Day 11: Pool, Surf Lessons, and Marinha Beach

  Konrad and Sam took surfing lessons for Sam's birthday, while Al, Cam, and I hung back at the airbnb sitting by the pool.  

That evening we went to Marinha Beach.  There was a short hike down to the beach and the beach itself was pretty small.  It is nestled right up against the beautiful cliffs.  Unfortunately there was also a ton of stinky bug infested seaweed taking up half the beach.  

This rock reminded Konrad and I of the James Bond rock in Thailand :)

Waiting while dad flies the drone:

This beach was made up of tons of tiny broken shells and small pieces of sea glass.  Sam found a rainbow of them :)

Helping her learn how to pose :)

She wasn't a fan :)

Minus the sea weed this was a pretty amazing beach!

They loved this cat they saw.  The cat even let them pet it.  

Turns out this is the beach we could have seen this:

As we were leaving we thought it might be so we tried looking from the top to see if we could find it, but wherever this view was from we didn't find it.  I think we would have had to jump a fence and put ourselves in danger to get the pic.  So we will just admire this one and know that we were at that beach too :)

Day 10: Sam's birthday!! and Praia de Dona Ana

 Today is Sam's 19th birthday!  I was so glad we got to spend it with them!

Sam's past year:

Sam wanted to start the day with crepes so we found a crepe place near the beach we were going to that day!  Driving on those little streets is a little crazy!

Allison and Camryn had donuts:

Konrad, Sam, and I had crepes

Walking back to the car.  We totally lucked out and got a spot on this busy hill!

Konrad dropped us off at the beach and then went and found parking.  We snagged 4 chairs (Cam was always content in the sand or water and never even asked for a chair the whole trip!)

This beach was FULL of shells.  Like mounds of shells!

The water was VERY chilly.  Sam went and bought a snorkel set so they could look for fish but the water was too cold to put your head in for very long, so they barely even used them!

This coast line has so many cool rocks and cliffs at the beach!

We sifted through these for quite some time finding all our favorite shells!

Cam and Sam went through this arch:

Konrad flew his drone:

He saw all these boats going out to tour around the rocks and he really wanted to do it.  I said I'd stay back with Cam (she doesn't like boats and I often end up sick) and assumed the other two would go with him, but they didn't want to either.  Later he was told that those boat tours are amazing...he was really bummed we didn't do it.  Sorry babe!

More piles of BIG shells.  

Sam wanted to stay in and have grilled cheese for dinner that night.  

We played cards, Mormon Bridge I believe (I still don't know why it's called that!)

We tried to find them a chocolate cake (we don't speak Portuguese so reading labels was very tricky and we didn't have data on our phones to look it up), but they were not a fan of what we found.  I thought it was yummy and ended up eating quite a bit of it while we stayed there.  They did like the ice-cream we go though.  

Two more pictures from the beach, sorry they are out of order :)

Sam go their bday present a couple of months early b/c they found a good deal on a piano they wanted.  And then we got them and Konrad surfing lessons for the day after their birthday.  It felt weird not having something wrapped for them this year...