Note: There is a problem with the server that prevents us from being able to upload pictures via the blog. This post will unfortunately not contain pictures. Sorry all!

Brazil is probably the hottest place I have stayed in - Kuwait was hotter but a drier heat and I was only there for business. Even Malaysia was cooler than here. It is a steady 35-40 degrees Celsius (95-105 Fahrenheit) and miserably humid (regularly over 90%), so the sweat is nonstop. Even nights can get up to 40 degrees. When we arrived, poor Saoirse got such a bad heat rash all over her body and face that people avoided her in the streets, thinking she has some sort of disease!

The boat is regularly above 40 degrees when the hatches are closed (if we are out shopping etc.) JC spent days on end sewing awnings for shade over the front of the boat area and that has helped keep the boat much cooler. Even with the fans running and hatches open, the measly wind rarely eases the discomfort. I suppose we are all more acclimatised now and Saoirse’s rash is gone, but like most pregnant women, I am running hotter than normal and I am positively melting most of the time. I would hate to do the full 9 months is such a climate.

January saw rain most afternoons/evenings - that violent rain that caused all those houses to collapse and poor people to die - it was on the international news. In Ilha Grande alone, one Pousada (hotel) collapsed and 25 or so people were killed on New year’s Eve. The only good thing that happened in Angra where dozens were killed, was that it was NYE, otherwise hundreds of people could have been at home in their beds and died, rather than out partying…

The daily rain and accompanying thunder and lightning was nothing I am familiar with (and being Irish I KNOW rain) - so violent and constant. One particular storm went right overhead us and the noise of the thunder must have equated bombs exploding. We were caught in the club house for that storm and decided to ride it out there. While we watched the bolts striking all around us in the bay and all over Angra, entire areas would go pitch dark from losing electricity. The sound of ambulances was everywhere - very eerie given what had happened just days before. Angra is small so that everyone here has been affected either directly or through family/friends and the sadness is tangible. I have to admit I was more than nervous during that storm with the pounding of the rain and the exploding thunder right above us. Incredibly, Saoirse slept through the whole thing!

Saoirse befriends people wherever she goes. All the staff at the club bar/restaurant know her. She especially loves 12 year old boys(which is more than a little scary)! Those who don’t speak to her in English she speaks to them in “whale” (anyone who has seen the film Finding Nemo will appreciate that one!) There are a bunch of kids that hang out at the pool (it is summer holidays here still, so many families have been coming down from Rio and renting houses) and they all know her name! There are also a huge number of Argentinian people here who keep their boats at the club and fly up a few times a year to holiday. We met a lovely family from Buenos Aires with whom we were very friendly (Saoirse even called them Abuelo and Abuela= grandad and grandma!). They had a daughter Marli and her 4 year old girl Morena with them on the boat and Saoirse played a lot with them. One day Morena and Saoirse were playing in the grass when Saoirse started screaming. Marli got there first and carried her to me. I thought she had fallen and was just whinging when I spotted her feet were covered in tiny ants. We quickly washed her feet in the pool’s shower and that is when I realised that they had bitten her badly. I counted about 50 bites on each foot. Between her heat rash spots all over her body and her red spotty and swollen feet she really did look diseased, poor mite!

January also saw my Godmother, Anneke, and her husband Siep come and visit us from Holland. We met them in Paraty and they spent the next 5 days or so on the boat with us, mainly around Ilha Grande. They were fabulous with Saoirse, who adored them in return. We swam in the sea, did some walking, drank the infamously strong Brazilian drink Caiperinha (Anneke will remember that experience!) and ate both out and on the boat, where JC as usual excelled in his cooking. He discovered palm hearts, which he ate in a fancy restaurant, so decided he had to make it on the boat for us. He bought fresh palm hearts (looks like cane sugar or a stick of bamboo) and prepared the dish from scratch. Yummy - like a tasty asparagus sautéed in onion infused olive oil dressed up with various herbs. Fresh crunchy bread dipped into the marinade oil finished off the simple but amazing dish. I think Anneke and Siep were impressed with the comfort level on the boat. They were gracious and unobtrusive visitors and Saoirse still talks about them.

The boat is finally out of the water and JC is busy every day fixing things on the boat that could not be done while she was in the water. My job was to try and get accommodation for us while the boat is out, as the boat yard is an industrial yard with zero facilities, so not at all practical for us to live there while the boat is on the hard.

Brazil is, as I have said before, an expensive place. With so many displaced people whose own houses either washed away or have serious structural damage, any of the cheaper places were long gone. To rent by the day was costing about USD 200 and given that we could be out for 2 or 3 weeks - that kind of money was simply not an option. At last I managed to find a 2 bed house very close the yacht club for USD 750 for a month. Even if we did not stay for the month it was still a better deal than anything else I had found. It came with no furniture except 2 beds and 2 sofas. Literally nothing else. I reckoned for that price we did not need tables and chairs and we could bring our own crockery and cooking things off the boat. It was situated in front of a jungle with monkeys living in the trees (although I have not seen any yet). It also has the most stunning views over the entire bay and I can even see the boat yard that JC motors to every day in the dinghy. I have to admit I was excited about moving into a house with a bed that did not rock. God, was I in for a shock…

The house has neither air conditioning nor fans, so by evening time on the first night, it was stifling hot. We had no choice but to open the windows and close the lace curtains to try and stop the insects from flying in. That first night was the worst night of my life in a long time. As we had no cot, we had to put Saoirse on the floor lying on a mattress, which we put in our room. There wasn’t a puff of wind so the room temperature must have been in the high 30s. I walked into the kitchen only to be attacked by what I thought was a bat, but in fact, was a giant moth with a wing span of what seemed to me to be at least a foot! JC heroically got it to fly out the window using only a broom. I managed to get over that shock and was engrossed in watching “Heroes” on our computer (there being no TV) when I suddenly saw (and practically heard) the galloping of a cockroach across the floor. Again JC sprang to the rescue and managed to get it outside. It was then we noticed that the door to the outside had a 1 inch gap between it and the floor, so any nasty creature of the night could just waltz in and scare the beejezus out of me. I was completely spooked by this stage and it took all of JC’s skills to talk me off the cliff.

When it was bed time we lay down sweating - JC from the heat and me a mixture of fear of what would jump out at me and the heat! I fell asleep at 5am. Saoirse cried every hour or so and would kick her legs wildly in her sleep beating her hands on her body. It was only the next day, that we realised she had been eaten alive by mosquitos - way worse than we had been. JC counted 150 bites on her little body. I cried for ages. That is why she had been beating her hands on her body and kicking her legs. The “great deal” I got, suddenly looked shitty.

The small swimming pool in the garden I realised was not clean and was a breeding ground for midges and mozzies. I managed to get a fan from a neighbour (whose son is dating a Leitrim girl!) and another kind woman married to a Dutch man lent me a second fan and a mosquito netting to hang over her mattress on the floor. The 2nd night was a much better experience as we had learned which windows to open to cool the house and the judicious use of a mosquito coil in the bedroom before we went to bed to kill all the mozzies. Saoirse did not seem to have any more bites (though with that many on her body it was hard to tell). It is day 3 and I am beginning to accept that all houses in this part of Brazil have insects, cockroaches and mosquitoes, irrelevant of how clean they are - it is part of living beside a jungle/water with this kind of intense heat. Being from Ireland and not being a “camping type”, I have never had to deal with sharing my living space with creepy crawlies. As far as Saoirse goes, I was terrified that she might have gotten Dengue (which is present here - luckily no Malaria though), but she has shown no signs of fever and is in great form. JC and I scratch wildly at our few spots, but she has not once touched her 150. I wonder is scratching psychological????

Well, my bump is certainly growing - I am 24 weeks now. Not sure if I wrote that we got a scan done and it is another girl? Saoirse seems to get that she has a sister growing in my tummy and talks to her now and then. It looks like we will be here till end of February so hope to see many of you in early March.

P.S. Can’t wait to get to the cold!