Caldas Novas and Quinze Anos

So this week we were on vacation, as the semester for the kids ended. Although, we didn’t know it was going to be all vacation, it basically was. We accompanied Roberto and his family to Caldas Novas to drop off Daniel for his month long internship at Palavra da Vida Centro-Oeste. Caldas Novas is in the state of Goiás and is about a 9 1/2 hour road trip from here.

I like road tripping with Roberto, as he’s like a tour guide who provides us with fun little facts about the area and entertaining stories from his childhood.

Once you leave the State of São Paulo and start heading north, into Minas Gerias, and finally Goiás, you will notice, that it is a lot more farm country. Miles and miles of nothing but sugar care or coffee.

Man, America is going to have to step up its game if it’s going to compete with Brazilian gas stations. This one we stopped at in Pirassununga had a churrascaria inside. Take that, QuikTrip roller dog.

This gas station even had a koi pond inside.

We pulled into this gas station just as Jorge and Mateus were pulling out. They are a really popular music duo here in Brazil.

In addition, to the change in scenery, you start seeing more cowboy/farmhand types, even crossing over the interstate.

We, also, saw a couple of fires like this one in Jardinópolis. Since it’s a lot of farms, you could see the fire for miles and miles.

We stopped in Uberlândia for the night, which was about 6 or so hours into the drive. Uberlândia is the second largest city in the state of Minas Gerais, behind the capital of Belo Horizonte.

I forgot to take a picture of our room but it was a nice clean small studio. Tuck was excited to see cakes and sweets along side the eggs, cheese bread, and sandwiches for breakfast. Usually, Brazilians will just have coffee and a bread/pastry for breakfast.

Back out on the road, we drove through Araguari, which is the largest producer of tomatoes in the state and they heavily produce rice, coffee, and juice.

This is a rubber tree. Seeing this tree prompted Roberto to tell us a story about Henry Ford and his rubber factory town, Fordlândia, in the state of Para in the Amazon Rainforest, that Ford created in northern Brazil back in 1928. The story was quite fascinating. The project failed, due to poor logistics, diseases, insects, and “American” diet, housing, and other rules that the Brazilians soon revolted against. The city was abandoned in 1934. None of the rubber from this town ever made it into a Ford automobile. I feel like this would have been a good Paul Harvey story.

On another interesting note, there are a good deal of buses on the road and most of them look new due to a law regulating the age of buses on the road. So if you’re thinking about traveling and don’t want to drive, a bus might be the way for you. They usually stop every 2-3 hours and any route over 4 hours the bus to have a bathroom on board.

I took tons of pictures of the Brazilian countryside but they never seem to really do it justice. The roads vary from area to area. Our roads were pretty rough in Goiás. Aside from the fields, there are some pretty lakes near Caldas Novas.

Arriving at camp is like arriving at a resort. We were not expecting such nice facilities.

Pool and tennis.

Ping Pong. Real nice.

Basically, all we did this week was swim, tennis, ping pong, and eat. I would have liked to have said sleep too, but that was not the case.

Camp was loud and they like to stay up late at camp. So between, the noise, the lack of air conditioning, and the rock hard mattress little sleep was had but, hey, the daytime was fantastic.

Fun fact, Caldas Novas is home to many thermal hot springs. Here at camp the pool is drained every night and refilled with water every morning. And don’t let the sign fool you, even though it says the pool opens at 8:30, the pool isn’t filled by then. That’s when they start filling it. So the boys waited and waited and by 10:30 they decided to just get in what little water was there.

Caldas Novas made us think of Panama City Beach in Florida just replace the ocean with thermal springs and lots of water parks. It’s definitely a tourist town. Lots of people come here for vacation. You have to remember we are in the middle of the country and any beach is far away.

There were tall condos, tons of swimwear stores, restaurants, and lots of lights and entertainment at night.

During the day it was chill, as most people were at the water parks, but at night it had that loud party vibe.

We usually ate on site for lunch and then headed out in the evening for dinner. We tried several Brazilian dishes.

Tapiocas are pretty popular here. It’s like a crepe but made out of tapioca and filled with meat, cheese, or whatever you like. It was fine but kind of bland so we went for crepes when we ordered dessert. Tuck had to run off some of the sugar after dinner.

This is the Goiano empadão, a regional specialty (think pot pie). Anna likes to get the natural juices, this time she had strawberry juice.

The panelinha (small pot) dishes were Trevor’s favorite of the week. There are several different ones you can pick from. Mason and I tried the Goiano da Tânia with shredded chicken, rice, diced potatoes, fried bananas, sliced green olives, pequi, guariroba, homemade, sausage, and mozzarella. Pequi, the orange thing on top of the dish in the top left picture, is a fruit that has a sweet, fruity, cheesy smell. When eaten raw you have to make sure and be careful to scrap the pulp off the pit because the spines can detach and hurt your mouth. Guariroba is a palm with a slightly bitter taste. The Mineira, which Roberto and Anna shared, was made with pork (no pequi or guariroba) and the Nordestina, Trev an Tucker’s pick, was shredded beef with mandioca.

We also had a jantinha (little dinner) at Espetinho do Toin and it was delicious. The feijão tropeiro (a bean side dish with collard greens and farofa) here was amazing. The waiter came by to take our order and after we struggled through pronouncing what we wanted as best we could, the waiter looked at us and in his Georgia accent, asked us where we were from. We thought we were being punked. When he spoke Portuguese he sounded Brazilian but when he spoke English he sounded just like us. His parents are Brazilian but he lived in Cobb County, Georgia for about half of his life. He graduated from high school in the US and joined the army. He’s now back in Brazil working on his dental degree (as school is cheaper here) and plans on going back to the US after he graduates. What a small world.

Dinner was usually followed up with dessert, usually ice cream. This place was having trouble with their machine, so Roberto and Trevor stepped in to help.

It’s none of your business how many of these I ate this week or whether or not anyone helped me eat them. Don’t ask me why they gave me that many spoons. What were they thinking?

The kids entertained themselves with a game of Heads Up while they waited on their pizza one night.

We took a short hike out to a small waterfall in the community by the camp.

And then we drove straight home on Friday. It was a looooong day in the van.

Despite getting home late, we were up early, as usually. Saturday was a very special day as Mason turned 15, quinze anos. How can that be?

He no longer looks like my little boy. He’s taller than me. He is becoming a man. Look at those long legs. I couldn’t be prouder of him.

He’s smart, can spell better than any of us, loves to try new foods, willing to go on adventures as long as they don’t involve heights, sarcastic, kind, loves to read, likes swimming in the pool, willing to help when needed. He’s not a complainer, he’s an always look on the bright side kind of kid. He enjoys learning computer programming and learns language easily. He is a bit tightly wound (he gets that from his father), but usually super chill (totally from me), and he loves the Lord. He doesn’t love sports, he hates beets, and only thinks popcorn is okay (not sure how he’s my kid if he doesn’t LOVE popcorn).

He has been to 45 US states, Niagara Falls and Sioux Saint Marie in Canada, Boquillas and Cancun in Mexico, Puerto Rico, numerous Bahaman Islands, and 4 Brazilian states. I had never even seen the ocean until I was his age. I can’t wait to see the man he becomes. What a truly wonderful human being.

Of course, he wanted to celebrate with sushi.

If you’re ever in Atibaia and want to try a bunch of different sushi, we highly recommend Iwata. They have a rodízio (all you can eat served at your table) and everything we ate was wonderful. Our waiter was extremely patient with our poor Portuguese and tried very hard to slowly explain what each item was.

And now it’s time to get some rest. We have an FCA team from Georgia coming in this week.

Oh, one last tip – ALWAYS, ALWAYS make sure you check to see if there is toilet paper in your bathroom stall, especially in a foreign country, BEFORE you sit down.