A brazilian Coca Cola
Loading Map
Foz de Iguaçu,
Brazil
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
We awoke and had brekkie before checking out of the hostel. The guy who ran the place had arranged for a taxi for us the night before so all we had to do was wait. And wait we did, he informed us it would be early and still we waited.... getting slighty worried as the taxi still wasnt there at 9am we asked and after inquiring it turned out there was no taxi!!! He did sort us one out so we were off to Brazil..... so we thought? The taxi driver on discovering we were Brazil bound went into a crazy panic, getting on his phone, jibbering at us lots. We were completely clueless at first but then worked out it wasnt his car, so he couldnt cross the border with us. Fortunately his father wasnt far away so we swopped drivers and were off. At the argentinian side we did nothing, just sat there whilst thge driver handed over our passports, to be honest the Brazil side wasnt alot harder. We just scribbled down our details and got our entry stamps. Our taxi driver then sped off full steam ahead speeding through the 40kpm restriction signs at about 100kpm. Wasnt long before we got to the bus station, in fact weŽd done wot weŽd been told was a 3 hour bus journey in little over 20 mins, even if it was a little bizarre crossing the border in a taxi!!!
At the bus station we had loads of time to kill, so after getting some very pretty Brazilian money we tried to get a coca cola, which was harder than youŽd think. You see in Brazil it turned out you have to first see the cashier who will give you a voucher for your goods. Once id worked this out which took a little longer than normal cos of the different language we got our cokes. And then we just sat and chatted until the bus came.
We werent that hopeful about the bus as it was the only company that had seats left to Rio and it wasnt long till we found out why. The bus was our most expensive of the trip and definately the worse quality. It literally rocked the whole 25 hrs we were on it! Add to that the screaming kids who as usual were right next to us and the toilet that reeked as soon as we got on the bus and we were gonna have some sort of nightmare. It only got worse too as we came to a police check point we queued up and drove straight through only to have to turn round and queue up again. After the bus had been thoroughly searched weŽd lost a couple of hours and the drivers were badtempered the rest of the way. The bus did stop for food a couple of times tho as usual we had absolutely no clue how long we had or how it worked. At one point the bus driver was insistant that he had to leave with out people cos of his schedule and it was only for there sprinting to the bus that prevented them being left behind. We were quite glad when we finally got to Rio!!!!!
