Buzios: good blood and tiny hearts

Those of you who stay in touch through the Eat Rio Facebook Page will know that the Eat Rio team (erm, that’s Mrs Eat Rio and me) went to Búzios over the weekend. Búzios is a popular beach town located on a peninsula around 100 miles (170km) northeast of Rio. Apparently Brigitte Bardot loved Búzios so much she stayed for months and is now immortalised by a statue that sits (rather provocatively) on a bench along one of the main streets.

I had heard plenty about Búzios since I came to Rio, but until this weekend I hadn’t visited. So when some workmates suggested a weekend trip I jumped at the chance. It’s really rather nice:

This is Praia de Geribá, just 2 blocks from where we were staying.

That’s a fine looking scene isn’t it? I can only imagine how this must make you feel if you’re currently suffering sub-zero temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere (heh heh!). However, you should know that we didn’t spend the whole weekend lazing on the beach…

That’s right, we also spent some of our time lazing next to the swimming pool back at the house we had hired for the weekend!

After a long week’s work, this was just what the doctor ordered – some games in the mini football court followed by cooling off in the pool with an ice-cold beer or two.

But we didn’t just laze around – there was some serious work to be done. A churrasco.

Various cuts of beef (picanha, filet mignon, coração de alcatra), pão de alho (garlic bread), linguiça (sausages) and chicken. That’s good eating!

And what churrasco would be complete without hundreds (well, tens) of tiny chicken hearts (coração de galinha)?

It’s always a sobering thought when you think that each of these tiny morsels belonged to a single chicken. That’s a whole flock right there…

Do you know, I think I’ve officially decided I don’t really like chicken hearts – they’re a bit chewy and the flavour is not particularly nice. You know what was nice though? Everything else!

Everything went on the board. Then we all just helped ourselves to whichever tasty item took our fancy. Top marks go to Ricardo, the Mestre do Churrasco!

Most of us spent Saturday like this: boozing, relaxing, eating, cooling off in the pool, repeat. There was, however, one notable exception – one of our party, Patricia, got up early and competed in a ridiculously difficult race over various horrible sounding obstacles – parabéns Patricia!

The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed and went for a cleansing day on the beach.

The pathway to hangover salvation – Praia de Geribá.

What a nice beach! Mrs Eat Rio snoozed (one of her favourite pastimes) while I read a magazine a snapped the seagulls.

Two rather nice looking seagulls I thought. It wasn’t until I got home and had a proper look at the photo that I realised they weren’t being so innocent…

The seagull on the right has picked up a Queijo Coalho (cheese on a stick), a favourite beach snack. Looks like he’s not into sharing.

If any of you are hating me right now, I’d like to point out that such lazy weekends are very rare in my life. Also, there was at least a moment of education. This guy came past pulling a rather impressive food cart with some strange text written on the side: “do sangue bom”.

This guy had a really impressive food cart – this was basically a mobile churrasco, so he was offering everything from chicken, beef and sausages to cheese on a stick and, you guessed it, those little chicken hearts! But on the side of his cart it said “Churrasqueira do sange bom”.

Do sange bom – “Of good blood” I said out loud like a five year old who has just learned to read. Was this a comment on bloodiness of his steaks? Perhaps someone can help me with this – I looked it up and it seems that this phrase is actually used to refer to “a nice guy” (do you think he was describing himself?). Regardless of what he meant, this seemed like a fitting phrase to learn at the end of a memorable weekend, spent with a group of very nice guys indeed.

When we were packing up and leaving on Sunday night, I learned another phrase: enterrar os ossos da festa, meaning to ‘bury the bones’ of the party. When there are a lot of leftovers at the end of a party, “to bury the bones” means to finish everything off the next day. Luckily for this ageing expat, the next day was Monday so this has been postponed until the next convenient weekend…