Rio blows

• Merkdog4's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Rio de Janeiro

Trip Start Oct 19, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Ongoing Next
Entry

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Oh, I upload some photos of the Alabama game.  Check them out, the one with Ewee and Stabler and the one with me drinking a beer in the Law Enforcement tent kill me. 

Tuesday, Rio was cloudy and looked like it was going to rain all day long in case you were wondering why I wasnīt at the beach.

Today, wake up to pounding rain and it sucks ass.  I totally wanted to hang at the beach today, try to get in some vball and look at chicksī asses.  Nope, not today.  Gay. 

Melissa from NYC and my only female roomy left today, sucks.  She was awesome to hang out with and now Smiley is starting to scare me.  She gave me her card in order to email her but I have since lost it.  I lose a lot of shit.  Iīve already lost my favorite T-shirt (not today, but in about 5 days I will have), you know the white one with the design on the front in which two dung beatles are doing it, ya, gone.  I hope this isnīt as bad as that trip Moran and I took to Florida in which I forgot a tshirt or some sort of article of clothing in every hotel room we visited. 

So, a bunch of us are hanging in the lobby (which is actually a bar) of the hostel deciding what to do with the rainy day.  Daniel, the portuguese fella gets on the net and finds out that itīs supposed to rain everyday until Sunday.  Worst news ever. Daniel opens up his Lonley Planet guide to South America which is a large book every backpacker who has ever visited South America brings with except me of course.  Nope, I decided I needed that room for a compilation (800 pages) of several of Friedrich Neitzsche books.  Hmmm, real smart Merker, I canīt understand more than about one sentence every paragraph.  Does me lots of good in the middle of South America, ya, the philosophical wrtitings of Neitzsche or a book on Brazil which details all the cities and the bus routes and phone numbers, and you know practical things.  And I choose Neitzsche, god, sometimes my stupidity even amazes me.  I thought I wouldnīt need a guide to Brazil as I could just hop on the internet to do the research.  But it just so happens that the google I have to use in Brazil is google.com.br, which is the brazilian version of google.  So, lets say I want to go to Recife, I google Recife and all I get are web pages in Portuguese on Recife, sweet.  So, yeah, Iīve had to do all my research on the internet which is all in Portuguese.  But I actually read Portuguese quite well, well, well enough to get by.  Thatīs a lot of wells.  But everything takes twice as long, I come to the conclusion that bringing an english guide to Brazil would have been the prudent thing to do. 

Anyways, Daniel busts open his book and starts flipping through the pages to see where he wants to go next.  Just like that, he decides heīs going to Foz Do Iguacu.  Amazing.  He packs his bag and heads out and Iīm complete awe.  I have so many questions, like how does he know what bus to take or how does he know where to get the bus or how does he know where heīs staying, etc etc.  I feel lost right now, like whoa, what did I get myself into.  There is no way I could just pick up and leave in a moments notice, especially with all the web pages being in Portuguese, and at this point I feel quite overwhelmed. 

I have no idea what to do, itīs pouring raining and I just kinda mope around the hostel talking to people.  At least Iīm making friends I guess.  Sucks Daniel is leaving, that dude was cool.  I was talking to him in the hostel before he left and he says `you know Iīve been here for 5 days and I didnīt go see the Christ Statue, I didnīt go see Sugar Loaf Mountain, I didnīt do anything cultural, Iīm a bad tourist`.  I reply with `Ya but you are a good drinker`.  My intial impression of backpackers is they are all alcoholics, they drink every freakin day, once again I think of Burns and how he should be on this trip and not me. 

Me, Helena, Chris and this cat from Santiago decide to go see a movie.  How retarded is that.  Iīm in Rio De Janeiro and Iīm going to see Super Bad.  I feel like I should be doing something else.  Super Bad was hilarious though, it was subtitled in Portuguese.  Hereīs a strange phenomenon I witnessed.  Helenaīs first language is Portuguese, Chrisīs is Dutch and Santiago dudeīs is Spanish, but we talked in English the entire time.  English is definitely the universal language.  I felt somewhat bad for Helena as she couldnīt quite understand what we were saying in the cab there and on the bus back.  But itīs cool that English is the common denominator, without it, none of would have been able to converse at all.  Itīs like the
Rosetta Stone for conversing with people from different countries.  If you take a moment to think about it, itīs fairly startling.  Maybe you had to be there. 

Have dinner with Helena, she speaks English to me and I speak Portuguese to her.  This process of communication really helps both of us learn more.    

That night, go to a bar with about 10 people.  BTW:  I absolutely love English people.  They are always in a good mood and I dig their sense of humor.  Not sure if Hogger feels this way or not.  Hah, this one English dude totally looked like Balls, god I wish I had a picture of him.  He looked almost identical to Balls, except with worse teeth of course.  So Chris starts making out with a hooker at the bar.  Not sure if he hooked up with her later or not.  I get the feeling lots of backpacker do hookers.  When I told Daniel Iīve never kicked it with a hooker the night before he was surprised.  Really!! getting hookers must be more common than I realized.  So I get to tell my first real zanger at the bar, and what story do I pick, Old Faithful, the Catching on Fire Story, mostly because itīs quick, to the point and never fails to cause hysterical laughter among the audience.  Everyone thinks Iīm cooler and funnier than they thought previously, or at least I think they think that Iīm cooler and funnier than they thought previously.  Rio is dead tonight, I donīt think Cariocas (natives of Rio) go out in the rain, especially on a week night.  We go back to the hostel and play some Texas Holdem.  We decide it would be a good idea for the loser (if it gets to head to head) to do a shot of Beruman and Jessīs vodka.  Everyone gets pretty wasted except for me since I never really lost.  Wow, am I good compared to these tools.  Chris was Ok, but he was easy to read.  Helena actually had no idea what she was doing but got AA twice in three hands.  Unbelievable.  All in all a fairly lame day, but Iīve made some really good friends and itīs cool because I would never meet so many different people from so many different places if I wasnīt doing this. 

Fin

Print this entry Share Rio de Janeiro hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry