Dang this family will never forget their family vacation. There are a lot of places in the world that I find intriguing but I vacation in the USA. Their choice, IMO, was a very questionable vacation to take young kids along on. I like the line "as we grow older" LOL with them being in their early 30s.


"How an American Family Escaped Pirates in the Amazon"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...QB?OCID=ansmsnnews11

PORTO DOS DIAS, Brazil—In October 2012, Adam and Emily Harteau, a California couple in their early 30s, set out on an overland journey to the southernmost tip of South America in their Volkswagen Westfalia camper van. With colorful travel photos, $16,301 raised on Kickstarter, and the hashtag #vanlife, they drew an army of social-media followers intrigued by their seemingly blissful existence.

“As we grow older, time is punctuated by appointments and alarm clocks, and we forget how to live at our own pace,” Ms. Harteau wrote in a photo essay published in the New York Times’ travel section in August, nearly five years into what was initially planned as a yearlong trip. “We wanted to slow down time again by raising a family on the road and use their questions about nature and life as our curriculum. We are world-schooling our kids.”

The Harteaus’ adventure came to a harrowing end on Nov. 1, when a ferry captain plucked the couple and their two daughters, 6-year-old Colette and 3-year-old Sierra, from a river in Pará state in the Brazilian Amazon. They had spent the previous three days hiding in the jungle after pirates in a wooden canoe ambushed the barge carrying them upriver on their return journey to California.
“They were very, very scared, hungry and covered by insect bites,” said Dinei dos Santos, the boat’s manager, who spotted them signaling for help.

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The couple didn’t respond to interview requests. The tale of their escape and subsequent rescue was pieced together from their statements to police and accounts from locals in the remote area where they were rescued.

The band of a half-dozen armed pirates surrounded and took control of the vessel Andorinha, or Swallow, on Oct. 29, brought the vessel ashore and confined the Harteaus and the crew in a tugboat. After several hours being held hostage and intermittently threatened at gunpoint, the family decided to make a run for it.

In the middle of the night, as the robbers were apparently busy off-loading cargo from the hijacked barge, Mr. Harteau grabbed a survival kit and his surfboard from the Westfalia and slipped into the Jacaré Grande River with his family.

Using the surfboard as a float, the family of four swam a mile and a half to the opposite bank of the river. From there they bushwhacked about 6 miles over the next three days through the jungle racked by fierce thunderstorms and teeming with jaguars, anacondas, caimans and a host of venomous spiders and snakes. They hid from passersby, fearing they might have ties to the pirates.

Exhausted and hungry on their fourth day in the wild, Mr. Harteau finally pushed his family on the surfboard toward Mr. dos Santos’s ferry. He was filling out his ship’s log in the cabin as the sun set when he heard shouts and saw hands waving frantically from the choppy waters of the river.

News that the Americans were missing had surfaced the day before, when the U.S. Embassy notified family members in California. Ms. Harteau’s father, Warren Brandle, a family doctor in the Sacramento area, read vastly conflicting accounts of their fate on Brazilian websites, including reports that the family had been kidnapped and that they had jumped into the river. Adding to the mystery was the fact that the Andorinha’s crew members were aboard the barge when the police arrived, by which time the pirates had absconded.

“I thought they were dead,” said Ieda Dias, a 56-year-old nurse in the nearby village of Porto dos Dias, where she first got word of the missing family. “Nobody swims in these waters.”

But when Mr. dos Santos saw the two children on top of a surfboard and their parents in the water, he said he instantly knew it was the Americans he had heard about in the news.

“They climbed onboard and rushed to a corner,” the 30-year-old ferryman said. “I think they only wanted to feel safe.”

Crew members and other passengers on Mr. dos Santos’s ferry gave the family clothes to replace their tattered garments and fed them a typical Brazilian meal of rice, beans and beef.

The Harteaus were taken to the river town of Breves, where they spent nearly 24 hours in a local hospital. Mr. Harteau was treated for a mild allergic reaction; Ms. Harteau had sunstroke and a leg injury from a previous accident; and their daughters were treated for fever, dehydration, insect bites and sunstroke.

In an Instagram post on Sunday, the Harteaus posed with their olive-green surfboard and Brazilian authorities in front of a single-propeller airplane.

“We couldn’t be more ecstatic to say that WE ARE ALIVE,” the family declared to 132,000 followers. “We are so grateful for all of your well wishes in these difficult times and want to relay our love for Brazil, which remains even after the hell we survived.”............... More at link near top.

They are Californians. That says a lot.

I don't know what Kickstarter is, but it sounds like other people paid for their vacation.

A soundly built wall could potentially keep all kinds of bad elements from south of the border at bay...

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
A soundly built wall could potentially keep all kinds of bad elements from south of the border at bay...

A Grade A dumbass heading up that family unit.

They will likely learn all the wrong lessons from this.

I'll wait for the movie. (I don't go to movies.)

quote:

$16,301 raised on Kickstarter

This sounds staged or fake.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

$16,301 raised on Kickstarter

How about we raise a kickstarter for me to pay for my living expenses.

That got my attention as well. They couldn't save to finance their own vacation? And what about about those people who gave them that money? I know, a fool and his money are some party.

And to expose their children to pirates... And it's not even like they were doing some good, they were just vacationing.

They probably also believe that wild animals are like the ones they saw in Disney movies.

At least in my opinion, if they wanted to explore and push the envelope of stupid why did they involve their children? Why didn't they leave the kids at the grandparents instead?

Home schooling? Like the three and six year olds would retain much of what they experienced. Kids of that age are still learning how to dress themselves. Unfortunately the part that they probably will remember is the fear factor they experienced while hiding out but hopefully they will not.

Snowflakes...........

Yep, my first choice for a fun filled family vacation is always the Brazilian jungle. And lots for generous folks will help me finance the trip on Kickstarter.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

$16,301 raised on Kickstarter

THIS!

So much fail here.

I especially liked how their trip was described as a "blissful existence".

It is all fun and games until the people with the rusty machetes show up.

Brazil behaves like the third-world shithole it is. This week Formula One raced in Brazil. Last Friday a handful of Mercedes-Benz team members were robbed at gunpoint. F1 may drop Brazil next year.

Exposure to the insects alone must have been brutal. I can't stand it if a single mosquito is in the house.

“We wanted to slow down time again by raising a family on the road and use their questions about nature and life as our curriculum. We are world-schooling our kids.”

Oy vey.

quote:

We are world-schooling our kids.

They sure did. How ‘bout a sailing trip around the Horn of Africa next year?

I bet time slowed down for the part where they were hiding in the jungle, starving, with insects crawling on them, so the trip was a partial success. Yay, Dad!