Buzios used to be an unknown fishermen village until Brigitte Bardot made it famous by spending here her vacation time with her Brazilian boyfriend in the early ’60s. At the time Buzios didn’t even have electricity and from the old pictures, looked like a bucolic place.
There is a statue of Brigitte on the boardwalk, but she doesn’t seem happy: Probably disturbed by all the tourist taking pictures with her. C’mon Brigitte, give me a smile!
Today, Buzios it’s a charming little town with a beautiful waterfront and lots of pousadas, restaurants and shops. You can easily spend a few months here without getting bored.
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The night we arrived, there was a wedding celebrated at the Iate Club where we anchored, so we could see the whole ceremony from our advantaged point of view, and the fireworks at night were spectacular!
The yacht club is right in front of the Praia dos Ossos (Bone’s beach) – called this way because back in the days Buzios was a whaling village and this beach was full of bones from whales. In fact, the complete name of Buzios is Armação dos Búzios, alluding to the process of separating the meat of the whales from the bones. Here is how the beach looks today.
The church of Sant’Ana, on top of the hill over the anchorage was built with rocks and whale oil.
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In Buzios there is a kite surfing spot and school, managed by a former Brazilian Olympic windsurfing champion Ricardo Winicki, aka Bimba. Too bad there wasn’t enough wind, because Monica and Joaquin are willing to learn. I promised them that if they take the canonic 6 hour lesson from a qualified IKO instructor, then I’ll take it from there and by the time we get to the Caribbean they will be excellent kitesurfers!
In the meanwhile, since we found a reputable diving school, Yuka and I decided to take the PADI open water license, so that when we get to Abrolhos we will be able to dive. Learning to dive here was fantastic!
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One night, about 3 am, a loud noise woke us up. Yuka and I jumped off the bed and went out to check. A big motorboat come free of the mooring, and while drifting hit our bow. We watched it drifting downwind in the anchorage, towards the area where many tourist schooners were moored. Luckily the damage on our boat was not much, just a scratch. The drifting powerboat ended up tangled with a tourist schooner. The next morning at sunrise, with the help of a couple of fishermen we were able to secure the powerboat. Needless to say, the owner of the powerboat was very grateful. Pfiuuu! Another lucky day for us. It could have been so much worse!
We stayed in Buzios longer than we had scheduled. But it seemed short nonetheless. Once again it was time to head up north. The Brazilian coast is 4,000 nm long (4,600 miles for land-lubbers). And we have only covered about 8.5% of it.
We are sure we’ll discover places that are even nicer. We’re optimists.