Paradise...My Ass!

By Tony Fitzsimmons

One minute you’re relaxing by the pool in a luxury Thai resort and the next you’re a gringo with a donkey on an isolated island off Brazil!

When Tony and his wife Sue were caught in the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that devastated hundreds of thousands of lives, they wanted more than to return to the rat race of suburban life, they wanted to ‘live the dream’. After careful consideration, or possibly in a moment of insanity, they decided that the dream was to run a guest house on a remote paradise island off the coast of Brazil.

And so began the most amazing, frustrating, and bewildering time of their lives as they gave up their careers, sold up all their belongings and moved to Moreré, a tiny, isolated fishing village on the tip of the Island of Boipeba in sunny Bahia.

With a scant knowledge of the local language, no previous experience in the hospitality business and a determined attitude what could possibly go wrong?

This charming and witty account of their first year living the dream will have you yearning for white sands and adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Fitzsimmons
• Release date: Aug 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476278155

Tony Fitzsimmons

After a chequered career which ranged from emptying people ́s chip pans and flogging wet fish from a van outside a supermarket to becoming, amazing though it may seem, a successful sports development consultant, Tony finally “lost the plot” and now lives on a remote island off the north east coast of Brazil. Possibly prompted by his presence on a Thai beach when the 2004 tsunami interrupted his morning doze or more likely because he is just a few fries short of a Happy Meal, Tony and his wife Sue, gave up their successful careers in the UK, forsaking all hope of a financially secure future and decamped to the Island of Boipeba where they opened a guest house or pousada in the tiny fishing village of Moreré.

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Paradise… my ass!

Living the dream on an island in Brazil

Tony Fitzsimmons

Paradise… my ass!

Living the dream on an island in Brazil

Published by Tony Fitzsimmons at Smashwords

Copyright © Tony Fitzsimmons 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published in Great Britain

www.paradisemyass.com

To my wife Sue, who throughout the chaos remained resolutely cheerful!

Contents

Author’s Note

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Author’s note

Moreré is a fishing village on the island of Boipeba, a tropical island off the North East coast of Brazil. It is home to approximately 350 people and has been our home for the past five years. Although power, light and internet have now arrived, it is a place which still feels stuck in time. Words cannot capture the tranquility and beauty of this paradise; just click on www.magicofmorere.com and dream!

Introduction

Don’t start living tomorrow, tomorrow never arrives!

It was a hot, sunny day. My wife Sue and I were relaxing at the side of the pool in a pretty little resort on Koh Phi Phi in Thailand, where we were spending our well-earned Christmas break. We were visiting my son Ben, who had just started his first job as a diving instructor on the island, and we were looking forward to two weeks of diving, relaxing and de-stressing away from the real world. For the previous two days I had been out at sea with Ben as, in classic role reversal, he had been teaching me advanced diving skills, and today it was time for a rest and to spend some time lazing on the beach with my wife.

The date was December 26th 2004 and little did we know that the events of that day were going to turn our lives upside down.

After breakfast we opted to relax by the pool that sat just behind the beach, and as I let my gaze drift over the sea I was surprised to see what appeared to be the wash of a very large speedboat. As I searched around for the boat that had caused it, the wave got closer and closer, and with hardly a sound it crept higher and higher up the beach. Intrigued, we were already on our feet ready to run when it suddenly reached its climax and immediately disappeared, leaving boats stranded and fish flapping and what five minutes previously had been a beautiful, calm, deep blue sea now resembled a lunar landscape. It was an incredible sight and in the distance we could clearly see where the land finished and the sea finally began.

Suddenly we realised the gap between us and this wall of water was closing rapidly, but nothing really clicked until we heard screams and panicky shouts to run, run, run! Instinct took over and we both just turned and ran the hundred metres to a small incline with a dozen steps at the rear of the resort, and in the time it took us to cover this short distance at top speed the Tsunami arrived!

* * *

We looked down at what had been rows of pretty chalets, now just piles of driftwood littered with debris, and the remains of the personal belongings of people, who, until this devastating 15 minutes, had been enjoying the beauty of this paradise island. All around us was an eerie silence, broken only by the occasional sobbing as people took in the enormity of what had just occurred.

The wreckage and carnage caused by the 2004 Tsunami has been well documented, and the images will be forever present in the minds of millions of people across the world but for us, at that moment, it was just total confusion and disbelief. Like most people caught up in that tragic day, we had never even heard the word ‘Tsunami’ and certainly had no idea that the huge wave which had just completely wiped out the resort was part of such a huge disaster which literally shook the world.

No one dared to return down to sea level in case another wave came, but eventually word filtered through that there had been an earthquake, and as no-one knew if there would be another tidal wave, our little band of survivors were advised to try and get to higher ground. And so began the most surreal 36 hours of my life. Dressed in only swimwear and with bare feet – the rest of our clothes together with our passports, cash and credit cards were now floating somewhere in the Indian Ocean – we hacked our way through the undergrowth for four hours until we reached the Viewpoint – the highest, and consequently the safest, point of the island.

From there we could see the devastation below with Tonsai, the main village, completely obliterated, and we could hear, see and feel the desperation as people called out names, frantically trying to locate missing members of their families.

We were no different – we had no idea where Ben was! Fortunately Sue, as ever, did have her mobile phone with her and we were able to exchange a single text message letting each other know we were safe and well and that was it! The sheer volume of people trying to call loved ones overloaded the system and that was the last we heard from him for the next 24 hours, but at least we knew he had survived!

As dusk approached more than a thousand people were gathered on the rocky outcrop. Many were injured, including Sue, who at some point in the escape had broken a bone in her foot, and just before nightfall we were informed that we should remain there overnight. The Thai navy would not be able to send rescue boats until the morning, so we settled down for what was going to be a long night. Still in our swimwear, things began to get a little cool as darkness fell, but we were fortunate to be alongside two French tourists who had just arrived on the island when the wave hit, and as such, still had their backpacks from which they produced T-shirts for us. Not my style, or size for that matter, but nevertheless very welcome!

There was very little chance of sleep – the air was full of people quietly crying and sobbing, and the constant calls of people searching for loved ones in the dark in the hope that they too had survived the horror. Alongside us lay a man and his nine-year-old daughter who had been separated from his wife and young son when the Tsunami struck, and had no idea if they had managed to survive – you could almost touch their anguish and desperation as they waited for dawn to start their search.

The following morning it got worse as we descended the steep steps to what, a day earlier, had been a bustling, noisy and happy place as people from all over the world celebrated Christmas together. Now it was unrecognisable – buildings flattened and buried, people with serious injuries and covered in blood being carried on old doors and anything people could find to use as stretchers, and worst of all, the ground strewn with dead bodies left where they were caught and dumped by the incredible and deathly force of nature which by luck alone we had survived.

After a couple of hours of increasingly frantic searching we found Ben, safe and sound, and he told us his tale. It turned out that on leaving us on Christmas night he had called in to the dive shop on his way back to his room and had been roped into an extra shift the following morning, and as such, instead of being in his bed in the main village he was underwater with trainee divers as the Tsunami passed harmlessly over his head.

The following days passed in a daze as, shoeless and still in swimwear, without money, credit cards or any means of identification we were evacuated from the island and eventually made our way to Bangkok, where Sue could receive the hospital treatment she required and we could complete all the formalities to apply for emergency passports and arrange cash to return home to our, by now near-frantic families.

Once back in the UK, life slowly returned to normal.

But for Sue and I, something had changed!

Chapter 1

Some people live the dream, others live to dream!

As we both approached our half-centuries, our lives seemed very comfortable and ‘safe’. We lived on an exclusive development in leafy Cheshire, complete with swimming pool, tennis and squash courts, and our joint income was sufficient to afford two or three foreign trips each year and live a full social life with many close and dear friends. I had built up a busy sports’ consultancy specialising in sport for disabled people, and Sue worked as a deputy head teacher of a special school for children with severe and multiple learning disabilities. Both our jobs, though sometimes demanding, were extremely rewarding, but niggling away at the back of both our minds was the thought that we could so easily have been killed that day in Thailand, and perhaps we should be grateful we had survived; be brave and make the most of our lives. It was time to press the self-destruct button and see what happened!

And so began the most amazing, frustrating, bewildering and at times, most stressful time of our lives as we gave up our careers, sold up all our belongings and bought two thousand square metres of land on an isolated, paradisiacal, tropical island off the coast of Brazil, on which we planned to build a small pousada, or guest house, to provide us with sufficient income to ‘live the dream’.

As we planned our escape we considered the more recognised option of a small villa in Spain or Portugal, but we felt that the Costas and the Algarve were basically ‘Surrey with Sunshine’, and if we were going to do something different we may as well go the whole hog. We even went