Fat Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro
Trip Start
Oct 10, 2001
1
76
79
Trip End
Feb 19, 2002
Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Wednesday, February 13, 2002
The super express bus to Rio de Janeiro passed through the beautiful landscapes of rolling green hills, ocean coasts, sugar plantations, endless palm trees, and farmlands. The highways was named Ayrton Senna Expressway -- immortalized after the greatest Brazilian Formula 1 driver who died in a crash in Imola in '94. This was our final bus ride of our entire trip and we were both very sentimental about it
Paradise City -- G n' R
. We talked about all the amazing bus trips throughout our journey and this was an almost perfect ending, travelling to Rio on a sunny day on Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras), the last day of Carnaval. The bus was not crowded and we stopped along the way for lunch, where "Fat" Tuesday truly had its meaning.It was the first time we had the unique Brazilian lunch experience of "Comida por Kilo" where we were free to select anything we wanted in a buffet spread and pay by the weight of the food in our plates. At 2 Real per 100 grams we had a nice lunch for less than $10 (about 1 kilogram). The trick was to take less than you fancy, which was a difficult choice considering all the great stuff available.
As we rolled into Rio, the poor slums and polluted rivers followed our highway. This city by the sea is much greener than Sao Paolo. At the chaotic central bus terminal, we had the difficult task of finding a hotel room without reservation. The tourist information kiosk tried to help us, but there was nothing. Somehow, we knew this was going to happen, homeless in Rio during the Carnival. What can we do? We didn't speak any Portugues, without a real map, and almost broke. So I decided we check our backpacks at the bus station, and go into the city and look for a hotel, once we found one, we will come back to get the luggage, and if we don't find anything tonight, we will party on the Copacabana beach until sunrise, after all, this is Carnival, and we didn't "need" to sleep.
One thing about Rio city bus drivers is that they are all crazy. Our bus goes through the seaside boulevard at a speed seemed like 100km/hr and suddenly a stop, the driver would slam the breaks and everyone would have to hang on for dear life or be turned into a human cannon ball. The bus was going so fast that we almost missed out stop.
We arrived in the middle class district of Gloria, our first choice of hotel was full, our second choice was a dark and dingy hotel. The rooms were small, had no windows, worse than a cell block in a Turkish jail. It had an sweaty armpit smell and the halls and stairs were so narrow that any fat Americans would not bother to fit through it. The man at the front desk, a thin black Brazilian who didn't looked older than 16, showed us a couple of cell blocks that we didn't fancy. Then he kindly showed us a second floor room that had [thank you God] a window and a fan. The bed was small for the two of us, but the room looked secure enough, and since we had no other choice, we took it for US$30/night. For this shit hole, it was highly overpriced, but this is Rio during Carnival, and we were prepared to be financially raped. Now, we didn't have enough money with us to pay for the room, so we asked the young man to hold the room at all cost as we looked for a bank.
Considering Rio was the most touristic city in Brazil and considering this was Carinval where travellers of the world gathered, I was sure that withdrawing money from a bank was not too difficult, omg, was I wrong. All the banks were closed during Carnival. All the ATM's were out of service or did not recognize my bank card. During our trip, of all the places we withdrew money, from the jungles of Guatemala, to the islands of Panama, to the financially ruined Argentina, Rio de Janiero was unquestionably the most F%@KING retarded city in the world. I still had some US Dollar Cash reserves in my backpack so we decided to retrieve our backpacks first. We hopped on a "highway to hell" bus, went back to the station, got our bags, back to our hotel and paid the clerk in US dollars for 3 nights.
Now we can relax, on the last few hours of Mardi Gras, we went to the Copacabana, perhaps THE most famous beach in the world. The street party was just starting to kick in, the seaside boulevard was full, young and old, Brazilians, tourists, blacks, whites, rich, poor, hot Brazilian girls in eyepatch bikinis, black kids in yellow & green football jerseys. Heavy beats of samba music blasted through the speakers. Me and Juliette embraced everything.
We made it! We made it to Rio de Janeiro on the last day of Carnival! Back in Mexico City I told Juliette about this trip, which I didn't know whether it was possible at the time, now I know. It was not an easy journey, in fact it was the most difficult thing I have ever done. But it felt good. We felt good. Together, we realized, we had done something wonderful. We partied on Copacabana until we were both exhausted......
