Brazil - Acai, Salty Food, Fun Loving Locals, Catching up with old friends

Bem-vindo a Brasil!

After finally leaving lovely and amazing Colombia, I was settled onto the large river boat that would take me on a 4 day ride to Manaus, Brazil. The cost wasn't too bad, as it was 200 Real which is roughly equal to $100, and included food. Not too terrible considering the distance to be covered over the next few days, and considering the cost of flying from Tabatinga to Manaus was about $340. I could have chosen to get a private cabin as well, but the cost of that was around $340 or so, not really worth it. After finding a spot next to Martin and a German guy named Rolf, who was in his late 40s, had been travelling for about 9 years, and basically seen the entire world, I had to set up my hammock. Unfortunately I had no idea how to actually tie one up, but a guy that had tied up Martin's hammock came over and gladly helped. I was settled in, and we just waited. I thought it was already fairly busy on the 2nd level, but over the next hour more and more and more people came onto the boat....it was really pretty intense the sheer amount of people that were packing onto the thing, and how close hammocks were put to one another. Rolf had a good plan, and that was to basically look as big as possible and take up as much space to our left and right so that no one would try and squeeze in, and this surprisingly worked out quite well. Of course there was one really hot girl who came on late and was looking for a spot, and it was funny to watch several men near us scramble to make room for her...the joys of being a pretty woman on a boat full of old men and families ha ha.

Being South America the boat left about 45 minutes later than scheduled, but that's just to be expected. We soon found out that they weren't actually serving any food the first day..bummer. We were already pretty hungry by mid afternoon, so we had to grab some rather unsatisfying hamburgers, and a few sodas. It was already mid afternoon, and after chatting awhile with Rolf and Martin, I was pretty tired, so I had a nap....one of many naps over the next few days. Martin, the Colombian had been calling me Bigote, which is Spanish for moustache, as I had shaved in a dirty porn 'stache to change things up a bit, but after napping 3 or 4 times per day over the next few days, he just started calling me Mr. Nap. After the power nap, and some reading...which is all there really is to do, I wandered upstairs to the upper level where several people were hanging out. There was a fairly eclectic mix up there, with 2 Argentine brothers who were travelling around South America, doing various things such as juggling, making jewellery, tricks, etc to make money for their trip. What initially appeared to be a young German couple with a child, who I would soon find out were just friends, and that it was a single mother travelling with her young daughter around Colombia and Brazil. A young Japanese couple who were quite shy and didn't really speak to anyone, and then a bunch of Brazilians who were mostly just crowded around the TV in the common room watching Brazilian soap operas....I really don't know what the deal is or the big draw of all these soap operas, but South Americans just love them!

Accommodations for 4 nights on the Amazon...a bit packed!

Gourmet breakfast on the boat...bread....coffee...hot sauce :)

Latinos love their soap operas and damnit if a Giant Moth on the screen will bother them, nope!

one big ass river

creepin' with the 'stache

I ended up chatting with the German girl, and her friend who were two pretty cool people, and we got along pretty good. 2 days earlier there had been a lady going around town, hostel to hostel, looking for someone who had forgotten their passport at the airport, and sure enough it was the German guy who was the culprit, but he had been fortunate to get it back. I was also quite impressed with the woman who was 27 and had travelled around SE Asia with her daughter who was 5 at that time, and now 6 and travelling in Colombia. I often think that having children would be a life changer and would likely end my backpacking ways, as there's so much more planning required, but she was doing just fine and said it wasn't too difficult. We spent the next few hours just hanging out chatting, sharing some stories, having some rum (I was the only person on the boat to bring any rum to drink, and the shop didn't sell any beer or other alcoholic beverages, much to the disappointment of several, including Rolf). It was a rather nice and clear night too, so it was perfect for star watching, although it wasn't quite as great as the one night in the Peruvian jungle. Because there's nothing really do to on the boat, and the store on the upper deck closes early, everyone went off to bed rather early as well, so I did the same. I was surprised to see that Martin had now moved his hammock over to a spot next to the pretty young woman who had boarded the boat, as the man beside her had left, and some other lady had put up a hammock really really close to Martin's. Of course, once he moved, that opened up a tiny bit more space, and another woman had put up her hammock, which was basically overlapping mine...thanks for taking my space lady! So I settled into the tight space, complete with old lady next to me having her legs basically laying right on my hammock and tried to get some sleep.

I had some troubles falling asleep, and once I finally did, police officials came onto the boat and kicked my hammock to wake me up...thanks asshole! He sat there speaking loudly in Portuguese to me, and I was half awake and kind of wondering what was going on, not understanding a thing. I politely asked “English or Spanish” and he angerly responded “passeporte!”...yikes. So I rummaged through my bags, provided my documents, and he then continued on, deciding to search through Martin's entire bag. We were originally searched when we boarded the boat, quite thoroughly in fact, that it was a bit difficult to repack everything the way I had it, as they pulled everything out, and then were hurrying me to pack it back up to search the next person. I also noticed that when searching my second bag, they didn't even bother rummaging through my giant bag of medication and prescription pills....realistically, if I was to be hiding drugs, one would think that would be the first place to hide them, but immigration officials never seem to pay attention to that bag...it's weird. I had to laugh at them searching through Martin's bag again...apparently a Colombian travelling by boat into Brazil is a suspicious case ha ha ha.

I managed to doze back off to sleep for a few more hours, but was woken up by lots of noise, as people were lining up for breakfast. I waited until the line had mostly disappeared, and was able to sneak in at the last minute for the amazing breakfast...which consisted of...a bun...no butter, no jam, no toppings..just a bun ha ha ha...oh man. After the big breakfast, it was back to the hammock for awhile, which seemed to keep getting lower and lower, either due to the poor quality which resulted in stretching..or the fact that other people kept sitting in it and weighing it down ha ha. Probably by about mid day I noticed that a large spot had opened up on the other side of the cute Brazilian girl, so I quickly jumped on that, glad to have a bit of space again, although the Argentina guy who was sleeping behind me seemed to like sleeping very high up his hammock, which resulted in his head hitting my rope quite often, jossling the hammock, and wakening me if I was asleep. Also, for whatever reason, so many people would run into the cord that tied my hammock to the one pole, as they couldn't see it or were too concerned with avoiding a barrier around a nearby staircase...seriously, the Argentina guy ran into my cord 9 times over the next few days, which would often cause me to awaken if I was asleep ha ha....not to mention about 40 other people that ran into it over the next few days.

After another sleep, and some reading it was lunch time, where the food was actually fairly decent, although very very salty. This would be a fairly common trend throughout my first bit of time in Brazil, they sure seem to love their salt! I had spoken with the Swiss guy, Michel, about his boat trip to Manaus earlier in the week, and he said that he got sick from the food, and my Canadian friend Kristy also said that all the foreigners on her boat became ill from the food, but surprisingly the food on our boat was fine, and I don't think any of us gringos became ill...win! After lunch, I mostly just hung out upstairs, catching some sun and chatting with the German girl, played some Uno with her and a few others, and just bummed around. I wandered down to read a bit, which again put me to sleep..another nap....really, all there is to do on the boat...sleep, eat, talk, read....repeat. Eventually it was time for dinner, which again was a fairly decent meal, although very very salty again. After dinner, I had a few more rums, which the German girl was pretty keen on sharing in, chatted some more, avoided the rain, and battled to find a spot to charge my computer so that I could watch some tv and kill some time in the evening. After a long and very hard day of doing nothing, it was time to try and sleep again, so I was in my hammock and off to sleep, although not until quite late.

I woke up the next morning to see a giant line of people all staring at me, and thought that maybe Immigration was again on the boat and searching through things or something, but then just realized the people were all in line for the kitchen to open. It was seriously like all of these people hadn't eaten in 5 days, as they would line up 15 or 20 minutes before the kitchen would even open, even though there was plenty of food at each meal to go around, and they often had extra food at the end of the meals, as I can attest to since I was often the last or 2nd last person to be eating. Since the line was rather long, I decided to just go back to sleep, but unfortunately slept a bit too long and missed out on breakfast....the amazing buns..oh no! Of course, since there was nothing else to do, I tried to read a bit, but found myself soon falling asleep again....I've been trying to read this Nietsche book, to become more aware of Philosophy and provide myself with another subject to discuss with others, however, the material is often quite dry that I make it about 5 pages before feeling sleepy and drifting off!

I was up in time for lunch at least, and after having that, I just spent more time chatting with the Germans, hanging with Martin, playing Uno, and reading....The river itself was very very wide and other than stops in a few port towns to pick up or drop off more passengers, there wasn't a lot of activity, and it wasn't like you could see any animals or amazing flora and trees. The previous day there had been some minor excitement, as someone mentioned there were some river pirates or something, and the boat captain did actually tell the German girl that they had pulled up the tires that they had hanging on the outside of the boat, used as stoppers or bumpers, in case the pirates decided to try to climb them.....I didn't see anything, and had a hard time believing it, so I mostly just poked fun at the supposed pirates and their lame attempts to commandeer our vessel. The rest of the day was pretty quiet again, with myself and the one German guy going to grab dinner late, and by late I mean at 6:30 pm, even though the door on the kitchen says it is open until 7 pm...well we were the last 2 to arrive, and the kitchen staff told us there was only one plate of food left...what the hell...so we went down to the lower level kitchen, and tried to find food there, but there wasn't any there as well...damn....so we went back to the second level where they had a complaint box, and once I started filling out a complaint, the kitchen staff magically came up with an extra plate of food ha ha ha...it pays to complain apparently!

So after the scraps, which were probably pulled out of the trash can, we finished up dinner..and just went back to relax in the hammocks again. The German girl decided to come lay in my hammock with me, which resulted in the level of the hammock lowering further....I think the material wasn't the highest quality, and soon enough I was pretty much laying on the floor again, after having adjusted the height earlier in the day. Once her youngin' was asleep, we went upstairs and hung out in the rain for awhile, laughing at a nearby Brazilian couple who were making the most awful and loud kissing noises. After mocking them a bit, and making out ourselves a bit, I couldn't help but laugh when I noticed a few of the Haitians from the boat come up and sit on some chairs nearby, casually watching us...such creepers! Eventually they left when they realized nothing else was going to happen, and it was getting late so we both just went to bed for the night. I was up the next morning, quite early as our boat was apparently going to be arriving at 6 am, and most of the boat was up at 5:30 or so, grabbing breakfast and already packing up and taking their hammocks down. Being the patient one, I wanted to wait it out until everyone had removed their hammocks before I would, but one old lady at the end of the room was willing to outwait even me, so I grudgingly took my things down and got ready to leave.  

arrival in beautiful Manaus...

We were fortunate to have made friends with the Brazilian girl, who was able to help find us a taxi that would drive myself, Martin, the 3 Germans, and her to Hostel Manaus, that had been recommended by my friend Kristy, when she had stayed in Manaus a few weeks earlier. Of course in typical taxi driver style, he wanted to take us to a different hostel, and claimed to not know where the hostel was that we wanted to go to, even though we had given him the address...and he even stopped to call the other place and ask if they had space....likely a relative of his owned the place, or he received commission...more corruption....but he finally did take us to the other hostel, where we found that they didn't actually have any rooms available. So, we had to pile back into the truck, and go to the hostel where he had wanted to originally take us, a place called Gol Backpackers. They fortunately had room for all of us, but we couldn't actually check in for a few hours, so we just killed a lot of time sitting around. I didn't even know what time of the day it was, but the German girl had suggested Caipirinhas since they were on sale...well, being 8 am or so...and nothing else to do, why not celebrate our arrival in Brazil :) After a few of those, and the very simple continental breakfast, we spent most of the day just sitting around catching up on internet related things, sleep, writing, etc. We did find out that there was a free showing that evening at the local Theatre, so we tentatively made plans for that, and I found a hockey game on the satellite for later in the afternoon to watch.

After a few hours of hanging out, and meeting a Latvian traveller...first time that has happened outside of Europe! A few of us decided to go find a late lunch, and were told of a cheap place nearby, which was a buffet style. They had a large selection of a lot of very tasty looking food, and having eyes bigger than my stomach I loaded up my plate with pretty much everything. Unfortunately, being a system where you pay based on the weight of your plate, my plate ended up coming in at nearly a kg!! I had severe doubts about the accuracy of the scale in the place, as I really doubt that I could eat an entire kg of food. I finished it all off, and it was damn delicious, but still had doubts about the system. The Latvian guy also had doubts, but our Portuguese skills were non existent, and it seemed like it would be a big hassle trying to get it sorted out, so we grudgingly paid the 34 real price tag (about $17!) for the lunch....my Brazilian friends had warned me that Brazil was expensive, and I could already see how it could be...that was the most I've paid for a meal since the Europe probably. After the lunch, the weather was rainy and crappy, so rather than walk around and get soaked, we just retired back to the hostel to hang out and wait for the hockey game to start. As per usual, I was having to explain the rules and such to the new international viewers, but all they wanted to know about was the fighting ha ha...After the game ended, I was exhausted from only having slept 2 or 3 hours, so I went to have a nap while everyone else disappeared to the theatre to line up.

I didn't realize it would be so popular that night, as I headed over to the theatre around 7:30 pm, as the show was meant to start at 8, and found the group from the hostel near the front of the line. Apparently several of them had lined up around 6:30 pm, when the line had actually doubled right around the entire building...wow. We waited in line another 15 minutes, getting to the front when the staff announced that the theatre was full. Well the young daughter of the German girl was very very upset over the whole event and started bawling her eyes out, leading to some compassion from the staff, but unfortunately the place was completely full and they couldn't let anyone else, so they explained that there would be performances the next night that we could come back and try and see. This still didn't console the poor little girl, who was also very very tired, so Mom had to take her back to the hostel, while a few of us others decided to look around for a place to have a beer or something. At this point everyone kind of split off though, and it was just the Latvian, myself, and a Colombian from the hostel who went to find some cold and cheap beers. We ended up finding a little plastic table at a corner bar, which appears to be the popular thing to do in Brazil, as there were many many drunk and very loud locals sitting at the tables. One thing about Brazilians is that they sure do know how to have a good time! The beers, in true Brazilian style, were also extremely cold..they have this unique obsession with having the coldest beers possible. After a few beers, and a decent conversation in Spanish (interesting when a Latvian, Colombian, and Canadian get together and start out in English but go to Spanish as the main language of choice), we decided to head back to the hostel to see if anyone else was around.

Upon arrival there, we found it pretty quiet, and the German girl just sitting around by herself, her daughter having fallen asleep nearly instantly after arriving back at the hostel. After sitting down and hanging out with her for awhile, she wanted to go for a swim, but the pool was too cold and the weather too cold for my liking, but she just jumped right in, clothing and all! After laughing at her a bit, and waiting for her to get out, we had a few more beers before deciding to have a little fun. There was a little corridor that lead to a staff room that was labelled no entry, but seemed like an ideal spot for privacy...well we went there, and sure enough probably about 10 minutes later one of the staff members came into the area, and awkwardness ensued...as she quickly said sorry and ran off....we later found out that there were security cameras there too...oops ha ha... By this point it was late, so it was off to bed for the night, without having actually gone out to explore Manaus's nightlife.

The next day I slept in way longer than everyone else, as people decided to go off and wander around Manaus a bit, although it was raining again. Once I finally crawled out, the German and I decided to go check out the local market and find some food, after walking around the main square for quite some time and finding everything closed. I'm not too sure if it was because it was a Sunday or because they were having siesta, but everything was closed. We arrived in the market just in time to get some food, as most of those stands were also closing down for the day. We ended up finding a really really cheap and delicious stand where we paid 8 Real for basically the same amount of food as I had taken the previous day, and for 1/4 of the price. After our tasty lunch, we found some Acai juice stand and grabbed a bit of that....it's a pretty tasty and healthy berry, and the Brazilians at least use a lot less sugar when making drinks with it, compared to the Acai drinks I've had in Canada or the US. After the lunch/juice break, it was back to the hostel to hang out for awhile, as it was again a rainy day. Once the rain cleared, we spent some time sitting in the streets, watching the two Argentine brothers performing their various street tricks, that they had learned to do and make money with to fund their travels around South America. It's quite common to see Argentine's juggling or performing other tricks at traffic lights in the big cities, where they pull in some money to pay for their adventures around. After a few hours of hanging around, several of us decided to head out for a few beers and to check out the main square.

Manaus Theatre

Manaus at night

Someone forgot to tell him that car shows usually have clean cars

Theatre again...at day

Wandering the main square during the day, not much happening

Food market meal, nice plate for cheap

We spent a fair bit of time sitting at a small cafe near the main square, and a few people went off to get in line for the theatre, and we were meant to go meet them and try and get in again. Of course the little German girl kept telling us we should go soon, and when we finally did we arrived and found that the place was closed...oooh boy, she was not a happy one again ha ha...but the whole performance was in Portuguese anyway, so none of us would have understood anything...I suppose much like the time I went to the Water Puppets in Hanoi Vietnam. Instead of attending the theatre, we were able to calm her down by taking her to the main square where the Argentines were juggling, and there were men selling bubble machines...solution to the angry child found! Considering how dead the city was earlier in the day, whether it was because of siesta or the religious association with a Sunday, the evening was certainly a lot more lively, especially in the centre. After enjoying the liveliness of the area for the next few hours, the Latvian, myself, and Martin the Colombian had to go off to the airport to catch our flights, so we said our goodbyes and were on our way. Upon arrival, I couldn't find my flight listed anywhere on any of the screens...hmmm...not the first time that has happened, but still kind of a bit strange and worrisome...so I went through towards the airline's check in counters, and had to laugh at the posted check in times, as the airline clocks showed the local time as 4 pm in the afternoon, even though it was 12 am, and the flights listed as current check-ins were flights that were leaving in the afternoon, not any time soon...oh Brazil..so organized! Fortunately, my flight was in fact still leaving as scheduled, and I checked in, went and said goodbye to Martin who was going to be waiting for the next 6 hours in the very boring and simple terminal, and went off to catch my flight to Rio.

I was pleased to find that my entire row was unoccupied, so I could lay down on the seats and try and catch a bit of sleep, however, turbulance deterred that for awhile, and then a medical emergency on the plane also made sleep difficult, as some lady had some issues and a doctor had to come attend to her, while the staff provided her oxygen. In the end, she seemed fine though, and medics did come onto the plane when we landed, but things didn't seem too serious. After sneaking by the medics, I arrived at the luggage belt, and was in for my next slight surprise...I sat at the luggage carousel, and while waiting for my luggage, they had television screens displaying illegal items to import, and items that needed to be declared...well semen is on Brazil's list of declarable items..! Interesting. After grabbing my bags, and wandering around the airport for awhile, trying to find the bus stop, I found the one that would take me to the main station, where I could get a local bus to go to Petropolis, where my friend Nick was staying with his father, while studying for his upcoming exams.

Rather than try to figure out where his apartment was in Rio, and get keys and such, he invited me to come stay at his father's place for a few days, and then show me the apartment and how to get there, so I caught a bus to the main station in Rio, and wandered around for quite awhile trying to find the bus ticket sales counter for the company that goes to Petropolis from Rio. After sifting through the giant maze of bus companies, and ending up at the end of the terminal, I soon realized that the bus company I was looking for was actually on the first floor of the massive terminal, and was able to find the company in time to catch the bus that was leaving in 10 minutes. When you hear Portuguese numbers after learning some Spanish, it sounds quite weird...so for example, the man asked if I wanted the 7:30 am bus, which sounded like “setch y me”, but I thought he was talking about the price of the ticket, so I put down my 10 Reals, thinking he meant 7 Reals...since it sort of sounded like that to me...so he sat there staring at me for awhile, before turning the computer screen to me and showing the price was in fact 20 Reals, and he was in fact asking if I wanted the 7:30 am bus. After paying my fare, I was on the bus, not really knowing where exactly I was going, nor what to expect. Well, needless to say, the drive to Petropolis was absolutely stunning....the winding roads passing through the lush green jungle and mountains of the area was quite a treat....although the bus ride was a bit scary at times, due to the lack of sufficient guard rails on the winding curves, and the high speeds that the driver insisted on taking the corners at, but I guess you just have to trust these guys. I eventually made it, arriving in the main Petropolis station.

  

riding the bus to Petropolis from Rio...never would have thought there would be such scenery only 30 minutes from Rio

After asking a cute local girl if I could borrow a phone to call Nick, which she wasn't able to provide since her phone was dead, although she was kind enough to help with any translating I needed done, I managed to buy a phone card to use on the payphones, since they didn't accept credit cards or coins...not too sure what is up with modern pay phones..they're pretty useless I must say. Once I got a hold of Nick, I waited patiently for him to show up and pick me up from the station. About 20 minutes later he arrived, I hopped in, and I met his German friend Sandra who had been staying at his apartment in Rio for awhile. We drove into the small city of Petropolis, did a little tour of the area, stopped for some photos and a little walk in the quiet town. Nick had to take care of some aquarium business, as he has a love for fish and we stopped by the local fish shop, thinking it would take a short time to get his affairs in order there, buuuut it ended up taking well over an hour of sitting there..I could only look at fish for so long...before my mind started to wander, and I spent a fair bit of time watching people in the street. Although I've heard Brazilian women are quite gorgeous, I can't say the quality of those I saw in the streets of Petropolis were too great, but I'm sure Rio would be much better. After the long wait, Nick finally finished up, we grabbed some groceries, and headed off to his father's house. His father initially bought one home up in a quiet neighbourhood of Petropolis quite some time ago, but then the 2 neighbouring houses came up for sale, and he bought them too, creating a rather large property with several different quarters.

  

Wandering the old city of Petropolis

Talk English, or suffer such consequences as a shark jumping out of a fountain in a park and EATING YOU!!!!

Canal in the city where some man's car was found after recent heavy rain fall...apparently it travelled about 7 kms in the water way before being found

Old Emperor's house 

Gothic church, reflecting the German roots of Petropolis

We made a small tour of the entire property, which stretched out over a considerable area, and one day will be turned into a hotel or bed and breakfast type of place. One of the more interesting issues that they had was that each house had a swimming pool, and rather than drain the pools not in use and risk damaging the concrete with cracks from shifting, each pool was kept in working order...so if one ever wanted to go for a swim on a hot day, there was a good selection. We then made our way to his father's little pet project, which was a giant flock of various birds such as chickens, geese, ducks, and a massive turkey who were all sort of living in harmony...kind of interesting indeed. After touring around the garden, seeing the various fresh fruits and colourful flowers covering the property, we wandered back to the house and had a nice lunch together. After lunch I was feeling pretty tired from not sleeping earlier, and figured I would have a quick nap, and then go help Nick take his aquarium into town in the afternoon...well this nap turned into a 6 hour sleep..oops. By the time I got up, it was already dark, Nick had gotten his father's helper to help him with the tank, and all was good.

We just spent the next few hours relaxing, until his father came home, who was an instantly likeable character, full of life and kindness. He claimed his English wasn't so good, but was willing to try, and it was more than fine to listen to him and communicate. We had a delicious feast, as well as some very delicious wine from his cellar, that he took us in to see. It was a rather well stock cellar with probably upwards of 1000 bottles of wine from all over the world...a wine lover's dream for sure. After enjoying a few glasses and some friendly conversation over dinner, most of the house went to bed fairly early, as Nick had to study the next day, and keep a good sleep schedule, while his father had to commute to Rio de Janeiro at 5:30 am, so it was just basically Sandra and I who stayed up a bit later, watched some terrible HBO movie that was the only thing on in English on the TV, and then called it a night.

  

my accommodations for the next few weeks, amazing house

Exploring the back yards, nice place to relax and study

One of three houses on the property, so many places to spend the night!

Pet project of my host's father, he loves a big cage of random birds

After waking up fairly late the next day, and having some lunch, I spent the majority of the day hanging around the house, working on some Spanish, and relaxing. The weather wasn't the absolute greatest, and over the next week and a bit I really didn't do much of anything other than read, write a bit, and watch TV. I don't think I even left the house due to the rain every day, so I was kind of stuck in ultra relaxation mode. Some of the highlights of staying in Petropolis were the numerous delicious dinners prepared by Nick's father and his wife. Some of the traditional and delicious foods I tasted were: Cow tongue in a tomato sauce (really nice texture, but still difficult to convince myself that eating a part of the Cow that I would normally never eat, was a good idea and that it tasted just fine), Feijoada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feijoada) which Nick's father made sure I stayed at the house until he could prepare it once for me, Bacalhau (cod fish, prepared with cheese and potatoes), and various other delicious meals, not to mention numerous types of wine from all over the world, to enhance the culinary experience. It was a very comforting time, and a thoroughly enjoyable 12 days spent in the house, even though I really didn't do much of anything. Once the 2nd weekend rolled around, Nick was heading into Rio, where he was going to be writing his medical exam, so I figured it was a good time to head in with him and spend some time in The City of God. We made the relatively quick drive into Niteroi, where he showed me the apartment, and we dropped off my stuff. After helping him pack up some furniture into the truck, grabbing some matte from a nearby shop, and getting a hold of another friend in Copacabana, we were back in the truck, and Nick drove me into Copacabana where I would be meeting my friend Rodrigo, whom I had met in Poland in 2011.

  

dangerous condition known to afflict Brazilian women...octopus in womb, beware!

It was a pretty busy area, and the GPS and Nick weren't getting along terribly great, but he did eventually get close enough to Rodrigo's place, so he dropped me off, we said goodbye and I was over to meet up with Rod. We hung out at his Mom's apartment for a little while, waiting for another friend of his to show up before deciding to head out somewhere to a pub in Copacabana, but then while we were waiting at the nearby bus stop, we randomly ran into two of his other friends who were going to Lapa. I had been told by several other travellers that Lapa was the cool area to go out during the evenings, so we joined them, and arrived in the bumping area. The Lapa arches are a fairly popular meeting spot for both foreigners and Brazilians alike, and are a shot walk away from all the nearby pubs, clubs, and restaurants. The guys knew of the place to buy the cheapest beers, so after a quick stop so I could grab a sub at Subway, we went to a small bottle shop on one of the main streets, where a large beer was about $2.50. We had lost one of the guys from the bus, but suddenly acquired 3 more friends of Rodrigo. They were a pretty nice group of guys, and even chose to spoke in English with each other the whole time, which is extremely rare for me to hear, unless groups of friends are in a hostel, they will almost always revert back to their native tongue to speak to each other, but these guys were different. They also found it quite entertaining for each other, as they had never really spoken in English with each other, so they had a good time making fun of each other's accents. I had to laugh at the one guy in the group who told us about how he had won a championship at his university where people had to put beer in their mouths and slap each other, and whoever managed to not spit out the beer first would move on to the next round. To prove his skills, he offered the opportunity for one of the people in the group to slap him, and one took him up on it, and he ended up spitting beer all over Rodrigo and a bit on myself...we managed to give him a pretty hard time over that, and he made up excuses saying he had put too much in his mouth in the first place.

After spending a few hours just hanging in the streets, a few of the guys wanted to move on to a different spot, as we were hanging around the gay bar area, and there were a lot of gay men making out everywhere, making some of the guys a bit grossed out ha ha, so we decided to go wander down to a Cachaca bar nearby, where the beer spitting guy had disappeared to for a bit, and brought back a delicious bottle of cachaca that took me a few nights to figure out what exactly it tasted like. The next time out in Lapa I realized that it tasted like pumpkin pie..mmmm. The place was quite busy, with people spilled all over the sidewalks drinking cachaca, beer, and other spirits. We eventually lost most of the group except for Rodrigo and a guy named Guihermo, and stopped by one pub for a few last beers and a snack. While seated there, a man and a tall and dark woman came over and sat next to us, and we got to talking with them, finding out she was a Swede, and had been out by herself for the night and found the Brazilian guy, who took her out with his friends. She pretty friendly and came and sat down with us, until the place was shutting down, so we went and found a pizza place nearby that was still open and serving beer. Rodrigo kept talking to me in French, saying how the Swede seemed to be interested in me, but I never really got that feeling...eventually it was nearly 7 am, and Rod was ready to go home, but we still had some energy, so myself, Guilherme, and the Swede decided to go to Copacabana and hang out there. After busing it back to her hostel, she got her bikini, and we grabbed some ice cream and strawberries then were off to lovely Copa in time for a nice sunrise.

Guilherme lasted about another hour and a bit before he decided to go home, but I stuck around with the Swede, who was pretty cute, and even though I was exhausted, I couldn't really fall asleep. I think I might have napped for about 10 minutes throughout the whole day, while getting absolutely fried in the sun, and enjoying the Swede's company. One of the more interesting sights would have been one of the Brazilian women who parked in front of us and had probably the biggest ass I've ever seen...absolutely ridiculous...it looked like she had a massive implant done, especially considering the rest of her body size...we couldn't help but be in a weird trance state of awe and shock over the size of the thing. Other than that, it was a pretty normal day on the beach, with the obligatory well tanned and muscular Brazilian men in tiny speedos. After several hours, we were ready to go grab a bite to eat, before I wandered off to catch a bus and head back to Niteroi for the night and catch up on some sleep, hoping to see the Swede again as she was going to be spending the next 7 days in Rio, but unfortunately we never did meet up again.

After catching up on some well deserved sleep, I was up the next morning, grabbed some lunch at a nearby bakery, and then since the day was clear and the weather nice, I figured it would be a good day to head up to Christ the Redeemer. Once I figured out buses, I was on my way, via boat into Rio, before tracking down a series of 2 buses to get met to the Redeemer. Upon arrival, I found out that the train was booked until 4:30 pm, so I had a fair bit of time to kill, which unfortunately also allowed time for the clouds to come in. The train ride itself wasn't really worth the $24 price tag, especially when I later found out that I could have taken a shuttle van up the hill, and had entry for half the price, but alas c'est la vie. I made the crowded train ride up to the top, and managed to view some incredible views, albeit with a bit of cloud cover. It was kind of refreshing at the top, especially as you the clouds would come drifting up and pass through the crowds. Of course the crowd was large, and everyone wanted to do tacky tourist photos, such as pose in front of JC, acting like they themselves were hanging on the cross. After waiting for a rather long time to get at the point of the Mirador where the best view of the Rio area was, and enjoying the sprawling, gorgeous City of God (Rio), the light was starting to disappear, and the temperature falling a bit, so I decided to head back down. Fortunately I was able to get under a bit of coverage while waiting in the massive line for the trains down, as it started to pour. After the train ride down, it was a few bus rides and back to Niteroi for the night.

  

Arriving in Rio via boat from Niteroi

First view from Christ the Redeemer

Ipanema and the Lagoa 

Ipanema and Copacabana to the left

What up JC!

view of Copacabana, Sugarloaf Mountain, Niteroi, etc. 

My friend Kristy, whom I had met in Croatia, then again in Turkey, and then once again in Vancouver, happened to be in Brazil at the same time, and arrived in Rio early the next morning, so we decided to meet up and have another meeting at her hostel which was located in the San Theresa area of Rio. After grabbing a cheap and delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant ($5 for a nice and filling buffet lunch), I caught a boat and then a bus over to the Lapa area, where I began trying to walk and make my way up the hills of San Theresa. I ended up at the famous steps of Lapa while on the way there (who's artist was murdered quite recently, sadly enough), stopping for the quick look and obligatory photo, before continuing on my way, and trying to figure out how to get to my destination with my small and very undetailed map. I eventually found one street that seemed to take me towards my destination, and upon taking it, came upon a rather large set of stairs with some questionable looking characters, including one guy with a bat.....they say you shouldn't really be going upwards into Favelas in Rio, as they can be dangerous, but it was the middle of the day, and the area was meant to be a finer area of town, so I just continued on past the people, without incident, arriving onto a street that wasn't on my map..oh boy. I wandered along that street, taking a wrong turn and becoming a bit more lost, so I decided to back track a bit and did finally manage to find a street that was labelled on my map, and finally made my way to the hostel. I was already 40 minutes late, but that's to be expected when you're in Latin America!

Famous Lapa Steps

View from Kristy's hostel in Santa Theresa

I managed to find Kristy, and we sat down and had a few beers, enjoying the awesome view from the hostel deck, overlooking Lapa and towards the North of Rio. While fighting off the rampant mosquitos on the deck (I would later find out that several people at the hostel came down with Dengue Fever while there, awesome) and catching up, we decided to head off into the Santa Theresa neighbourhood to find some dinner and kill some time until one of the workers at the hostel would take us out to a Foho bar in Lapa. After finding a Japanese restaurant and gorging on some sushi, as Brazil has the largets Japanese population outside of Japan and thus many many many Japanese restaurants, we managed to fight through our very bitter and not so great Caipirinhas (apparently the Japanese are not so great at making Brazil's national drink, but at least the sushi was good), we wandered back to the hostel and killed some time there waiting for the worker to finish up. I had to laugh a bit, as there was a French girl speaking to one of the other workers in French, while I was sitting in the common area, and she wasn't exactly saying the nicest things about one of the other guys who worked at the hostel, and after her rant looked at me with a puzzled look and inquired if I spoke French, and when I replied that I did, she was immediately quite embarrassed over the whole event. Eventually the replacement worker for our guide showed up, and we found a bus to take us down into Lapa, where we found the Foho bar.

Foho is a fun and catchy Brazilian music style, where the dancing sort of resembles Salsa, and the music sort of reminded me of a Waltz or some other German style dance hall music. I found it really quite catchy, but unfortunately Kristy and I had no idea how to dance to the music, so we spent most of our time just watching others, having beer, and enjoying the music. We didn't stick around terribly long, as our guide and the German girl that was with us grew tired of the place and wanted a change of scenery, so we wandered back over to the heart of Lapa and stuck around there for awhile, but being a Tuesday, most places weren't too busy, so after wandering around for a bit looking for a spot, we just stopped at one of the little beer vendors on the street, where we met some pretty interesting characters. One of them resembled the character from The Wire, a crackhead named Bubbles...same hair, same figure...obvious drug user...it was nearly impecable, the resemblance. One of the other guys with him was an American man who had moved to Brazil in his 20's and was a fairly well spoken and intelligent guy, even though he was associated with some less desirable social characters, but we had a pretty interesting chat with him, where he kept proclaiming that we were the future of the world, and that exploring in our young age was important for the future of the people...it was a strange and poetic speech, but also entertaining. He kept following us, chatting away until we reached the point where we could take a van back up to Santa Theresa, and towards the hostel.

A few weeks earlier, there had been an incident in Rio involving a few tourists getting into one of those vans, where three men carjacked the vehicle, and took the tourists on a terrible ride involving theft, rape, assault, etc...so up until that point I had been a bit leery about the vans, but the hostel guy assured us that they were fine. Furthermore, I wasn't really certain about bus schedules back to Niteroi, and was under the impression that they stopped running around 12:30 am and didn't start up again until 5:30 am, leaving me in a weird scheduling conflict. Kristy and the hostel worker told me to just come up to the hostel and spend a few hours there, until the buses started running, so I went with them back to the hostel, and was going to sleep on the couch in the common area, but then there were so many free beds in Kristy's room, that the hostel worker told me to just go and crash there. The next morning I was up a few hours later than Kristy, and had slept well past the start of the bus running time but decided to stick around, as she wanted to go to Sugarloaf Mountain that day, and it was nice enough so I decided to tag along. After figuring out the buses to get there, and meeting some Guatemalans at the one bus stop, who recognized my shirt from a pub in Antigua, Guatemala, we arrived at the lower station, paid our expensive fees (about $27), and were on our way up to the first hill. I really don't enjoy heights so travelling in cable cars is rarely a great experience. We arrived at the first top, wandered around for a bit, took some pictures and took in the nice view of the city before heading up to the second stage. I was pretty surprised at how many times they scanned our tickets throughout the whole process going up and going down. I think it is possible to hike up to the first summit, but I didn't see anywhere one could buy tickets for the cable car there, to continue up to the second summit, so I'm really not too sure how one would go about doing that...

We spent a bit more time on the second summit, having a coffee, looking at some of the shops, and just sitting around watching these neat little monkeys that were running around the top, looking for people to feed them even though signs were clearly posted prohibiting the feeding of wildlife, which most tourists blatently disregarded, as per usual. After an hour and a bit up top, and taking in as much viewing time as we desired, we made our way down to the bottom, and decided to go to Copacabana, where I figured we could find Rodrigo and introduce Kristy and him, since he had actually met another Canadian girl in Europe a year earlier, who had ended up working with Kristy in Australia. We made our way over to Rod's house, and got him out of the house, which can be difficult at times, and headed down to Copacabana beach for a bit, where we wandered around a bit, checking out some sandcastle displays that were created as part of advertising for the Olympics. There were some rather impressive creations, although there were also people sitting at the sand castles asking for money for taking photos. I was pretty certain that none of the guys asking for money at the sand castles were the actual creators, they just seemed to be people who set up in front of them to take advantage of tourists taking photos, and asking for money for the upkeep of them....one guy came up and asked for money after a photo, and I asked him if he was the creator of the sand castle, and he couldn't speak any English so the question was moot, but I still wasn't giving him any cash for a photo. After a wander, we stopped for some caipirinhas on the beach, which provided us with a difficult choice, as there were two stands side by side, one claiming to have Rio's best Caipirinha, while the other claimed to have Brazil's best one...well Brazil's best won out, and it was actually a very good and well priced beverage, considering it was $3 and on the main beach. After our drinks, we wandered off to a local pub near Rod's house, and happened to see a rather funny sight, as an 80 something year old man was driving his scooter in the bike path, while a 40 something black woman was walking with him....at this point I couldn't help but start providing some commentary on the possible scenario at hand, imagining the old man asking “so do you come here often?” or various other cheesy lines...however, it actually appeared that they were a real couple..talk about an age gap! We arrived at the pub, called the Blue Peacock (Palvo Azul) where we tried some Brazilian snacks, such as pastels and bacalhau balls, as well as very cheap and very cold beers. Considering it was in Copacabana, it was still a fairly nice and cheap spot to grab a few drinks.

After our little pub spot, Rod took us to a very delicious buffet restaurant called El Siquera, that had an awesome selection of food, and a great little Brazilian barbecue, with some amazing cuts of meat. After Kristy and I gorged ourselves, while Rodrigo watched, we didn't know what else to do, so we all just decided to head home. I caught a bus and happened to sit beside a cute girl, who was reading a rather interesting looking book that was about personal body language. I could kind of tell that she wasn't too thrilled about someone sitting beside her based on her body language, but I made a comment about the poor lighting for reading, and was surprised to find that she spoke English quite well, as she began to initiate conversation. We talked the whole way to Niteroi, and when we arrived, she suggested she needed a beer and wanted me to join her, so she took me to a small park where there were several restaurants and tables serving beers, and televisions showing the local football team playing a match. We enjoyed several beers and a nice chat, before stopping at a nearby gas station where she needed to grab some money and wait for a cab. I was a bit surprised to find that the petrol station had several tables set outside and inside where people would just sit around drinking beer.....it's definitely a Brazilian hobby, sitting around and drinking beer nearly anywhere. When she grabbed some money, she suggested one last beer for the road, but this turned into several more, before it was finally time to head back. We hopped in a cab, dropped me off and exchanged contact info before calling it a night.

  

The Lapa Arches, famous meeting point for all types of people

On our way to Sugarloaf Mountain

One cable car up, one more to go

City Centre and Praia Flamengo to the left

View from Pao de Acucar

Modern cable cars, with Copacabana in the distance

type of monkey I've never seen before

Amazing Rio

Sandcastle building on Copacabana

Was told there would be small bikinis in Brazil..didn't think they would be on sand castles

Caipirinha on Copacabana with an old friend

"Hey baby you wanna go for a ride with me"  chicka chicka wow wow

The next day I decided to stick around Niteroi, as the girl from the previous night was interested in hanging out in the afternoon, so we made plans to meet up, and I just spent a few hours hanging out waiting for her. Of course in true South American style, she was a few hours later than expected, and we weren't able to go to the nearby museum as planned, but we decided to find something else to do, so we went to a movie instead. The selection wasn't that great, and we had an hour to kill until we could see the only semi decent looking film. We grabbed a coffee, and I always enjoy going to coffee shops who ask for my name so they can write it on the coffee cup, as there are some rather hilarious names that show up, as many foreigners can't seem to understand the name Reilly. In this case, the Brazilians somehow came up with Walt (Wali?) for my name on the cup....ahh interesting. With a bit more time to kill, we grabbed some Chinese food that came with fortune cookies....well, Brazilian fortunes are rather...interesting I guess?

Great spot for a nap

Sunset from Niteroi

Reilly spelled in Portuguese...

"You possess an iron structure" and "Punishment of the good, who don't care about politics, is being governed by the bad"

After dinner, we caught a movie, and I could definitely see how Brazilians are much more physical and touchy feely, as she was not afraid to put her arms on mine or on my legs. I heard there was a study that showed Brazilian couples touched each other the most out of any couples of any nationality..interesting indeed. Once the movie was done, she had to catch the last bus of the night, so it was a quick goodbye and back to the apartment for the night. The next day Kristy invited me to come join her at Ipanema for the day, but I slept in a little bit too late to arrive exactly at the designated arrival time. Once I caught my boat over, I decided to stop by Rod's place first to see if he wanted to join, but he wasn't interested, and was going to play poker instead, so I grabbed a quick lunch and Acai with him....I had tried Acai a few times, and it's become an almost daily ritual, as it's very very tasty and provides a nice burst of energy. After lunch I wandered over to the Lifeguard station where Kristy had said she would be, hoping she might be laying nearby, and even though I later found out she was there, I couldn't see her and ended up walking all the way up and down the very very large beach, without spotting her. After an hour and a bit of walking around, I figured I may as well stop at one of the Caipirinha stands near the lifeguard station in case I saw her walking around, but never did find her. Fortunately there was wifi and I was able to briefly chat with a friend from Australia whom I had met in the Philippines the previous year, and who also happened to be in Rio at the time. She mentioned I should meet her down in Lapa around 8 pm, so after hanging around for sometime and reading at the beach, I went over to Rodrigo's to leave some of my stuff and catch a bus over to Lapa.

Acai....love that stuff!

I was already about 20 minutes late when I arrived, and wasn't completely sure if I would be able to find Lisa, and what I would do it if I didn't. Fortunately, she was still waiting by the arches with some tall English guy and I walked up to them and said hello, and she sat there looking at me like I was an unknown...and just continued staring at me, asking what I wanted....at this point I began to feel a bit uncomfortable as I thought that maybe I had made a mistake and was talking to the wrong person, and after a few seconds of awkward silence and her looking at the bigger guy and him looking at me like he was going to ask me to leave or something, until she asked who I again and after explaining, she finally realized it was me and was then excited...ha ha such an odd moment. I was a bit lucky as they had been waiting for a few others, and she hadn't seen my message that I was coming to meet her, plus I had longer hair and a beard when I had met in her Asia, so that was the reason she didn't recognize me. The others showed up shortly after, two lesbian girls who were pretty cool, so after some quick introductions, we decided to wander over to a nearby hostel, where she had stayed during Carnival, and had a cheap little bar. After grabbing a drink there and chatting a little bit, but not staying long we wandered back into the increasingly busy streets of Lapa, and ended up finding some wicked cool gay Peruvian guy who had been in the city for awhile, and was a real laugh. While waiting with him, and grabbing a few sausages from nearby carts...making for a few funny photos and laughs with the guy, as us straight guys were teasing him with the sausages, we were ready to head over to a pub...but before we did that, some random New Zealander walked past us, heard us speaking English, and asked if we could borrow him a phone, which none of us had, but he decided to join our group since he was by himself anyway.

With our ever increasing group, we went over to a pub, which was pretty close to where I had been the previous week with Rodrigo and his friends, and sure enough, it ended up being a gay bar, as men started to pile into the place, which was fine but a bit overwhelming for myself and the Kiwi guy, as we were the two straight and single guys of the group, so after a few drinks there, we were ready to move on to the next place where we could at least find some girls. We all wandered around the street a bit more, stopping at the Cachaca bar nearby for some delicious shots, which after conferring with the one lesbian girl, who happened to be Canadian, about pumpkin pies and if that was the taste that I was in fact thinking of, we confirmed that the cachaca shots were of that flavouring..tasty. We then decided to go find some funk parties in the streets, near the arches themselves. As you walk past the Lapa arches, especially in the weekend evenings, they reek pretty badly of urine, as there are so many people who are having streets parties nearby, and none of the establishments let people in to use their toilets so everyone just goes near the arches..myself included, unfortunately....We ended up losing half of the group at this point, so it was just myself, the Peruvian, his 2 roommates (one lesbian and one straight guy), and the Kiwi that were remaining in the street. I can understand why very few women were there, as the street partiers are pretty aggressive, grabbing at any girl that walked past and trying to flirt with them...it was pretty funny to watch the guys trying pretty hard for the lesbian girl, as very few of us knew she was one, and she had to keep swatting them away. My friend Kristy confirmed this behaviour a week later, as she went to a street festival and said it was extremely irritating having all the men grabbing her, especially as they couldn't even make a conversation with her. Eventually the Kiwi and I were ready to get out of there, and went back to the main square area, where we somehow found the English guy from earlier, but he was too messed up to really talk and was just wandering around aimless.

While talking amongst ourselves two guys and a girl came over and started chatting with us, with very bad English. They were trying to get me to kiss their girlfriend for awhile, but she appeared a bit manish and I was kind of thinking maybe she might have been a tranny or something, so I didn't bite but the Kiwi guy was all about kissing her (possibly he). While that was happening, the one guy kept hitting on me and trying to kiss me, which was my cue to leave and head home, as it was around the time that the buses left for Niteroi, so I said a quick goodbye and ran off so I wouldn't have to fight him off anymore. Fortunately, the buses were running frequently, and I was able to hop aboard and make my way back to the apartment, arriving at the break of dawn, and getting to sleep around 7 am. I awoke in the later afternoon, and found Kristy to be online, so I inquired what she was up to, and it just so happened that her and Marlene, the German girl we had been out with earlier in the week, were over in Niteroi and had just gone to the museum right by my apartment, so we decided to meet up. They made their way over, and we wandered off along the beach so that I could grab some coconut juice and check out the area, since Marlene had lived in the area at one time. We saw one of the funnier sights of poor Brazilian driving, when a bus turned a corner and a SUV left their parking spot and cut in front of the bus....the impact was at a slow speed, and rather than immediately stopping, the bus just kept driving, pushing the vehicle along, as if it was trying to continue on past it without stopping! The vehicle finally became lodged on a cement barrier, fully blocking the bus's path, resulting in the driver having to finally stop and then take forever to get out of the vehicle...it was such a slow moving and hilarious collision that we couldn't help but laugh, and soon enough there were a few vehicle lined up behind it trying to get by and honking their horns endlessly...it was so ridiculous....Brazilian drivers are pretty terrible and overly horn happy!

After the laughter there, we decided to head over towards the central bus station where there was a large outdoor concert being held, but upon arrival it was a bit too early and empty, so we wandered back out to find some cheap beer from a supermarket before making our way back to the concert. However, upon arriving back at the bus station, the clouds opened up and pouring rain ensued. We contemplated going out in the rain to the concert, but decided to wait inside the large station for awhile, and found a very busy and small bar where we settled into a table for a beer or two...well once a group of random Brazilians who didn't really speak any English, but a little Spanish showed up, since it was myself alone with two girls....they were nice enough guys and kept filling our cups, even though we were always ready to head out after the current bottle....somehow we were convince to stay longer, especially as others showed up, soaked head to toe from the rain...so this went on for about 2 hours or so, before the guys decided to come with us to see the concert, where it was still pouring. They were pretty nice though, and even bought umbrellas for the girls, so they felt a bit obliged to go check out the music for a little bit....we ended up getting extremely soaked and quite drunk, but it was a fairly fun time. Marlene spoke enough Portuguese to be our translator at least, although the group of men were definitely interested in the girls, so I had to pretend to be Kristy's bf, and Marlene had to bat them off and tell them she already had a bf. It was nearly 1 am when the girls decided to head back to Rio, and I didn't feel like sticking around in the rain much longer so I decided to walk back to the apartment, which was a bit silly, as the rain was still quite heavy and I was absolutely soaked. We said goodbye to the guys, thanked them for the funny night, and went our seperate ways.

After a quick stop in the supermarket where the A/C nearly froze me into a popsicle, I was back in the apartment and off to sleep. The next day I slept in quite late again, and after some lunch, I made plans to meet up with the local girl again, so after killing a few hours, we met up and she took me down to an area called San Francisco, that had some nice bars and restaurants, and we stopped in one of the pubs to have a few beers. She was a bit of a clumsy girl, and ended up spilling a half full beer all over me, first time that has ever happened, but it was fine. She was also quite Brazilian with her touchy feely nature, as she was very much into public displays of affection. So after some passionate PDA, it was time to settle the bill and....go to the McDonalds for a late night snack and unfortunately separate ways home....so another lonely night at the apartment, oh well! I had to be up early the next morning anyway, as Kristy and I made plans to go rent bikes and cruise around the lake near Leblon and Ipanema. I woke up and figured I could catch the 9:30 am bus to get over to Copacabana for the meeting time of 10:45 am...well of course in typical Reilly fashion, I missed the first bus, and was able to hop on the 9:55 am bus, which had a different style and design than the buses I had usually been taking.

  

Well it turned out that this bus made wayyyyyy more stops than the other company running buses to Copacabana, so that was my first set of worries. Next, we ran into an absolutely massive, slow moving traffic jam, which took about 45 minutes to navigate through. I had neither grabbed any breakfast, nor did I have anything such as a book to keep me entertained for the ride which ended up taking 2 hours and 35 minutes to arrive near Rodrigo's house, where I was meant to meet Kristy at 11 am...and of course I didn't have any means of communication either...great. So I arrive at Rod's place at 12:30 and am surprised to find that Kristy is actually still there, having been quite late herself and only arriving at 11:45 am. Rodrigo, being a bit of a lazy bum, wasn't interested in coming for a bike ride, but was willing to help us go rent bikes, which turned out to be a good thing, as the bike shops wouldn't take credit cards as a deposit, only a form of id, of which neither Kristy nor I had brought with us. Oddly, we could just leave Rodrigo's id and no form of payment when renting the bikes....probably should have just sold the bike and never talked to him again!

We made our way along Copacabana beach in the very busy bike lane (people are always running and biking in Rio, it's a very very fit city or at least along the beach areas it is), then continued on along Ipanema for a little bit and then cut across Leblon to find the lake. After cruising around for awhile, enjoying the views and trying to ignore the terrible smell of the lake (pretty sure the city's sewage just goes right into it), and also trying to ignore the slightly retarded Rio residents who don't even look before crossing into your path, we made our way back to Leblon for a bit, stopped for some Acai, which I've grown accustomed to eating nearly every day, before crusing back along the beaches and returning the bikes. Rod joined us for a few beers at the nearby pub, before Kristy had to take off early to go fetch her expensive laundry (about $15 for a load of laundry yuck). Rod and I had a few more beers, then found our way over to The Siquiera Grill http://www.siqueiragrill.com.br/ (probably the best food I ate in Rio) for another round of delicious steak (with soya sauce and wasabi; Japanese style and very very tasty). Eventually it was getting late, I was tired, so I caught a bus back to Niteroi, chatting with a friendly local man for the majority of the ride, before crashing for the night.

  

Cruising on bikes around the Lagoa

"It's not a real bird Kristy"...sucker!

Cruising down Copacabana

The next day was a fairly quiet one, just hanging out reading a bit and waiting to meet up with the local girl again, as she wanted to take me to the MAC museum for the sunset and a quick tour. It's not a very large museum, but it has a cool shape, much like a giant spaceship, and has some rather interesting modern art to see. I've never quite understood the whole “modern art” thing, as to me it just seems like you throw a bunch of random shapes, figures, objects, etc..together into a painting, sculpture, etc and if no one really understands what the hell it is, then it it “modern art”. After touring around and seeing all the exhibits in about 30 minutes, we enjoyed the view of the sunset from the second floor of the museum, which was quite delightful, before the museum closed and security punted us out. The girl had to go run some errands but said she would come back later on and we could spend the night together, but that never materialized, so I just spent another quiet alone night, making plans for the next day.

  

Modern Art museum in Niteroi

Sunset from the Modern Art museum

I caught the ferry the next day into Rio, which actually provides some nice views of the city, and is kind of an enjoyable and rather quick ride. I didn't want to risk getting stuck in traffic again, and completely missing out on meeting Kristy around the agreed upon time. When entering the boat, someone stepped on the back of my flip flop, causing it to fall off....I really don't know what it is about Brazilians, but if you spend some time here, you'll notice that they ALWAYS step on the back of your shoes as they walk way too close behind people. I've never quite experienced anything like it, as it happens at least once a day...in all the crowded places of the world, I've never had so many people step on my shoes. 

Anyway, off topic there. I arrived into the Rio centre, found the necessary buses and arrived in Ipanema a bit later than expected, as per usual, but I was able to find Kristy this time. After a bit of poking fun of some of the characters of the beach, and some chat time we made our way off to go find a bite to eat. On our way we happened to run into the New Zealander who was wandering around by himself, so he tagged along and we struggled to find a nearby place to eat for a decent price. Well this exercise was a fair bit fruitless, and we ended up just taking a bus all the way over to the Lapa area before finally settling on a spot there, where we received some fairly large portions at a relatively decent price, along with a few ice cold beers. Being a Wednesday, we didn't really think about doing much more in the evening, so we went our separate ways for the night. The next day was Kristy's last one before flying out, so we agreed to go out for dinner and a few drinks. I didn't realize she had an early flight the next morning so I had assumed it would be a late night out, but alas it wasn't meant to be. After the ferry and bus combinations (I hadn't actually taken a bus all the way up to Santa Theresa, so I was just kind of going along trying to figure it out as I went and somehow managed with my lack of Portuguese), arriving by mid afternoon.

We checked out the Parque de Ruinas, which was right by her hostel, admiring the...well I'm actually not even sure what the hell the park was supposed to be...it was just basically a big old abandoned stone house that provided a nice view of the city, and not really anything else ruin related. After the quick tour, we stopped for some beer and snacks before making our way over to a delicious Amazon style restaurant called Espirito Santa, where we enjoyed a rather tasty chicken dish called Chuchu no Xinxin http://espiritosanta.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/chuchu_no_xinxin.jpg. The decor and the staff of the restaurant was rather bright and cheerful, and it was definitely a nice spot to check out if you're ever in the area. After our tasty dinner, we stopped at a nearby cachaca bar, where several young groups of people were hanging out, having beers and cachaca. After some deep life conversations, she informed me that she had to be up early and leave early, so the night would be a short one. I decided to go try and track down Rodrigo for a bit, since I wasn't quite ready to go home at 10 pm yet, so after walking back to her hostel, borrowing a phone, and saying goodbye, I was on my way via metro to Copacabana.

  

Cruising on the ferry over to Rio

Parque do Ruinas in Santa Theresa

Lapa and the City Centre

Wandering Santa Theresa

Sunset from Santa Theresa

Cachaca!!

I had told Rod I would be there in about 20 minutes, but it took me about 35 minutes and as I was walking up to his gate to ring the buzzer, a black dressed man suddenly came out of nowhere with a pen pretending to to stab me....I was a bit surprised but of course it was Rodrigo, whom I had completely walked past, not noticing him sitting outside the gate..ah. So after grabbing a few beers form a nearby supermarket, we wandered along Copacabana for awhile, finding a huge couchsurfing party, but decided to not stop at it and continue on towards Ipanema, where he knew of a few good pubs. We tried an Irish one first, but entrance was $20 and it was only open another hour, and didn't even have live music..no thanks! So we found another smaller pub that was a popular little spot, and hung out there for awhile until it was shutting down. We went and found another supermarket with cheaper beers, continued to walk around looking for other places before ending back in the same area as the previous pub, where there was another place that was actually starting to get quite busy for 4 am, however, I wasn't really feeling it, and we just decided to start making our way back to Copacabana where I waited for ever to take a bus back to Niteroi, arriving around 7 am there and off to sleep.

The next day was a pretty quiet one, with myself not having a whole lot to do for the day. It was a pretty relaxing day, walking around a little bit, before having a quiet night in, as it started to rain quite heavily, validating my night in. The next day after trying to coax people into going out and not finding any takers, it was another pretty quiet day, heading down to the mall for dinner, finding some amazing new Havaianas which I couldn't resist buying. After trying to convince the local girl to hang out without luck, I resorted to just having another quiet night in, so much for the crazy Rio nightlife! I found out earlier that an old coworker from Canada was going to be showing up in Rio with his g/f, old roommate, and her husband, so we made plans to meet up the next day. I hopped on a bus towards Ipanema and spent most of the time reading, and admiring how the woman sitting beside me could put makeup on while the bus was driving. Rio buses are by far the most bumpy, jerky buses I've ever been on...I nearly fall over every time I board one, and I really can't imagine an elderly person trying to ride them...so here is this woman putting on eyeliner with all the rapid stops, starts, and swerves, all while not taking our her eye..very impressive. I admired her a few times, and she started speaking to me, and when she found out I spoke English, she was quite happy to practice. So rather than getting off right where I needed to, I decided to ride a bit longer past my stop as she was interesting enough. After exchanging emails, and saying goodbye, it was over to the apartments where Devin Bowes was going to be staying.

I didn't need a new pair of flip flops, but come on...Pacman!

It was nice to see the guy, as he's kind of a clumsy and awkward dude, but pretty funny and somewhat loveable at the same time. I met his nice g/f Paige, who was a fellow engineer from Devon, and we went to find a cash machine, as they had also been having problems taking out money, so I began to lead them towards the Citi bank that I knew would work, but we found an HSBC before that which also worked. In Brazil, these two banks are now the only two that work for me...ahhhhh I hate my bank, screw you TD CanadaTrust! After grabbing some cash, we found what would be by far the cheapest buffet place I've seen so far, that was $13.50 for all you can eat..not bad. After lunch, we grabbed some beer and went back to the apartment where we ended up spending the next several hours hanging out, catching up, and relaxing before we knew it, was already nearly 9:30 pm and we were starving. We ended up asking the staff at the desk and they directed us towards a Churrascaria that was ridiculously over priced..especially for what we received..the meat was alright, but definitely not worth the $70 price tag. After eating and having one drink...we were back to the apartment for a few more late nigt beers before calling it a night. The next day Devin, Paige and I just hung around for awhile, enjoying the nice view from their apartment, before heading down to wander around the beach for awhile. After stopping at the HSBC and not being able to withdraw money there I just lead them down to the Citibank, while stopping to grab some Pastels (tasty breaded and salty Brazilian snacks) and some Acai so that they could experience for the first time the delights of Brazil. We found our way to the bank, and I still had left some stuff at Rodrigo's place, so I figured I would head there and pick it up, plus introduce them to him and see if he wanted to go grab dinner that night, as I figured it would be my last day hanging out in Rio. He was in a fairly zombie like state, as his late night poker hours and lack of sleep had taken it's toll, so it was a bit difficult to converse with him at all, but he mentioned he might be interested in dinner later after sleeping a bit.

So, we went down to walk around Copacabana a bit more, and find the Caipirinha stand that offered Brazil's best, settled in there, and had a few drinks there, before heading off to a Churrascaria that Rodrigo had recommended. It was a bit of a funny challenge trying to get the staff to bring us the exact cuts of meat that we wanted, with the language barrier and all, plus for some reason they kept skipping our table even though Devin and Paige kept pointing out the exact one they wanted and asking them to come over...ahh being a foreigner with a language barrier can be so difficult! They had a few more interesting and new types of meat at the bbq, and deciding to be a bit braver with my meat selection, I even gave chicken hearts a taste for the first time, and they actually weren't all that bad! After the very very filling meal, we said our goodbyes, as I didn't think I would be seeing them again, and it was off to Rodrigo's to try and wake him up for one last beer, but I wasn't able to so I just caught a bus back to Niteroi for the night. The next day was a pretty quiet one, just busy cleaning the apartment a bit, and hanging out a bit with the local girl one last time, although not for very long as she was busy with homework and studying, so we said our goodbyes, after randomly running into her mother while walking the streets, which wasn't a good thing, as her mother is highly distrustful of strangers and quite protectful when it comes to her daughter (for good reason, but I won't elaborate). After the goodbye visit, I stopped by a local pub to watch some futbol, before making my way back to the apartment, to make the obligatory birthday phone call back to Mom, especially since I hadn't spoken with her since February (I'm a bad child at keeping in touch with my parents and friends in general).  

View from the balcony of Devin's apartment in Copacabana..nice spot

Caipirinhas on Copacabana...with an old friend

Itacarai beach in Niteroi

After catching up over the next few hours, I had to decide when to catch a bus to Sao Paulo, my next destination. There was a 5:50 am bus leaving from Niteroi, and I figured that would be a good one to catch, as I would be able to arrive in Sao Paulo in the mid afternoon when my friend Henrique would be free to meet me and let me into his apartment. Because of my dodgy sleep habits where I had been going to bed around 5 am, I just decided to pull an all nighter instead, and head down to the bus station around 5:15 am, figuring that would give me plenty of time. Well, of course I didn't leave the apartment until 5:25 am, and then arrived at the Central Station with about 15 minutes before departure time. I looked around everywhere for the company that was running the buses to Sao Paulo, and couldn't find a desk anywhere to buy a ticket. I wandered outside and found two buses that the company ran, and asked the drivers in very poor Portuguese where the buses to Sao Paulo were leaving to, and they informed me I was at the wrong station...damnit! So I could have ran to catch a taxi and try and make it to the other station in time, but I figured it would just be easier to go into Rio to the main station, as there were a lot of companies running buses out of there, so after squeezing onto one of the public buses (in the process losing my awesome Casio party watch, RIP little buddy, we shared some good times with your cool disco lights!), and arrived at the main station.

  

Leaving Rio in the early morning

I eventually found a bus, but it wasn't leaving for another hour, so I had to kill some time, and still hadn't slept, but didn't want to risk falling asleep in the terminal and missing the bus, so after ordering a coffee at a shop, and then not actually receiving it as they lost track of it, leading to me trying to explain in Spanish what happened, them not really understanding...and yeah...what a mess, but eventually they just caved and gave me the coffee, as I just started rambling on on English, which seems to cause people here discomfort and you can just kind of get whatever you want. I got on the very nice and luxurious bus, and pretty much fell asleep instantly in the comfy seats....travelling by bus in Brazil is actually pretty nice. I'd recommend a company called 1001 or else Itapemirim is also pretty good, and the prices aren't so bad either.

I slept pretty much the entire way, and before I knew it, I had arrived in Sao Paulo Tiete station, which happens to be the 2nd largest bus terminal in the world (not too sure what the first is, but this place was huge!). After finding my way to the metro, which fortunately wasn't too packed as it was mid day, so I was able to actually get onto the train with all my bags and not be caught in uncomfortable spots or stuck on the transit without being able to get off at my desired stop (this has happened to me several times while travelling, not fun! I made my required switch to the next metro line and arrived at the Faria Lima station, which was the nearest station to Henrique's apartment. He had mentioned he would be out of the house, but to call him from a payphone, using a number that would make it a collect call. So I tried that, and of course the piece of shit payphone didn't work with that number combination, so I tried the next one, and of course that didn't work. Then I tried my calling card, and again, no luck.....I seriously hate pay phones, they are one of the most frustrating and annoying things in the world, I've had countless issues with them anywhere in the world, whatever happened to the old days where you put in a quarter and made a local phone call??? FML. Fortunately he had written down his address and I had a crude map, so I managed to make my way to the apartment and was lucky that his one roommate was home and there to let me in. So after settling in and getting comfortable, I waited for Henrique to show up.

It was really nice to see him again, as we first met in Montenegro, then again in Thailand and travelled in Laos and Cambodia together for awhile before parting ways, and then I again met up with him in Cuba over the Xmas holidays. This is now the 4th continent we've met each other on, which puts him in very select company, as my friend Kaisa from Boston is the only other person I've met in 4 different continents....cool! So after hanging out at the house for awhile and stopping by the nearby supermarket to get some things for dinner and lunches the next few days (not to mention looking in awe at some of the ridiculous prices of items in Brazil including a container of Pistachio nuts that cost $42!!!), we eagerly awaited the Indian Curry dish that his one roommate Polaco was cooking. One thing that I soon realized is that all Brazilians have funny nicknames for each other. Henrique's nickname is Mindu, which is the Portuguese name of the cartoon series Peanuts, as some of his friends thought he looked like Charlie Brown when he was younger. Polaco was named as such because one of his friends thought he looked like a Polish man, and subsequently his brother was called Italiano, even though they don't have any Polish or Italian heritage in their family..funny stuff. I soon met Glick (real name Fabricio), one of the other roommates who was a pretty friendly guy, and we had a tasty dinner together, along with some beers. Another thing I soon noticed, and came to appreciate was how they were more than willing to talk to each other in English so that I could understand and always be part of the conversations....I have to admit, it's quite comforting when people will go to that effort to speak in their 2nd or 3rd language amongst each other, even if they haven't done it before, just to make you feel at home.

  

damn those pistachio prices are nuts!! $41 for this

How Brazilians chop up onions...wimps!

After the tasty dinner, everyone went off to sleep, as they all had to work the next morning, with the exception of Polaco, who had just recently quit his job and was going to be taking a year off to travel. The next day I slept in as I needed to catch up on sleep, and had a pretty quiet day just hanging around the house with Polaco, and catching up on a few things. My friend Martin, whom I had met on the boat ride from Leticia to Manaus was now living in Sao Paulo, and very close to the apartment, so we made plans to meet up early the next morning. Once Henrique arrived back, he showed me the tricky shower system that their apartment had, as the hot water required one to go into the back room and fiddle with a water heating panel...kind of a strange system but whatever. After Henrique finished at the gym, and I had some coffee at a nearby cafe, we went to a Japanese restaurant that was about $30 for all you could eat mixed Japanese platter. The food was pretty good, but fairly expensive, although this is kind of normal for Sao Paulo, as it's a rather expensive city to eat and live in (10th most expensive City in the World I read). After the huge and filling dinner, we just went back to the apartment and relaxed before calling it a night. I tried to fall asleep at a decent hour, but had problems sleeping, and didn't fall asleep until probably about 7 am, and of course I had to get up at 9:30 am to go meet my friend the next morning ughh.

So after struggling to get out of bed, I wandered over to the Metro station, where I met up with Martin, and headed off to find a bus that would take us towards Parque Ibaquera. Fortunately his Portuguese is fairly functional, so I let him do all the talking, although I was quite sure we could just take a Metro and walk to the park, so after sitting around the nearby bus stop and not seeing any buses going towards where we wanted to, we just hopped on the metro and were on our way to downtown Sao Paulo. Upon arrival, we asked around and found a bus that would take us right by the park, so that's what we did, arriving there and immediately noticing how busy it was for mid day on a supposed work day. It seems like a lot of Brazil doesn't work during the days, based on the amounts of people sitting at little sidewalk pubs drinking beer, people running around, people exercising, etc. After spending a fair bit of time practicing speaking Spanish and English, and wandering around the park for a few hours, Martin had to go off to work, as he was working as a chef in an Italian restaurant, and since I was exhausted, it was time to go back and have a late afternoon nap. Well of course that nap turned into something much longer than a cat nap, as I woke up close to 7 pm, which just caused further consequences to my bad sleep patterns. Once Henrique arrived back, I made us dinner, trying to create some sort of Habanero chicken which didn't quite have the flavour I had hoped for but ah well. After dinner we grabbed a cab and went to a house of a friend of Henrique and the other roommates (the guys are all from the same town, a place called San Jose dos Campos).

  

Mural along Paulanista Avenue in Sao Paulo

Parque Ibarapuera, fighting some kids over a pig

not too sure what this monument was of....slaves in Egypt?

We arrived there and I met some pretty interesting guys, including Rodrigo the owner, who was a journalist for Reuters, another friend who was a lawyer, and another Doctor. We proceeded to enjoy several beers, some cachaca, and a boys night in, talking about politics, philosophy, sports, and life in Brazil. It was pretty shocking to learn about some of the crazy events that Henrique and the other guy dealt with as Doctors. The one Doctor had a patient show up, bleeding, and a drug dealer come with the guy and pull out a gun on him and tell him to not save the guy otherwise he would kill him! Henrique also had some pretty crazy stories, including one where he was called to a hospital late at night, took his motorcycle there and didn't tell the security guard he would be parking it there. Shortly afterwards, the druglord/kingpin of the area near the hospital was about to have someone steal it, when the head of the hospital had to go plead with him to not steal it as it was the Doctor's bike. The Kingpin said that he needed to be told ahead of time that a Doctor was bringing a vehicle to the hospital at that hour, so that no one would steal it! Henrique also had a story about people coming in with guns and telling him that he had to save someone's life, as opposed to not saving it...wow! Eventually Henrique had to go back early, as he had to work the next morning, but I stayed with Glick who was staying later. We stuck around to the very end, which was about 3 am or so, before catching a cab. Sao Paulo cabs and an app developer created a pretty cool tool that allows you to see where all the cabs are near your place, and if they area free, and you simply have to put a finger and push onto the free cab and it will show up to pick you up..amazing. We caught our cab and were back to the apartment for the night.

The next day I had plans to meet up with a super cute Brazilian woman that I had met in New York City, so she told me to stop by the Consolation Metro Station on Avenida Paulista and meet her there. Unfortunately not having a phone makes for difficult meetings, so I arrived at the station, but didn't know exactly where to find her, so I went and sat out on the main street hoping she was somewhere easy to spot. Of course she wasn't anywhere to be seen, and I spent the next 20 minutes looking everywhere to find her, without luck, but finally she showed up, and had in fact been waiting inside the station the whole time. We caught up and went for a wander along Avenida Paulista, which is the main road passing through the centre of Sao Paulo, and home to several large buildings and interesting people. We stopped by the one Museum which had one of the crazy Architectural structures I had seen, as it had a very large open space underneath the structure, and the building was supported by what seemed to be very little support structure...the engineer/geek side of me was quite impressed with the force balancing of the building. After that we continued to wander down the street until we found a little Garden Cafe, where we stopped for a drink. Unfortunately she had plans for the evening to go to a party which was sold out, and didn't have much time to catch up, which was really unfortunate because I really enjoy her company, but such is life. After our coffee, we walked a bit more before having to say our goodbyes.

  

Amazing building design demonstrated at this museum..very little support

Wandering Avenida Paulista

I arrived back at the apartment, and Henrique and I went for a wander to grab dinner at a busy area a few blocks from his apartment, which was full of young people and many many gorgeous women. I had to laugh when I saw a motorcycle that was using a bike lock to secure it to a tree...interesting security devices used here! We also passed some spots where Henrique showed me how people had actually cleared out spots in the sidewalk and planted metal hooks where they could chain up their motorbikes to. We also talked about some more of the dangers of Brazil, including one time when his girlfriend had two assailants car jack her by gun point and take her to the bank, telling her that if she had no money in there they would kill her. Then they asked if she had a bf so that they could get more money out of a loved one, and she told them that she didn't, but they went through her phone and saw Henrique was the most recently called number, so they dialed him. He happened to be in school writing a test that day and ignored the call, but they called 3 more times which he fortunately ignored. If they had called one more time he was sure that it was something real serious and would have answered it, but they didn't call again, and let her go without getting any more money, but still quite scary!  

Hilarious motorbike security

Because he had to work the next day again, and would be doing a 24 hr shift, and then immediately going to his other job after that 24 hour shift, we would only be able to go for dinner before he had to go home to bed. We stopped at a hip little sports bar, and being a Saturday, they had Feijoada (the bean/pork stew that is famously served on Saturdays) on the menu. Apparently it's more of a lunch item, but Henrique inquired and they said they could still serve it to us. While we were waiting for it, we had a few beers and caught up a bit more about travels and life in general. Eventually some food showed up that didn't resemble anything close to the Feijoada, but I figured it was part of the combo or some sort of appetizers that Henrique had ordered without me knowing, so we started eating that before the staff realized that they had delivered to the wrong table....oops. Eventually the big pot of Feijoada showed up...and damn was it good! After the huge feast, Henrique had to head home but I wasn't really ready to go to bed yet, and fortunately Glick was planning to go out for a bit, so I tagged along with him.

We stopped at a restaurant/bar near the centre, that his friend had just opened up, and I met a few other friends of his, who all spoke a bit of English and were pretty friendly guys and as well as one cute girl. Unfortunately she was spoken for, as we had a great chat but then I realized one of the guys there was with her..damn. We ended up watching some UFC and having beers, which was nice. It was kind of funny as the restaurant wasn't really officially open yet, just for friends during the evenings and for lunches, yet several people showed up and came in to have a drink, but had to be shooed away by the owner. After everything wrapped up, we were trying to leave, but it took probably about 15 minutes before the owner could properly shut the door so the alarm wouldn't go off...it was kind of funny as there were 4 of us trying to get it to properly shut and lock, and this alarm kept going off, drawing attention from passing cars and nearby bars...I'm surprised the police didn't show up! When it was finally shut, one of the guys had been invited to a “lesbian night” party at a pub, so Glick and I hopped in a cab with him and went to lesbian night. I had been to one in Melbourne, Australia earlier in my trip and it was a pretty funny time so I couldn't wait to go again. However, when we arrived, we soon found out that it really wasn't lesbian night, as there were maybe two or three lesbian couples, and just a lot of hipsters. The place actually reminded me a fair bit of a bar in my University town called O'Hanlons. We had a few beers, and hung out meeting a few new people, and admired the one cute lesbian couple having a hardcore makeout session ha ha!

One of the more funny sights of the evening was when a very drunk couple were making out hardcore and pretty touchy feely with each other, and apparently throught they could go into the toilet together. Well the place employed a sort of toilet bouncer, and as she was walking in with him following her, the bouncer quickly grabbed the guy by the collar and threw him back and started yelling at him...busted! The toilet lineups were so unorganized anyway, and they were set right in the middle of the dance floor area, which made for some strange lineups involving people waiting for the toilet, and others just actually out dancing. Glick met some girls from Belem, who I wasn't really attracted to, but decided to wing man for him with the one, who ended up having a bf and wasn't really that interesting, but I am a team player so I chatted with her while Glick worked on the other girl. I could tell they were kind of flaky girls though, and as soon as we all went to settle our bills, the paid quickly, said they would wait outside for him, and as soon as we got outside, of course they were gone. We just hopped in a cab and went back to the apartment, as it was already about 6 am.

The next day was a pretty quiet day, just hanging around the house for pretty much the entire day, as I slept in quite late. There was a party that day that a guy I had met on a ferry in Stockholm had told me about, but I was too tired and lazy to bother going down to it, especially as I figured I wouldn't be able to find the guy if it was a big party. So the day was just spent hanging out, while poor Henrique was off working for 32 hours straight! I had hoped to go check out a futbol museum on Monday, but once I woke up, it was a bit late and then I checked the website and found out that it was closed on Mondays anyway. I find it a bit weird actually how a lot of museums seem to be closed on Mondays....I wonder if museum employees and curators have really wild and crazy parties on Sundays and are too hungover to work on Mondays, or if they just have such Monday blues that they choose to have the day off...who knows. So I just went for a wander to find a Citibank or HSBC so that I could grab some cash. I managed to find one on a fairly busy street, but as soon as I arrived, there was a security guard at the day saying things in Portuguese that I didn't understand. I could see behind him though that the employees were restocking the machines, so I understood implicitly. Hilariously enough, the next 2 times I went to the bank, the exact same thing happened, as I would arrive just as they were working on the machines and would have to stand outside like an idiot for 15 minutes.

After grabbing some cash I just stopped by a nearby cafe to do some people watching, and had to laugh at some very drunk or drugged up black man who was wearing a shower cap, with very torn clothing and headphones in his ears that weren't actually attached to any music player. He was dancing around and singing along as if he was actually listening to music, and would fall on to the ground and roll around and act like he was strumming a guitar...absolutely hilarious! After the free entertainment, I strolled back to the apartment, where I had some garlic-oregano chicken marinating, and made Henrique and I dinner, that turned out a lot better tasting than the previous attempt. He was pretty tired from his 32 hour shift, so it was early to bed for him, and I didn't have much else to do, so I just watched some tv and went to bed.

The next day I took a mental image of where the futbol museum was, and started off towards the metro station that was near the stadium. Upon arrival, I found my one landmark and continued past it, but soon became very very lost. I stopped some girl who fortunately spoke English, but unfortunately didn't know exactly where the stadium was, so she just pointed me in a general direction. I went towards that direction, found the main street that she had mentioned and proceeded to wander along it, not seeing any signs for the stadium. After stopping at an office building where the security spoke no English, but were actually sort of able to help me find my way, I was again turned around and set in the general direction of the place. I found myself wandering down a very steep avenue when I saw a large building that said museum, but of course, it wasn't the museum I was looking for, it was some art museum, but the girl spoke a bit of English and again directed me....well I finally found the damn stadium, which was down in a large valley. If I had at least understood the topography of the googlemap I had initially looked at, or drawn a map out for myself, I probably would have found the place in 15 minutes instead of well over an hour...but that's life! I found the parking lot of the stadium to be mostly cordoned off and a large group of Military officials mingling around the front of the stadium, as it was apparently some sort of graduation day. I was worried that the museum might be closed, but it wasn't. Unfortunately, the whole thing was in Portuguese...so that presented a bit of a challenge.

It was fairly cheap to enter, and it was a pretty cool museum, even if I couldn't understand a fair bit of it. Fortunately, written Portuguese does have a fair bit of similarities to Spanish so I could make out a fair bit of the information surprisingly! They had some exhibits featuring the history of the best Brazilian futballers, the World Cups and pop culture events associated with those times, the history of the game, the officials, and even some activities such as practicing free kicks against a computer goaltender. Unfortunately I spent a bit too much time in a few parts of the exhibit, and it wasn't until one of the workers who spoke English came and told me that I was only half way through and that the museum would be closing in 20 minutes, so I had to hurry up a bit through the rest of the exhibitions. If they could get an audio translation or do more translating of the posted exhibits it would actually be a pretty cool place for anyone to go see. I later found out a rather ridiculous thing about the stadium itself that demonstrates the power that a small class of people hold in the country. It was built in an area that has since become surrounded by fairly wealthy people, and these people have basically held the city hostage so that no events can be held at the stadium that go past 10 pm so that there's no noise affecting their homes. The city spent all that money to build this nice stadium, and now can't really do very much with it because of the clout that the small group of residents have...sheesh! They wouldn't even be able to host a World Cup match there, as the nights games typically go past 10 pm, yet the city tax payers are stuck with helping pay for this stadium that no one can really use.

  

Pacaembu Stadium

After the museum, I wandered outside to find several large groups of grown men playing with electronic flying machines such as airplanes, helicopters, etc...it was kind of a funny and dorky group of guys enjoying the large open confines of the parking lot. When entering the stadium parking lot, I had noticed that there was a small store at the entrance that sold a type of Clove cigarettes called Djaram Blacks, which an Aussie girl that I had met in Guatemala had become addicted to and desperately wanted someone to send her some of them to London. So being the nice guy I bought several packs for her, and then tried to find my way back to the metro station. Since I'm kind of an idiot at times, and never seem to want to go back the exact way I came, I figured I would take a different way back and try and find a closer metro station if I was lucky, but of course, this lead to me getting fairly lost and taking a lot more time to get back to the metro station instead of just going back the way I came. I somehow ended up back on Avenista Paulita where I knew all the metro stations, and caught one back to the Pinheiros neighbourhood and back to the apartment. Since the Wednesday was going to be a public holiday, and no one had to work, including Henrique, they were planning a night out on the town, so after getting cleaned up, and ordering some tasty Sao Paulo pizza in, we had several beers and cachaca shots before heading out.

  

"oh man I swear this never happens...boooo!"

We went out to an area of clubs called Estudio Emme, which was actually quite close to the apartment, and Glick went to work asking around the various doors to see what was happening that night. I was pretty pumped to see one place that had a bunch of people wearing Cowboy hats...awesome! I had asked some girls which place would be better, the Cowboy place or the Reggae bar, they said the Cowboy place, but the guys said it wasn't usually that good and that the Reggae place would be better, so we went there instead. Well it was quite dead, and a bit pricy to get into ($20, although Sao Paulo has some really expensive nightclubs where entry can be up to $150!!!) We got inside, had maybe one drink but then decided to go to the Cowboy place. That's where things got a little blurry as all the Cachaca caught up. I do recall dancing with some cute girl for a little bit, but then don't really know what happened after that, and I do know I was talking to some girls who only spoke Portuguese and I just continued speaking in English to them...what a mess. Glick was off trying for several girls, while Michele (or Thiago) the other roommate who had a gf was being pretty quiet and ready to go home. Henrique was just suddenly gone, and I didn't see Glick anymore, so Thiago said we should just go, so that's what we did..no luck with Sao Paulo girls! :( I didn't get to sleep until around 6 am and was woken up around 1 pm the next day, as Rodrigo was having a big barbecue at his house to celebrate the holiday, and Henrique and Glick wanted to go.

I dragged myself out of bed and we went off to Rodrigo's. I didn't feel the absolute greatest, but I was okay, and upon arrival, all the cold beers there helped a lot too. It was a lovely group of people with quite a few well educated guys who were willing to have some very interesting conversations in English with me about a large variety of topics, so I was always kept interested at the very least. Rodrigo made some pretty damn tasty burgers as well, so the food was definitely great. Unfortunately Henrique found out that his Uncle had passed away, and that he would have to leave that night to head up north to help out the family, which made for a little delicate of a situation, as he had purchased us tickets to a futbol match the next night. I didn't really want to bring it up, so when he was on his way out I just mentioned that I'd pay him back for the ticket when he got back and to not worry about it, but he was kind enough to leave his card behind so that I could still go to the game. He went off, and Glick and I just stuck around, having more beers, enjoying some of the very delicious rum that Rodrigo had been gifted from a friend who had gone to Cuba recently (which he was fairly protective of and for good reason as it was pretty damn amazing). After a few more beers, good conversations, and one last futbol match, it was time to head back, as everyone had to work the next day.

big barbecue at Rodrigo's house

It was nearly impossible to sleep the next morning, as there was contruction work being done on the floor above the apartment, and the builders were very loud that morning, putting together scaffolding right outside my window, so I had to give up and just go sleep on the couch, sleeping in quite late. I decided to go wander off and try to mail some clove cigarettes that an Australian friend had asked me to buy for her and send off to London, England, but of course that was met with some rather hilarious difficulties in communication. I had read that I could send them to England, and that she would have to pay duty on them, but when I took them to the post station, and asked around if anyone spoke English (of course not), I had to try and explain in poor Portuguese, and the lady asked to see what I was sending and said there was no way I could send it, or at least that's what I sort of understood. So after that it was off to grab some money from the only Citibank that I knew of. As soon as I arrived there was a security guard standing at the door, no allowing me to pass, and he didn't speak any English but I could see that they were doing something with the machines so I patiently waited. Hilariously enough, 3 out of the 4 times I visited that machine, I always arrived just as they were doing their work opening the machines, so I was stuck sitting around waiting outside for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

After grabbing some cash, I stopped by for some good people watching and a coffee at a nearby stand on the main street. I found one fairly rough looking guy to be highly entertaining, as he was wearing no shirt, old dirty red pants, no shoes, and a shower cap over his hair. He kept wandering up and down the sidewalk, with headphones on his ears, appearing to be listening to music, but then upon closer inspection I realized the headphones weren't in fact connected to anything at all, he was just making the music up in his head. At one point he even laid down on the sidewalk and was pretending to be strumming along an air guitar to whatever music he was “listening” to. Not too sure what he was on, but it looked damn entertaining whatever it was! Ha ha ha! The people in the streets met his display with various looks of shock, disgust, wonder, and ignoration, but I found the whole ordeal to be quite hilarious, especially when he would go into random shops along the street, bobbing his head and then be kicked out shortly after be security and not have a worry about it. After my coffees it was back to the apartment, where I waited for Henrique's roommate Thiago to come back from work, as he was going to the futbol match that night, and was going to drive me there with him.

I was surprised to find Glick come crawling out of his room, as he had apparently called in sick that day for work, and spent the day laying in bed...hangovers and missing work are fairly common in Brazil though, apparently. Eventually Thiago showed up with another friend of his, and we hopped in the car and were on our way to battle the heavy traffic of Sao Paulo. Typically they schedule games for 10 pm or so, as the traffic is sooooo heavy and the stadiums are so far away from the city centre that it takes up to 2 hours to drive the 30 kms or so to get to games, so when they have later start times, it's a bit easier to make it. However, this game was scheduled for 8:30 pm, so Thiago found some back roads to get to the stadium, which was a little bit like driving in a rally car, taking various winding roads at high speeds...good thing for the seal belt. We made it near the stadium in just over an hour..record time! Then we had to drive around the massive residential neighbourhoods looking for parking. One thing about the stadiums in Sao Paulo is that they they didn't have very much planning involved as far as parking spaces during construction, so in the case of this stadium, there really wasn't any, other than parking in people's garages or in front of their buildings in the area. This leads to having to pay random strangers on the streets to either look after your car or else provide you with a parking space at their house, their neighbour's house, cousin's house....whatever it is. I do suppose it provided some small job creation, as the guys who showed us to a parking spot were from Northern Brazil and came down to Sao Paulo just to work in the streets with parking. Once parked, we made the 20 minute walk to the stadium, where we split ways.

Thiago was sitting with his family, while his frind Alison (a guy not a girl) had to wait for his other friend who had the tickets, but was sitting in a section nearby, so he could help show me where to go. Normally I'd just head off on my own, but with the language barrier, I wasn't too sure what to expect, plus I was left with only the credit card from Henrique, and no paper copy or anything of where I was meant to be sitting. It took forever for his friend to show up, and he had contemplated just coming to sit with me when the guy finally showed up, and we made our way to the stadium. I passed through the first gate by swiping the credit card, but then had no idea where to go from there, so I just tried to go through the nearest gate, and was of course stopped by some workers asking to see my ticket, and then the language battle began. The one girl spoke absolutely none and called over another who spoke very very little and I just tried to explain that I only had the card, and eventually she just gave up and let me through, saying go wherever. I thought there would be designated seats, but of course there weren't, and I wandered into a section filled with people who were just standing about and already cheering. I never even made it off the cement stairs, as it was too packed and all the chairs in the area seemed to be occupied. So, this was my first South American futbol experience, standing for several hours in a courseway, being surrounded by very excited and emotional fans.

Oh, and since about 2 years ago, you can't even buy beers at the stadium! So everyone was sober (or sort of since you could buy them outside of the stadium and drink them before entering). The home team managed to score the first goal, and the atmosphere and the noise was incredible. Being in the lower level, you could just feel the stadium shaking, especially from above as the thousands of people in the sections above were jumping, screaming, yelling, clapping, and celebrating as only Latins can...loud and proud! It was a pretty intense feeling to experience for sure. Unfortunately for the home team, Ronaldinho and his Atletico Mineiro club, on the back of one his goals, managed to take a 2-1 victory leaving the home crowd quite disheartened, as they seemed to outplay the visiting squad, but couldn't capitalize on many chances. One thing that really really bothered me about the game was how many times players would fall down to fake injury and sell it.....it was pretty embarrassing and pitiful when the first aid cart had to drive onto the field 9 separate times to retrieve players, all of whom soon after were out running around and playing at full speed again, as if nothing happened. If there wasn't so much acting and faking of injuries, the sport could definitely be a lot more exciting for me to watch, but it was just so painful to ensure through this, especially since ice hockey players will only be taken off on a stretcher if they are really really injured and are off to the hospital...real men play that sport, instead of all these divas and whining bitches...but oh well, it was still a fun and unique experience to have.

  

Sao Paulo vs Atletico Mineiras

After the game wrapped up, we met out at our designated stop, and fought through the large crowds to get back to the car and make the somewhat decent drive back. It didn't take nearly as long as I figured it would with all the traffic. We arrived back at the apartment and that was it for the night. The next day I wasn't too sure when Henrique was coming back, and if we were still going to go join Polaco at the beach or not, so after sleeping in a bit, and heading out to wander around awhile, grab a bite to eat, a coffee, and read awhile, before making my way back to the apartment to find Henrique had returned from his Uncle's funeral. I was a bit surprised to hear that within one day they had made the arrangements and had the funeral, compared to North American time, where there is usually a 5 or 6 day time period before burial...very quick and efficient here with burials and celebrations apparently. After getting ready to head off to the beach town, we went to the main bus station and caught a bus to Henrique's hometown, Sao Jose dos Campos, where Polaco was picking us up to head off further. Being a Friday, the lines were huge, and the buses were pretty full, so it took a lot longer to get out of Sao Paulo than we had expected, not arriving in San Jose until around 9:30 pm, and then once picked up, having to drive another few hours to the coastal area, a town called Ubatuba. It took quite sometime to find the beach house, as it was tucked away and along some pretty rough roads, but we finally found the place, were settled in, and off to sleep.

The next day, after grabbing breakfast at a restaurant in town, where i had one of the most large and greasy and difficult to finish breakfasts of my life, “The American” breakfast, we were on our way to the first beach, where the guys were going to do some body surfing and real surfing, while I was going to....read I guess! We arrived at the beach, picked a spot, and enjoyed the beautiful weather, sexy women, and relaxing day. I hadn't slept very much the night before, so I tried to catch up a bit on that, without being able to, so I just spent most of the day reading a rather entertaining book called The Game. I found it quite hilarious, the stories and characters of the novel, and wasn't so interested in it for the “pickup techniques” or anything like that, just more for the characters and situations they found themselves in. While sittting by myself, a few cute Brazilian girls came and sat by me, once I smiled at them, but then they didn't speak any English, so I couldn't chat with them. After relaxing for several hours, enjoying the view, we went to grab some amazing and large Acai at a nearby restaurant, before making our way to another beach, closer to town. It was a really large and broad beach, but the waves weren't the greatest, and it was more of a family beach, so there wasn't much eye candy to look at either, unfortunately. I gave it a go trying to surf a bit, with terrible results as per usual...probably just not cut out to be a surfer! Eventually the waves were non existant, so we headed back to the beach house, where I promptly fell asleep and had a pretty long nap to catch up a bit on the lost sleep. . By that point it was well into dinner time, so we drove back around the town a bit, looking for a spot to eat, and found a decent seafood restaurant that had a shrimp cauldron on special for $15 a pot, and one was good for 2 people, so we grabbed two of those and enjoyed the delicious feast, before heading back to the house for the night. Again, I could barely sleep, so waking up at 8 am that morning after maybe sleeping for 2 hours or less, was not very pleasant!

We drove back to the beach we had been at the previous morning, but found the weather to be rather unpleasant, as rain was on the horizon, and the waves weren't so good so we didn't spend too much time there before packing back up, grabbing one last Acai, and heading back to the house to pack up and head back to Sao Paulo a few hours earlier. The car ride during the evening was harder to appreciate the sheer size of the hills and curves that we had to navigate through to return back to Sao Paulo. Polaco's little Fiat only had a 1 L engine, and several times the thing nearly stalled while going up the hills, leading to several tail gaters behind us at all times, nearly hitting us every time we downshifted....giving space is not something Brazilian drivers know how to do! We arrived in Sao Jose dos Campos around 5 pm, and decided to spend a bit of time there, as Henrique wanted me to meet his family. They were all quite lovely and kind, as I would expect from anyone related to him, and even though his Mother didn't speak any English, she was more than willing to talk to me and try to ask questions and have them translated by him or his sisters. We watched a futbol match together, as Brazilians do, and then made the long walk over to Polaco's place (about 2 houses down ha ha), and we made our way back to Sao Paulo for the night.

  

Beach day with one of my bestest

Quiet and beautiful beaches a few hours from Sao Paulo

Curious new friend

The next day was pretty chilled out, as I went with Polaco to have him help me mail the cigarettes to London, and then to what he described as an Indian buffet place for lunch. It didn't really seem to be very Indian, the food at least, but it was pretty tasty, so I couldn't complain too much. After our nice dinner, I had to make another bank run, arriving just as the staff was about to come out and do their work on the bank machines again, and we shared a laugh together as they recognized me from the previous days and were talking about how I was always arriving when they were working and having to wait. After that, I met up with Martin for one last time, and we went and grabbed some Acai and a coffee and hung out for a little bit, catching up before he had to head back to work, but agreed to try and meet up in the night time and go check out the nightlife, but that never materialized as he didn't finish work until 1 am and was too tired to go do anything. After a late lunch, and hanging out at the apartment a bit longer, Henrique and I went to find a Mexican restaurant for some eats. Even though he claimed he was on a diet and wouldn't eat, as soon as he saw all the other people eating the tasty looking food he caved quickly. I had probably my favourite beer of my time in Brazil there, a Brahma dark beer that was awesome....the service was super slow and it took forever to get food, but the food was fairly decent as well. After dinner, we just wandered back to the apartment for the night.

  

Faria Lima Avenida

The next day was a pretty quiet one again, as I ended up wandering around the neighbourhood a little bit, before grabbing a late lunch at a nearby restaurant that I had discovered the previous week, that provided large portions for a very good price. After some reading and Spanish practice, it was back to the apartment to hang out with Henrique for one last night and heading out for one last Japanese all you can eat deal before saying our goodbyes as I was going to be leaving the next day while he was at work. It was awesome seeing him again and catching up, and I hope that we will once again cross paths somewhere in the world.

The next day was travel day, as I was off to a southern city called Curitiba. I hadn't really heard about it before, but had met a guy in New York City who was from there, and he invited me to come visit and stay at his place, so I decided to break up the distance to Iguassu Falls by going there for a few days instead. After figuring out a bus that would get me to Curitiba somewhere around 7:30 pm, which worked best for Cassius to come pick me up, I was on my way back to the Sao Paulo bus station, grabbed my ticket from Itapemirim, and was on my way to Curitiba. I didn't have any way of letting Cassius know that I was able to catch the bus I had mentioned I would try to take, until a few hours along the way when we made a lunch break at a rather expensive road side stop. Being in Latin America, I should have known to tell him to show up at least 30 minutes later than my expected arrival, but of course I didn't, so when I finally rolled up to Curitiba, over 1 hour later than expected, he was nowhere to be found, and I figured I would have to go find a phone to try and call him, but fortunately he was still there, having waited the whole time. I didn't recognize him immediately, but he recognized me, so all was good, and we hopped into his car and made the quick drive over to his parent's amazing house. After settling in and meeting his very kind parents, who spoke no English, we went for a beer at a beerhouse that he liked to frequent because of the nice women that usually were to be found there. Unfortunately, the weather in Curitiba had just recently become quite cold, and it was a very very quiet night in the town, so we were one of only 3 tables at the place, but nevertheless, we settled in and enjoyed some of the tasty house beers and the nice soup bar they offered, and caught up on the past few months since we had last met. We hadn't really spoken a whole lot in NYC, but the guy is such a friendly and outgoing dude, that we got along quite well. After sharing some funny travel stories, it was getting a bit late, and he had to work the next morning, so we went back to his place, played some Mortal Kombat (used to be my favourite video game, been years since I last played!) for awhile, before calling it a night.

The next day after sleeping in, I was surprised to see that he was still at the house and asking if I was coming down for lunch. I guess he had caught a cold and was going to go to the doctor but wanted to drive me somewhere before his appointment, so he figured it would be good to go see the Oscar Niemeyer museum, which is a fairly famous Modern Arts museum in Curitiba, similar to the one in Niteroi, but much much bigger. After getting dropped off, I was immediately impressed with the design of the building, as the main striking feature was the eye shaped tower in front of the building. I entered inside, and was treated to a rather impressive and diverse set of displays. One of my favourite was a section of works done by a Dutch graphic artist named M.C Escher http://www.mcescher.com/....his works were so amazing and such a delight for the eyes that I spent so much time wandering around and getting lost in the works, thinking how amazing it would be to decorate a house with his works some day. It was also fairly interesting to watch a documentary about the namesake of the museum, Oscar Niemeyer, who is a fairly famous architect worldwide, and has created some fairly astounding works. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2012/dec/06/oscar-niemeyer-life-architecture-pictures

I'm not too sure how accurate the translations were to English, but if they were, he had a rather great sense of humour as well. After my time in the museum, it was closing down, so after finding a local who could speak English and lend me their phone to call Cassius, who didn't answer, I waited around hoping that he would hear my message and show up and grab me, which he did about 25 minutes later.

Escher Room

Escher art

Rather than heading back to his house, we stopped by Curitiba's oldest bar, a German restaurant and bar in the old city centre named Schwarzwald, where we had some massive and delicious German plates, as well as several beers. One unique thing they offered was drop shot beers, where they would put liquors such as Jaggermeister into small ceramic steins and drop them into the beer, which actually provided a nice flavour to the beers, plus you were able to keep your mini stein as a souvenir when finished. After the huge and delicious feast, we drove past a few nightclubs but decided against going out, and just retired back to the house for the night. The next day I was woken by Cassius again, and he wanted to go grab some lunch at a nearby restaurant that claimed to have the “Best Hamburger in the World”....bold claim I must say! We waited for quite awhile to get into the place, and settled in, where i tried the Mignon burger, and he had the Lamb burger....they were both quite tasty...but I don't think they quite competed with the Ferg Burger in Queenstown, New Zealand as far as best burger in the world, but nice try anyway. The place did have very nice decor, but was lacking on beautiful women for servers...with that added, it could definitely help its cause a little bit anyway! After our lunch, he decided to take me over to the Botanical Gardens, which were located in a huge sprawling park in the Eastern part of the city, near one of the Universities. We wandered around there for awhile enjoying the great weather and the very beautiful scenery, while he taught me a little Portuguese. After our wander there, it was back to the house, where we just spent some time having some coffee and leisure time. One of the more interesting features of the house was the large electric fence securing the perimeter...bad ass...can't say I've stayed in a place with an electric fence before...I was somewhat tempted to try touching it, but figured I should probably avoid that pain.

We ended up just gaming out for the next several hours with one of his old friend stopping by the house and trying to get him involved in some sort of pyramid or ponzi scheme. I didn't know about this until the guy left, but apparently they hadn't spoken in a really long time and Cassius was kind of curious why the guy suddenly wanted to stop by the house out of the blue. Sure enough, it was to try and sell him into this scheme, so after declining, the guy became a bit angry and left the house in a haste! We ended up just playing some “snooker” in his garage after that (I say snooker because that's what they call a game of 8 ball on a larger table, and trying to explain the real English game of snooker is rather difficult). We contemplated going out, but it was already nearly 2 am and I figured there wouldn't be much to do that late so we had a night in and figured we would go out the next night on the town.

Botanical Gardens

After waking up a bit late, and having a nice lunch with his parents, his brother and his gf and her sister, and talking about a birthday party that the one sister was having that night, I decided to go out and tour the city a little bit. There was a tour bus running around the city for around 2 hours with several stop off points, but because of the late start, I would only be able to ride the actual bus and not have any time to stop off anywhere. I probably should have done the bus tour in the early day and seen more of the city, but that's the problem with being a lazy traveller. Cassius went off to play Magic, a really old and kind of nerdy card game with some friends, while I got on the bus, which was actually a bit pricy, costing around $15. Some of the visual highlights from the bus were the Parque Tangua, an area called Santa Felicidade where the world's largest or second largest restaurant is located, Parque Barigui, the Historic Sector, and the old City Centre. I had to laugh a little bit as the bus was a double decker, and as we passed through one of the particularly wealthy neighbourhoods, we could see over top of the large fences the people had built for their privacy, kind of defeating the purpose. Another strange thing was how the bus would just barely pass underneath overhead powerlines, but if a passenger was to stand up to take a photo, they would be struck in the face or maybe electrocuted! After the 2 hour tour, I arrived back at the Oscar Niemeyer museum, and called Cassius to come pick me up and waited. While waiting a pretty cute woman came off the last bus and was standing around waiting so I tried to strike up a conversation in English with her, and soon found out she was actually Bolivian, so after speaking in Spanish for awhile, Cassius showed up and I was a bit foolish in not getting her contact details, as I have never heard of a pretty Bolivian woman, all travellers say it's a hopeless cause finding one there!

  

Parque Alemao

Exploring downtown Curitiba

Arab Memorial...not very glamourous

Oscar Niemeyer museum

We went back to the house for a little while to eat something and have a shower before heading to a Samba Club quite early. It was a nice place and they had an outdoor patio where people could hang out before the actual club opened up, and it was good that we arrived when we did, as the place soon filled up and a very large queue began to form. The women there were absolutely stunning, very well dressed and very fit...it was an awesome spot to check out but super packed. I immediately thought back to a large nightclub fire a few months earlier in Brazil that killed a lot of people, and I can see how ti would be difficult to evacuate the places, as there didn't really seem to be any capacity ratings. Such is life partying in non first world countries I guess. We ended up grabbing a spot by the main bar and getting bottle service, although it was way too much for two people to drink. Eventually one girl came near us who looked like someone I know from back in Canada, so I told Cassius this and he passed the word on to her, and she started speaking to me in Portuguese thinking I spoke it, and was surprised that I didn't. She had a friend with her who spoke good English and who was really cute so she came over and we had a great chat, but I didn't noice any of the signs that she was interested in me unfortunately, so I missed my chance with her, whlie Cassius was off kissing her friend and becoming way too drunk. I didn't really realize it until he came over and said we should probably head home as he was swaying back and forth and not speaking very well...I felt fine, so not too sure what happened to him! We chatted with the girls a bit more, but they got in a cab and went off on their own way, and we just caught a cab and went back to the house for the night.

I was woken up the next morning quite tired and feeling like I had caught the same cold that Cassius had, and sure enough I had come down with the bastard sickness. It was Mother's Day and he was having a barbecue for his Mother and hosting a few friends as well, so I crawled out of bed and joined them in the back house, where they had a nice size Churrascaria. After some very salty but very tasty meats and some rather funny attempts at speaking Portuguese with Cassius's father, another very cute friend of Cassius showed up. She was a well dressed and well spoken woman, who spoke great English and we got along pretty great, which was unfortunate since I was planning on leaving the next day...never good timing for me! After a few beers in the garden and some chatting, there was a futbol match on that a few of the people wanted to see, surprise, so we made our way inside and watched the Curitiba team beat their arch rival in the State championship match, much to the delight of several of the people in the house. After the match, we were invited over to one of the guest's place for dinner that night, so we went over there and had a rather disgusting looking but very delicious dish called bacalhau escondido or “hidden codfish”. Along with some tasty wine, and some good banter it was a nice way to finish off the weekend, before heading back to the place night.

The next day I decided to go for a little wander down to the city centre to find a bank and explore a little bit before catching a night bus. Before leaving the house, I managed to have a decent conversation with Cassius's father, who was a really really nice and friendly man, and we somehow managed to communicate a bit in our mixing languages. Funny enough, his housekeeper seemed to understand my poor Portugnol better than him and would translate at times too. After a few hours of hanging out chatting, I made my way into the town, after becoming lost for about 20 minutes looking for a bus stop to head in. Once I found my bearings, I grabbed some cash, and explored the old city for awhile, enjoying the amazing buildings and lighting, not too mention some of the crazy and strange people I saw. While waiting for a bus to go back for instance, some man came up to me and started speaking to me as if he knew me, and I couldn't really tell if he did or not, so I started asking him if he was a friend of Cassius or something, but he wasn't, and just seemed to be drunk and having mistaken me for someone else. Then, when I tried to pass through the desk and pay for my bus, he grabbed me and kept talking to me asking me questions which I had no idea what they were, and left him behind...strange. After catching the bus back to near Cassius's place, I found that I couldn't actually get back into the house as I kept ringing the buzzer over and over and no one answered, so after sitting outside for 20 minutes ringing, finally his parents heard me and let me back in. Cassius showed up shortly after, and didn't seem to understand that I was actually going to leave that night, thinking I was leaving the next day, but once he finally understood, he took me to the bus station, we said our goodbye, and I was on the overnight bus to Iguassu Falls.

bold claim!

Wandering the old city centre at night

Unfortunately the cold had really kicked in by this point, and with the constant running nose, coughing, and headache, I didn't sleep very much on the way there. Shortly before leaving I had booked a hostel that provided free pickup from the bus station, so I sent them an email telling them what bus I was on and what time I would arrive, but upon arrival couldn't find anyone there that was meant to pick me up. So after going to the tourist desk and grabbing a map and not seeing the street I was staying on anywhere on the map, I figured I'd try calling the hostel. Well this lead to another terrible battle with the payphones, as several different ways that I put in the phone number didn't work, until finally at last one of the combinations worked. The girl was nice enough but she told me to wait at the Administration Office, and even though I asked if she meant the tourist information desk, she said no, to go to the admin office....so after wandering around the station aimlessly for quite some time I found the Admin office which was outside of the building and in a very small room. I waited there for quite some time and no one was around or showed up to pick me up...after waiting there another 20 minutes, being hungry and tired and becoming a bit irritated, I walked back over to the tourist desk to ask if they knew any directions, when a man approached me and said he was from the hostel and had been waiting at the tourist desk for quite some time..argh. So it was into the car and off to the hostel. Shortly after arrival and check in, the rain started to come really hard, basically nulling any plans I might have been able to make for the day, plus I was feeling terrible from the head cold, so I ended up sleeping nearly the entire afternoon away.

Finally waking up and finding it to be nearly 7 pm, I met a cute Brazilian American girl, and we got to chatting for a fair bit of the evening, and having dinner together, since the hostel was very quiet and empty. It ended up being a quiet evening, resting up for the next day. I was feeling a bit better the next day, and up early for breakfast for a change. There were 3 other people in the hostel going to the Argentine side that day, and I figured we would all be going together, so when they were all packed and ready to head out the door at 8:30 am, I was a bit confused, since I was told the trip started at 9:30, and started rushing to catch them, but then the staff told me they were on a different tour group so I was able to relax a bit. Eventually it was time to go, and it was already very rainy outside with lightning striking all through the night, not an ideal day to be going to a waterfall, but I only had a short time in the city I figured. I was in the van and all by myself heading to the falls. We passed through immigration, and arrived at the falls entrance, and I thought the man from the hostel would be guiding me through the park, but then found out that he was just there to do the transport and would be back to pick me up later. I told him I walk slow, so he said he'd come back in 5 hours time to pick me up...well that was a mistake! I entered the grounds and started wandering along a path, slowly getting soaked from the medium rainfall, until I came upon a rail station, where I realized I could take a rail car up to the top part of the falls instead of walking in the now much heavier rain. I ended up meeting a pretty nice group of people from several places who were on a tour of Argentina and Brazil together, so after teaming up with them and heading up, the rain really really began to come down! I ran along the concourse, trying to keep a smile going in the terrible weather, while most people coming back from the lookout point had miserable looks on their faces, not enjoying the weather one bit. The rain was so heavy that I could feel it soaking through my supposed waterproof jacket..great! I arrived at the main lookout point of the Devil's Cauldron, and was immediately impressed and awed by the sheer volume and power of the falls....it was so intense and took the bad taste of the awful weather out of my mouth. After admiring the brute for quite some time, and taking a few pictures while trying to not soak my camera completely, I had to get out of that rain though, as I was starting to become really really cold and went with the new friends back to the train station, making our way down to the middle station. We stopped in there for some coffee, and had a bit of a laugh as a grumpy old Englishman came out of the shop with two coffees and quietly asked them to move but no one heard him, so he became quite angry and bitter towards them, telling them to eff off and move the hell out of his way....then sat there brooding over the whole thing!

  

Devil's Cauldron at Iguassu Falls

Happy despite the rain and cold

It was around this time that the group decided they were just going to head back to their hostel, as the weather was just too miserable and everyone wanted to go dry off and warm up, but since I had to wait around for another 3 hours before my ride would be there, I had nothing to do but try and get somewhere indoors and warm up. Unfortunately none of the buildings seemed to have any heating, and I was stuck being very wet and very cold. It was around this time also, that I decided to see how my interior pocket was holding up, where my passport and camera were, and sure enough, water had soaked right through that and my passport was a mess....stamps smudged everywhere, pages soaked..yuck....I was thus worried about future border crossings as it looked to be in pretty bad condition, so I tried to find something to help dry it off. I also had another 2 hours to kill still, so I found a buffet restaurant which was a bit warmer than the visitor centre I had been lingering in earlier, so I sat down to a bite to eat there and stayed until they were closing, as it was the only dry and sort of warm place to be. Eventually my ride showed up, a bit late of course, and I was fortunate to make it through immigration with the very wet passport, as they didn't seem to care one bit...I guess South America border control isn't quite so strict like North American or European. We arrived back at the hostel, and I was just happy to sit in the scalding hot shower and warm up finally. The rest of the night was pretty quiet, as I hung out with a few other people from the hostel, including an incredibly smart French lawyer who had been working in several poor countries of the world, providing humanatarian support to NGOs and spoke 5 languages fluently, as well as a kind older Swedish man who had travelled in Africa for quite some time and had some very funny photos and interesting stories, and finally a lesbian couple, one Brit and one Canadian. We spent the rest of the night chatting, having a few beers, and making plans for the next day.

I had been thinking about leaving the next day on a night bus to Florianapolis to meet two German friends I made in El Salvador, but they told me that the weather was quite bad and that they were likely going to leave and head north from there, so it wouldn't be able to catch up with them, thus changing my plans. Myself and the Swedish man were a bit surprised to find that the girls all seemed to have left the hostel, even though we had all discussed going to Paraguay that day together, so Johan was a little bit put off, as he had become quite close to the girls over the previous week and a bit, but I didn't think too much of it. We'd later find out that they were actually just sick (probably caught my evil cold) and spent the day in bed instead. A young German showed up and wanted to come with us to Paraguay as well, so we got ready to go and walked over to the bus station where we could catch a local bus to Paraguay. Being Canadian, I need to get a visa to enter Paraguay, so I was put off on the idea, especially after the ridiculous wait for my visa to Brazil, but found out from the hostel staff that they didn't even check passports at the nearby city, so it wouldn't be an issue to go there for the day. We caught the bus, and were soon stuck in a large chaotic traffic jam to enter Ciudad de Este Paraguay. It's a haven for Brazilians to go shopping, as electronics are very cheap, and there's no tax on most things so the place is frequently quite busy. It was kind of interesting to see the random people on the “Friendship Bridge” connecting Foz do Iguacu and Ciudad de Este, selling random trinkets, such as large dolls, and to observe several people jumping on our city bus at the very last minute at the border, as if to avoid having to go through immigration while walking across the border. Our bus crossed over into the surprisingly well developed city, as I had read the Paraguay is actually quite poor and not very developed at all. We were immediately surrounded by salespeople, but they weren't nearly as pushy as the ones in Asia or Central America. After wandering through the markets a little bit, we continued on walking, not really knowing what to see or do, so I stopped to ask a police officer if he had any ideas as to what we could go see, and he just pointed towards the direction we were walking earlier, and said El Corazon is nice to see. I assumed he meant the Heart of the City, as Corazon means heart in Spanish, so the three of us guys started walking that way, and about 15 minutes later we came upon a huge shopping centre called, you guessed it, El Corazon.

  

Entering Paraguay, illegally!

Chicken buses

local musician

"El Corazon" not the heart of the city like I thought

Apparently, shopping is indeed the only thing to do in Ciudad de Este! We continued walking further though in case there was anything interesting to see, but after stopping a few more locals and asking, they told me that there wasn't, and that anything interesting would be back in the shopping district. So we made our way back towards there, finding an information centre, where the woman working mentioned that we could go do a free tour of the Itaipu Dam, North of the City. We stopped to change some money so we could take buses, which provided a bit of a challenge, as they required identification to change money, and when asked for my passport, and not having it with me (since I was an illegal immigrant after all), I could only provide my driver's licence, which actually worked out okay. The other two had brought their passports in case, so they were fine. We then grabbed some lunch at a nearby supermarket, where the food was noticeably cheaper compared to Brazilian prices, and then went to catch a bus to the town North of the City where we could visit the dam. I wasn't too sure exactly where to get off the bus, and tried asking a local kid sitting beside me, but he couldn't seem to understand me, and just said the place was closed, even though the brochure we had been given at the tourist agency clearly said it was still open. Eventually the bus neared the dam, and he seemed to understand we wanted to visit it, so he told us to get off and walk.

We strolled up to the visitor centre, and were again asked for ID, and this time my driver's licence didn't work, but I was able to just give my passport number instead...strange I think. So we registered, and then hopped on a bus for what we thought would be an hour long and interesting tour of the dam site, as the Itaipu Dam is the largest power producing dam in the World. We soon found out that the tour guide wasn't very enthusiastic about giving the tour, as his voice was quite monotone, and it was also all in Spanish, so the other two didn't really understand anything, and I probably understood about 65 to 70% of it. I do know that there were about 20,000 workers on the project, that it's a split project between Brazil and Paraguay, with agreements in place as to power usage and the ability to sell excess power to the other country if requested. After our 10 minute stop at the one view point, and driving across the dam, I assumed we would be stopping and having a few more attempts to look around and take pictures, but no, the bus just kept rolling, and soon enough we were back at the visitor centre, having spent all of 25 minutes on the tour instead of the written 1 hour. Later on I found out that the Brazilian side is much more interesting as you get to go inside and explore the dam and see the equipment making up the beast, so that's what we should have done. Anyway, here's a link to some info on the dam, so you can read how impressive it really is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itaipu_Dam

  

Maximo lost his xray!! lungs look like smoker lungs ha

chocolate milk factory

Itaipu Dam....largest power producing dam in the World...absolutely massive!

People believe that I actually went in a helicopter!

After the tour finished, we stopped in the visitor centre for a really cheesy photo at a fake Helicopter photo booth, where we could pretend like we were flying over the dam. Hilariously enough, it does apparently look real enough that several people have believed us when we tell them that we got a free helicopter ride as part of the Paraguayan tour...suckers! As the centre was closing, we wandered back along the highway, finding a local bus back to town and were back at square one, and ready to head back to Brazil as it was getting dark. We managed to quickly find the Mona Lisa shopping centre, which was a big draw for us based on how many Mona Lisa advertisements there were around the city....but the place was closed so we couldn't experience the amazingness that it might have offered. We eventually arrived at the border and waited for a local bus back to Brazil, but it seemed like there weren't any at all, as we waited at least 45 minutes with no sight of them, even though several had come across the border from the Brazil side, so we eventually just took a taxi as the price difference wasn't all that different. We arrived back at the hostel, and had another mostly quiet night in, just having a few beers, playing some billiards, and some PlayStation 3, before calling it a night.

  

dirty local buses in Paraguay

Found the Mona Lisa finally!

mean streets of Paraguay

The next day the weather was fantastic again so a few of us decided to go check out the Brazilian side of the Falls to hopefully make up for the crappy day we had previously. After once again missing breakfast (I'm not very good at making those free breakfasts!), a few of us gathered our bearing and went over to the bus station where we could catch a bus to get to the Falls. We waited at the bus stop while several buses came and went and wouldn't let us on! Apparently they were having lunch breaks or something...or maybe just didn't want gringos on the bus, who knows, so because it was getting a bit late we hopped in a cab and took that to the entrance, which ended up being a huge time saver and not that much more expensive. After paying our entrance, we arrived and were immediately quite impressed with the overall view of the Falls that the Brazilian side provided. So many people told me beforehand that the Argentine side was way better to visit and way nice to see, but honestly, I thought the Brazil side was much better, as you have a better appreciation of the sheer size of the entire system of falls. Maybe if the weather had been when I went to the Argentine side I might have appreciated it more, but I can't be certain. We enjoyed several great view points of the falls, before making our way closer and closer to the heart of the falls where we really started to get wet. I became completely soaked once again, definitely not learning my lessons! After the soaking, it was time to get out of there and up into the sun to dry off a bit, where we met a large group of Brazilian students who wanted to interview me about Brazil and the park.....I seem to get interviewed in foreign countries a lot, I have no idea why! So after that funny little event, we stopped by a gift shop where some local animals were wandering around everywhere, begging for food and being shooed away....the signs there about the animals were hilarious as seen below.

  

host location of the X games recently

wow, amazing view of Iguassu Falls!

because of the recent rain storm, the water is quite dirty compared to normal

starting to get wet

almost double rainbow :(

getting absolutely soaked in Devil's Cauldron

getting very soaked!

oh that inappropriate water...can't take it anywhere!

strange racoon/lemur like creatures roaming around the falls

and they love hamburgers!!! but I am not going to feed them mine

After a short wait, we were back on a bus heading back to the park entrance, where we caught another bus to the City Centre, which in turn let to another bus back towards the main bus station. I made a last minute decision to buy a bus ticket to Buenos Aires for the Sunday afternoon, since they were so cheap, and my German friends in Florianapolis weren't going to be sticking around there for when I arrived. Johan, the older Swedish man was going to Buenos Aires, so I figured why the heck not, and made one of my typical spontaneous decisions. I had contemplated going out that night on the town, but ended up just spending the night in the hostel, playing some billiards, and hanging out with the people from the hostel. The next day was a rainy one, so it was a very quiet day, just spent catching up on some blogging, watching hockey, and just having a lazy day. In the evening I met a few cousins of one of the neighbours of the hostel, one who lived in Paraguay and kept insisting that I should come visit his small town and stay at his place the next day...he was also quite drunk and kept asking me the same questions over and over again, but a nice enough fellow. His other cousin kept asking me to come visit his home up in the North, as he was living in the Amazon and providing dentist services to Indigenous peoples, travelling around by boat...it sounded cool anyway, although he only spoke Portuguese, so going to visit there would be quite an interesting experience I'd imagine! After a few beers with those guys, they were off for the night, and the hostel was very quiet now with only myself and Johan the Swede left over, so there was nothing to do or no one to go out with so I had another night in sans party! The next day we were up and ready to head off to the bus station, and say goodbye to Brazil. We arrived at the bus station, found our bus to be a bit smelly and old, but still decent enough considering the price and distance we were about to cover, made the quick drive over to the two borders and entered into Argentina...unfortunately I smuggled in some bodily fluids that weren't allowed according to this signage! And with that, my time in Brazil has come to an end!

  

How Swedes travel...with many man cans of Snus!

Bye Brazil!

No semen allowed in Argentina...

Some random thoughts and observations of Brazil before I leave:

• Probably the saltiest food I've eaten anywhere in the World....crazy amounts of salt, but also very very good!
• The people here are so much fun, lively, colourful, full of laughter, and very very very loud! But they seem to be enjoying life to the fullest, and make life fun!
• Acai is such an amazing and delicious treat, I can't get enough of the stuff!
• The language barrier is painful, as Portuguese is pretty much all you can get by on, except for some English in the big cities, but you definitely have to search out people to help
• The hospitality of Brazilians is second to none....the people I stayed with gladly took me in, showed me great times, were so generous, and fun to be around
• People seem to have a problem following too closely when walking, you will have your shoes stepped on nearly every day from behind by someone!
• People seem to only be working half the time, the rest of the time they are in street cafes drinking beer...very very cold beer...coldest beer anywhere in the World so far..usually has frost on the bottle and a bit slushy inside!
• It's a relatively safe place to be, just as long as you stay within the City Centres and surrounding areas...trouble happens out in the outskirts or so I'm told by the locals
• Brazil immigration is a pretty big pain in the ass!
• Brazilians are bad drivers...take care when out there on the road ha ha
• World Cup is going to be awesome!! Although I wonder what they will do about the beer bans at the stadiums, as beer companies are typically major sponsors

With all that, it's time to get my Argentina fix on....adios amigos!

Rye