TAIBA!!!

Beautiful - Absolutely Beautiful!  Taiba is a wonderful little fishing village along the Brazilian Coastal line.  Everything here was very relaxed and I felt as if I had almost stepped into one of those brochures people hand out to tourists.  You know the ones with all the happy, smiling beautiful people and the beautiful scenery.  When I was walking along the beach I was captivated by the boats that scattered the shoreline. Now not the boats your thinking of, not the huge sport and fishing boats we see here, these boats had the look and feel like they had been passed down from generations to generation to fish with.  Here are some pictures of a couple of guys pushing their boat out into the ocean to go fishing with.

Belem!

First, let me apologize for not posting this sooner.  It's been a little hectic around these parts, actually I think its been a little hectic everywhere!

The 2nd destination on my last trip to Brazil was Belem, you could kind of consider this city as the entrance way to the Amazon.  It is a very busy place and everyone is constantly moving.  I flew there because to travel there by boat would have taken about 96 hours, now I like a nice boat trip but that is a little too much even for me!

Here are some pictures from the flight;

This city was amazing and there was so much to see and do.  While I was there I found out that approximately 2 million people in this city, I believe it.  Every street was packed with people and every corner had a merchant or two on it.

Manuas!

These are just a couple of pictures I took while visiting Manuas.  After going back and looking at these pictures I got to thinking about what I found so interesting about them - I think besides the beautiful colors and atmosphere its the shear size of everything.  This town is inland on a huge river (and I mean HUGE river) named the Rio Negro.  For more information about this town check out this link.

This first picture is the view from my hotel room.

This is one of my favorite pictures.  It's a picture of a riverboat, this is one source of main transportation in Manuas, and the smaller boats that this boat is pulling are used to carry to your destination if the riverboat can't make it.

I took this picture as I was wondering around.  This town is very busy, the street is lined with different merchants selling a variety of items.

The fish market - look at all those people and this is just a section!

I captured this picture because to me it was just so interesting.  One small boat on a huge river - it really shows the immense size of the Rio Negro and really helps put things into perspective.

You can't see it in this picture but the trees down there are just big, lush and beautiful.

One section of the town. It may be to small to see but the river front is lined with merchants.

I was walking down to get on this boat and saw these kids just having the time of their lives.  Man how I envied them!

Traveling through Brazil

I’ve just returned from Brazil, as always want an amazing place!  You may not know this but we have added some Real Deal Bags to our collection (we decided that just a hat wouldn’t do), you can view them here. 

You may notice that some of the names of these bags seem rather peculiar, maybe somewhat interesting.  Well I can show you exactly where they are on a map.  I’ve visited each town and this time I brought back pictures of just about everyone of them so that I could show you what a wonderful little towns they are and why they deserve to have something named after them – after all they are what inspired us to get into this recycled tarp business.

On this map you can see where each city is and I even marked out my trip.

Check back next week to see pictures of Manaus!

Awesome Picture!

I wanted to share this picture, it's from David over there at thegoodhuman.com.  He was recently on a trip in New Mexico and his wife captured this stunning picture.

Beautiful Brazil

No matter how many times we go to Brazil, I am still entranced by it.  Maybe it’s the heat that plays with our minds, either way I still find Brazil to be a beautiful and truly mysterious place.  The culture, the people and even the land just seem so real and maybe it’s just the fact we feel that much closer to earth here then anywhere else. 

I’ve got some more pictures I would like to share.

What is truly amazing to me is just being able to walk around and see all these different things, how often are we truly mesmerized by our surroundings?

Some pictures

Hey everyone! We are still real busy getting things squared away from our last trip so I thought I would post just a few picks we got to take while we were down there.

This first one we thought was pretty neat – it’s modern meets old, it’s amazing how you will see cars and motorcycles and then horses transporting people and things.

This pictures on the right is of a bunch of tarps getting ready to be cleaned and made into hats!


This picture on the left is a guy cutting out the different parts to make hats. This guy was amazing to watch, he moved so fast it was like watching a magician work.

The picture on the right didn’t come out like I would have hoped but it is a picture of a gas station – which just happened to be the hotel we were staying at.

This guy on the right was selling pineapples from the back of his truck, if you look above him you can see tarps! They are used on just about all the trucks down there. Most likely the tarp you see in this picture will be used to make a hat in the future.

The picture on the left is from when we were in the car taking a tour when I looked to my right and there was this guy, in one of our hats riding a bike. I took a real quick picture because to me I thought it was just pretty cool to see.

On the right is one of the town markets from a village we visited.

We would love to see pictures of the different ways people are wearing their hats so if you have some, email them to us and if you would like we would be more than happy to post them here to show everyone your unique style.

Just got back from Brazil!

Wow! We have been in Brazil for the past month and what an adventure we've had. Even though we are working around the clock it doesn't seem like it, we go down there and from the time we get off the plane until we get back on it, it is nothing but fun and excitement. All of us love going to Brazil so much - the people, the atmosphere - everything there is just phenomenal! We met a lot of great people who are willing to make our hats for us out of used car tire wire and tarps from the cargo trucks there. And ever better then that, they are going to send us some sample of some new items like bags, backpacks, shoulder packs and so on. As soon as we get them we get some pictures of them loaded up here.

While we were visiting these different towns, we were amazed about how many tarps they have left over from trucks. To think this heavy duty material wasn't being used for anything is just appalling! We are so glad we can put it to some good use. Here is a picture of a pile of tarps one place had.

Everywhere we went we saw trucks that use tarps to cover their cargo around - this stuff is really used a lot down there. From what we could gather from people there is that one of the main reasons you see tarps used so much more then a metal covered cargo area, is because of the heat factor! It's so hot there that a metal covered bed would be like a death trap and so hard to load and unload stuff. Which this makes perfect sense - it was a 104 degrees in the SHADE while we were there! Here are two pictures of a truck we saw with the tarp covered bed.

Hopefully I can get some more pictures up here in a few days from our trip, there is just so much to do now that I can't get them all done!