Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The worst thing about missing my flight to Rio was the fact that I had plans to meet up with Beruman and Jess at my hostel bar the night before. I was really looking forward to seeing them and thought it would be awesome to see familiar faces on my first day in a far off and unfamiliar land. The cab ride from the airport was quite the eye opener. My first impression of Rio was that it had been in a war and lost badly. Ghettos (Flavelas) everywhere. Just complete poverty mile after mile. One area completely smelled like a combination of piss and Big Foot´s dick with a bit of shit thrown in for good measure. These areas look like what Ewee´s face would look like if we ever fought. And remember I´m on the freeway and can smell this! Motorcyclists are everywhere and ride in between the cars going about 60mph. I can´t believe a few of them don´t die each day, not to mention all the people selling what look like bags of rice cakes in the middle of the freeway. I´ve never seen people standing basically in the middle of the highway between cars selling shit. How they don´t get hit by the bikers is beyond my comprehension. I find it hard to believe anyone actually buys whatever is they are selling. But anyways, I get in around 11:00 and Beruman and Jess left a note for me at the hostel and I´m supposed to call their room and hopefully grab lunch with them. So, I get the key to my room and I´m in a room with 6 beds and some chick is passed out in what I percieve to be my bed due to there being a 3 on my key and a 3 on the bed also. I go back downstairs to reception and tell the person working my plight and he looks at me like I´m retarded and says fairly blankly `you can take any bed``. How was I supposed to know, I´ve never been in a hostel before. My roomates are the chick who is passed out named Melissa from NY, some German guy who is there for a month learning Jiu Jitsu and speaks English very well and some Brazilian dude who speaks no English but smiles at everything, I name him Smiley. I find this odd that chicks and guys are in the same room. Easy access I guess. Small problem with meeting up with Beruman and Jess, I don´t have a cell phone that works yet and I have no idea how to use the public telephones. It appears you need a card of some sort, but I´m clueless at the moment. I needed to get a Brazilian SIM card for my phone anyways, so I thought I would start heading towards their hotel and look for a place to buy a SIM card. So, I see a mobile phone store and I try to open the door by pulling it but it won´t open and I figure it´s locked. I later find out that almost all the doors to stores in Rio have to be pushed open upon entering. I´m an idiot. Finally I get a SIM card and I´m feeling pretty good about myself. I have my own Rio De Janeiro phone #, how awesome is that. Actually, not all that awesome as it turns out. I´ll talk about this scam later. I see that it is now 1:00 and obviously I have missed meeting up with Beruman and Jess, which blows. I get the best mango smoothie I´ve ever had in my life. I will end up drinking 2 or 3 fruit smoothies a day while in rio. They are that good. Head back to hostel after getting a little lost (I even had a map how is this possible, lack of sleep is the cause of my stupidity today I hope) and Beruman and Jess went to my hostel to try to meet up with me. Shit. They leave me a bottle of vodka which is cool of them and comes into great use later on. I decide to check out my phone and all the menus are in Portuguese so I spend about 30 minutes deciphering what all the different buttons do. It reminds me of when my Geo had no dash board and just a bunch of knobs sticking out everywhere and I had to commit to memory what each one did and what was hot and cold and air conditioning, etc. A quick aside, the only American phone # I have in my phone is Gracie Hamels. I programmed all the #´s to the SIM card but Gracie input her # in my phone herself and saved it to the phone and not the SIM card. Odd seeing Gracie Hamel and my only contact as for now. So, Gracie, if I ever need to make an emergency phone call to America it looks like I´m calling you.
BTW: I will start putting FIN at the end of every entry when I am finished so everyone knows that is the end as I seem to be updating the same entry on multiple days.
Ok, where was I, Rio, right. So, I´m chilling in the hostel bar and I notice a sign stating that the bar is sponsoring a drinking contest: whoever can drink the most gets a free night stay. Hah, this is crazy, how is this legal and don´t people die from alcohol poisoning, that would have been like Bradley telling Bobby Burns that he could get free tuition for a day if he could outdrink Nicohlas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, Burns would have done it but he also would have died. I actually thought about Burns when I saw this drinking contest, I would have bet all the money I had he would have won. But then I think about it, since you have to buy the drinks, if you actually win, you´ll actually spend much more on the drinks than what the room costs (about $40R a night = $24 USD), so now it really seems stupid, but funny and interesting nonetheless.
I need to get some cash so I go exploring Rio some more and I find an ATM at Banco do Brasil and this is what the ATM screen says verbatim - `Please dip your card in and take it out in order to begin`, WHAT!! I start dying (even more so than Londos), even the ATM machines have obligatory sexual references.
Back at hostel, making friends and stuff and I find out that a lot of the people have been traveling for 1+ years or at least plan too. Daniel, this portuguese guy has been traveling for about a year, this English bloke Mark has been traveling for about a year and this Dutch dude Chris has been traveling for a year and a half. He quit his job and sold his house and plans on traveling for about 3 years or so around the world. I find this amazing. After hanging with these guys for a bit I feel like I have just come across this subculture akin to the bike messengers in Chicago. I don´t quite feel like I fit in yet since I´m still pretty clueless about everything, but all the backpackers I met all have this sort of otherworld kinship and bond with each other. I guess it´s because they all know that this sort of traveling isn´t easy, isn´t for everyone and respect the fact that the other person has quit his job, given up for the most part his material possessions and is trying to live life like they perceive it should be lived.
So, about ten of us from the hostel head out to a club for the night. The place is called House and there I have my first caipirinha which will slowly become my demise. Those things rule. I end up talking and dancing away most of the night with one of the girls from the hostel named Helena who is from Brazil and speaks a little english. She´s super cool and for the next couple of days becomes my best friend in Rio.
Sidenote: I totally forgot to bring my camera, I wish I had pictures of all the friends I made in Rio. I told Helena to send me some. hopefully she will. I realize I´m awful at taking pictures, and make a vow the next day to change my indifference towards picture taking.
Oh, and the drinking contest was from the night before.....too bad I missed that.
Fin
