We got to Rio in the last days of February and as of June I haven’t yet gotten into the water. First it was too hot, then it was to cold, but really above all we were just way too busy, weekdays and weekends. So, eventually we decided that we should take a week off and go to somewhere else, as this would be the only way to actually get some time off. So, we went to the Northeast, and did a tour of the coast of Pernambuco, Paraiba and Rio Grande de Norte. Here is a map:

We flew into Recife, stayed there for a day and a half, took a van down to Porto de Galinhas, then went up to Paraiba and stopped at Jacumã, just a bit short of João Pessoa. From there we took a taxi to Pipa (3 hours, US$50), then took a bus to Natal, spent a few days there and few back out of Natal.

It was great and I brought home tons of pictures, which I of course didn’t have time to put up for a while. But now with the my trip to India coming up, and having just assembled 10GB-worth of flash cards for photos of India, I'll have to cover this trip to the northeast now if I am going to do it at all.