Some beach neighbors from England that pulled out some fun toys.

And the ride home.  We couldn't believe that our "captain" actually remembered to come pick us up, and he showed up on time!  Slightly red and crisp from 4 hours in the sun we were okay to leave.  It was a fun, relaxing day for everyone!

Funny--without being given specifics from other Americans except that we would take a boat to get to the island, I didn't know what kind of boat to expect.  But in my mind I think I was envisioning one like the nice, large passenger boats that are docked on the left.  Nope.  Our boat worked just fine though.  :) 

Exiting the boat area to walk back to our car.  Trash everywhere of course--we could really use a Scout troop (okay, maybe more than one) here to earn their "clean up your community" or "help take care of the environment" merit badge!  :)

Locked out!  Oh, that's right.  The problem with getting back in the house that we realized we were going to have after we shut the door to leave in the morning.  We tried putting our key in but it wouldn't turn to open the door.  We actually have two doors to the apartment, one that goes straight into the kitchen, but we don't use that door because of the storage shelves behind the door, so we didn't have the key.  We realized that we had probably left a key in the lock on the other side of the door because that's how we lock the door at night (they have different locks here).  
Anyway, we called someone from the embassy to help us.  We were extremely luckily that they were there on a Saturday afternoon and could find the extra keys to our apartment.  They had a driver bring the keys to us and we were able to use the kitchen door key to get in.  We were happy to discover that Rhea is small enough to get through the door even with the shelves behind it.  We learned our lesson--we will never do that again!

And, the clean up.  Since we don't have a yard, garage, or anywhere else to clean off the extra sand that snuck home with us, we decided there was no harm in putting the sand back down on the ground from 14 stories above.  :)