Itapema, Brazil - Our First Challenger Event

After a week of being back home, we were once again flying to a different country… Itapema, Brazil. We were thankfully able to get into this tournament with zero points (see previous blog post for more explanation on points). It was a challenger tournament, so it was a step up from our previous future tournament in Australia. This meant better competition, so we knew each match was going to be a battle. We were excited, just as we always are heading into competition.

*This may be a bit long but just had to document everything. Hope you enjoy reading!

Yes, we took a bathroom mirror pic right after

Does Taryn look like my mom? Do I look 12 or under?

Our first funny of the trip didn’t take very long to happen. We roll into MSY, get our bags checked and head to security. We walk up to the lady at CLEAR (which I highly recommend if you travel a lot) and hand her our boarding passes. She looks at them and then looks at Taryn and asks, “Is this your minor?” Taryn busts out laughing, and then barely gets out the response of “No.” Like what?? This lady thought I was 12 or under? I mean I know I look young but 12?? C’mon!

 We made it to Brazil and boy did we learn quickly that we don’t know a lick of Portuguese. We both maybe got an hour of sleep on the flight over so when we landed we were pretty hungry. We also learned quickly that apparently Brazil does breakfast a little differently than us. Everything is dough and cheese or just dough. We were looking more for something like eggs. Also, every menu is in Portuguese so us ordering at the counter is entertaining to say the least. As we are walking around the airport we see everyone eating these little balls of dough, and they are in all the glass windows of the restaurants. So, obviously we have to see what the hype is about. We walk up to the glass window and Taryn starts pointing and trying to ask questions. The worker is also pointing and trying to make more hand gestures but it was very clear that the communication was not going well. A very kind young lady got up and came over to help translate a little bit, thank goodness. Turns out what we now refer to as “the balls” is just dough stuffed with cheese of which Taryn can’t have so off to find the next possible breakfast place.

Ahhh Starbucks. We found our home base. We know they have to have something that we can order. Stroll up to the counter and attempt order #2. More pointing but the worker knows a little English, at least we think. This pretty much sums up how the ordering went… Worker – What’s your name? Taryn replied, Taryn. He proceeds to write “T” on the cup, turns it to us and goes “T?” That is when we knew this was going to be an eventful trip.

We made it to our 3rd flight of the trip, our final one. We had been lucky for our first two flights - no delays. Not the case for the last one. We get on the plane and the guy sitting next to us unfortunately fills us in that we are delayed 30 minutes. At this point Taryn and I are both dead. We haven’t slept at all so we are officially out of it. We were both going in and out of sleep the entire hour long flight. It honestly was a blur. Once we landed at Navegantes airport, which is the smallest airport I think I’ve ever seen, our friend, who was a coach for Brazil, next to us on the plane delivered some more bad news. It was about an hour drive to our hotel. We had absolutely no idea. We should probably do a little more research when we go to the tournaments. Luckily, they do Uber so we booked an Uber for a pretty cheap American amount and we were en route to our hotel. Side note - you would think that the tournament would have people at the airport guiding you or something but that’s just beach volleyball for you I guess… figure it out yourself.

Checking into our hotel was pretty similar to us trying to order at a restaurant… language barrier very evident. A lot of back and forth google translating happened but at last, we were into our room. Not a very large room at that but it was cozy and there was a bed which is all we cared about. We had thought about getting a practice in that day but we were just so dang tired that we thought it was more beneficial to us to take a 2 hour nap, then wake up, check out the venue, get our Covid tests and finally, find food.

People in Brazil eat at very different times. Most of the restaurants don’t open until 6:30-7 so when you are hungry at 5 there are not many options. We walked around the area in search of any restaurant that was open. After what felt like an hour of walking (it was probs only 15-20 mins), we found a burger place that was open and even better had Wi-Fi. Not sure if we just picked a bad place, but don’t go to Itapema, Brazil and expect a burger that tastes like home bc let me just tell you… IT DOES NOT. We got back into the room with our stomachs feeling full yet not satisfied at all.

Our hotel had a breakfast buffet that was included which was very ideal except when approaching the buffet we were a little confused. All you see are desserts and bread, like that can’t be right? We keep walking around and thankfully we stumble upon a small warmer with little sausage links, some not your usual American bacon, and scrambled eggs. Thank goodness, we can survive off that. Another little funny… Taryn made herself a little jar of what she thought was peanut butter for her bread but turned out to be caramel sauce.

It was practice day so we walked to the venue (about a 15 min walk) and got some good reps in with our fellow Americans and former teammate Toni Rodriguez and Zana Muno. Kind of crazy that there were 3 Tigers playing in Brazil, Geaux Tigers! We spent the rest of the day just hanging out in the room and doing some things on the computer up until dinner time. We made it to 6:30 this time so we had a couple more options. Every time we walked to the venue from our hotel we passed this Cantina place that said on the door that it had a pasta buffet, so we were like okay, carbs, we need those. We sit down and not only is it a pasta buffet, it is also a sushi, pizza, and some meat buffet. So bizarre. The waiters are constantly offering you so many different kinds of pizzas. At one point it was dessert pizza time and these are the pizzas that got brought right in front of our face that we had to turn down: s’mores, Nutella, ice cream (literal scoop of ice cream on each piece), apple pie, pretty much any dessert they had made into a pizza. Let’s just say the kids that were sitting next to us had to be in heaven. Us on the other hand, not so much. I probably looked like an idiot bc I was taking pictures (which you can see some of to the right) of all the dishes on the buffet, getting one very small serving of it, then going to the table and attempting to google translate what I was eating. Google translate was not much help, so was basically just taste testing everything and seeing what I had to go back for.

The moment we had traveled over 4,000 miles for… GAMEDAY. It’s win or go home and we woke up with one saying, “it’s a bad day to be Denmark” (if it was not clear, Denmark was our first opponent). They were a young yet powerful team. We were able to shake off the first game jitters and pull out the win. The saying changed to, “it’s a bad day to be Japan.” Well, in the first set the saying quickly changed to it was a bad to be Taryn and Kristen because we got destroyed. Japan was putting on a clinic and we were the dummies. They were running a fast offense and putting us in uncomfortable positions defensively. We realized it was time to just focus on our side of the net… we play our game and we take this to 3. Indeed we did and before we went out for the 3rd set I looked at Taryn and said, “we didn’t come all the way to Brazil to lose in one day.” We had to fight and crawl for every point  in the back and forth game but we pulled it out. We did not play well at all but hey we made it in and that’s all that matters. No one came up to us after the win to provide us with any information as to what we were suppose to do. Do you have to sign something? What about meals or hotel? Nada.

Once we were able to find someone, we were informed we had to come back for a preliminary meeting (which we ended up not even having to do). We headed back to the hotel with a pit stop at King’s Açaí, which was our lunch everyday. We took a pic with one of the workers and they posted us on their instagram… think we went there enough. We headed back to the hotel to shower and chill. What do we do in the hotel room you might ask? Typically, lay in bed with our feet up over the headboard while we catch up on social media, wild stuff I know.

Came time to head back to the venue and we wanted to give our legs a break so we ubered. Boy, was that a scary Uber ride. I thought we were going to crash at least 5 times. Driving in Itapema is WILD. There motorcycles that just drive wherever the heck they want and then people are just constantly cutting people off. Anyway, we were also going to get treatment at the venue later that evening so the timing of the meeting worked out perfectly. This is where I will give a big shoutout to our USA medical providers that were on the trip with us, Lisa Reed and Jenn Watters. They were game changers for us. I actually am not sure what we would have down without them because not only did they help our bodies recover, they also just knew everything about the tournament. Like where everything was and how everything things works. For example, on day 2 of being there, we randomly run into Jenn riding her bike back from the venue and she informed us of a mandatory preliminary meeting that was going to take place in like 5 hours. We seriously may not have been able to play in the tournament if she would not have told us that. They were both just so freaking helpful and just awesome people.

This is two different receipts. Also, $1 is R$4.68

We finally found a restaurant that had good meat and pasta and we would not have found it if it was not for Lisa and Troy Field. They recommended it, and thank goodness because it was exactly what we were looking for. This meal was featured on my lovely food chronicles if you were able to see it. This was dinner #3 for us and we still had no idea if we were suppose to be tipping or not (finally asked someone who was from Brazil and they said tip is usually included so we were good). Also, the receipts are minuscule. Please see picture to the right for just how small I am referring to. That’s my hand. Makes it pretty easy to misplace them.

Got back to the room and watched some film of our opponents for the next day thanks to Tyler Widdison. This is where I will give another huge shoutout: Tyler literally provides us with film about no joke 1 minute after the bracket goes out. It’s just wild and we are so incredibly lucky. I will bet a lot of money in saying that other countries do not have a Tyler on staff.

So when you are playing Rebecca and Talita in your first main draw game on stadium court and in their home country I think you deserve a little excuse for having some jitters. Our first set kind of showed that. It was very similar to our first match against Alix & April. We were trying to be too perfect and that showed in the amount of errors that we made. Tried to hit cut shots too sharp and they went into the net. Tried to be too precise hitting down the line and they went wide right. Just trying to be perfect in a game where that’s not possible is never good. We went into set two knowing that if we cleaned up our side of the court we would be able to earn some points off of our serve. The start of set 2 wasn’t much different than set 1. Again, just error after error but then the errors started to be eliminated and we were getting some points back. We would make a great play and the crowd would go absolutely silent and there was a decent amount of people there on a Friday morning. Let’s just say Brazilians are a very loyal fan base. We were able to push it to three but again those darn errors just kept adding up and we just could not overcome that. It is definitely a game that both Taryn and I would want a do over on. 

We had to bounce back though because we didn’t want to go home. I am not sure if it was just the amount of mental and physical energy that was drained from me in the first match or if it was my lack of Coke Zero before the match but that second match I just could not do anything right. The play that really sticks out in my head and if you were watching you probably can remember going, “what in the world is she doing?”. That play would have to be when I bumped an easy over on one ball out of the court by at least 5 feet. I couldn’t help but laugh. I was on the struggle bus, but that’s why you have a partner. Taryn was able to carry me through that one and we pulled it out in 3. We thought we were into the bracket. Little did we know, in a 24 team main draw not all 3rd place teams make it in. 4 out of the 6 have to play in the round of 18 in order to get into the round of 16 and guess who informed us of this… Lisa (again, we would have been lost without them).

Post Sponcil/Cannon Game

We walked to our usual spot, grabbed our açaí bowl and headed back to the hotel to clean up, take a power nap and await our fate. After an hour or two, the match was set. We had to face a familiar opponent in Sponcil/Cannon. The game was not going to be played until 8pm so we had to eat dinner before. We went to the same spot as the night before and even ordered the same exact meal. They opened at 6:30 and we we rolled up at 6:20. The staff was actually in what appeared to be a meeting but then we walked up and everyone assumed their positions. We tried to explain to our waiter that we were in a rush because we had to play a game but I don’t think that message was translated very well. Like I said we got there at 6:20 (first customers in the restaurant) and left at 7:10. Needless to say we were on a little time crunch for warmups. The game was under the lights so it didn’t matter how much warm up time we got, the lights were all we needed. This was our best match of the weekend by far. We executed like we usually do and the results showed that. Saturday here we come!

Yet another game, another battle, another do over worthy performance and another game that we will be thinking about for sometime. We did not play well, yet still had opportunities to pull away and even win and we just could not execute. It’s a game that makes you frustratingly happy. You are frustrated because of all the mistakes and what could have been, but then happy because you know if you clean up so,e of those things you win. Think those are one of the more difficult ones to swallow. We could have been playing in the quarterfinals but instead we had to pack our bags and leave.

We were suppose to fly out Monday evening but we figured we would check out what changing our flights would look like. We had Taryn’s mom call American Airlines and then FaceTime so Taryn could talk to American Airlines. Of course, they had to call us back in like 2 hours and we really did not have that time. Taryn was able to get on a chat with them and we somehow were able to get on a flight that was leaving in a couple hours from an airport that was an hour away or shall I say 60km away. We had to go back to the venue to get a PCR test and OMG, I have never had a Covid test go that far up my nose. I had the privilege of watching Taryn go first and I think that may have been worse… the tears that naturally came out of her eyes gave me the impression that it was not going to feel good and indeed it did not. I am writing this about 6 hours post Covid test and my nose still feels clear. We had a little more time than we thought so we were able to fully checkout what was happening at the venue. They had set up vendor tents, so we were able to get our little knick knacks (we plan on getting something from every place we go) and also get one last açaí bowl before heading back to the hotel and packing it up.

Taryn’s Fav: Mickey Mouse

My Fav: Strawberry Cake Square

We once again were making the walk back to our hotel that we did about 7 times. There was a cafe that we would walk past every day that smelt so good and we refrained from going in but not this time. We wanted to try some pastries, so we did our best pointing because that is just how you must order things. We weren’t even sure what we were eating but that was the fun part. Some were good, some bad, and some okay. Think we are just use to sweeter desserts/pastries. Guess the US uses more sugar. Taryn’s favorite was the flakey Mikey Mouse looking thing and mine was the strawberry cake. We were full and we were ready for our hour Uber ride to Florianópolis International Airport. It’s a little scary Ubering in other countries because you do not have data so once you leave where you are, you lose the ability to track where you’re going. And when you are in a different country, the driver could be taking you to who knows where.

We go to check in for our flight at the very empty airport, like only about 15 other people were checking in, and you can tell on the lady’s face that there is a problem. Apparently, they have been having issues with American Airlines’ flights connecting to their network so we weren’t in their system. I was panicking a little bit. I immediately texted my mom telling her to get on the phone with American asap since the GOL airlines people were saying that American needed to reissue our tickets. Taryn and I were both chatting with American Airlines as well, and the lady had called 3 people over to try and fix the issue. For a solid 20ish minutes we did not think we had a flight… that’s scary. The manager ended up over riding the system so our boarding passes were printed and we were set to fly to CGH in San Paulo, then from GRU in San Paulo to MIA to MSY. GRU is about an hour drive away from CGH. When chatting  with American Airlines, I had asked about transportation from CGH to GRU. Both people that I chatted with said American airlines would provide transportation. Well, they lied. We arrived at CGH and I had a nice google translated conversation with one of the GOL airline workers and he proceeded to tell me that you have to Uber or taxi to GRU, so Immediately Taryn opens Uber and books a ride. Trying to find an uber driver by messaging back and forth in different languages is apparently not possible. We were trying to translate on the phone but we just did not know where he was, so I walked up to one of the security guards and again had a lovely google translated convo via my phone. He motions for Taryn and I to follow him so we do. We start walking, go up an escalator, and walk for about 10 minutes through the airport with both Taryn and I constantly making eye contact and reading each other’s mind… “should we be following this man?” The answer was yes we should because he lead us directly to our Uber driver. We get in and let out a big sigh of relief.

Juan - our Uber driver

Our Uber driver was from Chile but lived in Brazil and he spoke Portuguese and Spanish and a very little amount of English. Taryn and him would go back and forth speaking a little Spanish while I was sitting there with everything going over my head. I’m sorry if you are reading this Mrs. Coleman (my high school Spanish teacher). I just kept asking Taryn what is he saying? What did you say? He was a lovely guy and really liked to talk. He even called his brother in India who could speak English because he wanted to know where we were from. In addition to being our Uber driver, he was also our tour guide through San Paulo, pointing out different things like the São Paulo library or the “special” police building. He was great and we even got a picture with him. It was a great way to leave Brazil.

And just like that, we played a volleyball game in Brazil at 9am their time and then was back at home in Louisiana about 24 hours later with an extremely sore body and messed up time schedule… crazy. Time to rest, recover and get ready for the first AVP of the year.

My takeaways of the trip:

•           I wouldn’t say I have to go back to Itapema. Would like to see what Rio De Janie do is like though.

•           Will now be bringing salt with me on trips.

•           I need to start learning more languages.

•           We will get better as a team - this tournament was good for us.

•           We can compete with anyone.

•           We are so incredibly lucky to be doing this as a career.

•           Thank goodness for Google translate.

By: Kristen Nuss