Get Rich Or Die Trying in Rio

Trip Start Oct 10, 2001
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Trip End Feb 19, 2002


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Saturday, February 16, 2002

I believe it was Richard Nixon who said "one must go through the darkest valley so that the glory of climbing the highest mountain will be truly appreciated." We have reached our goal, we made it to Rio in time, now the hangover is setting in. What do we do now? We knew this day would come, we are stranded in South America, sort of. Both me and Juliette had used last of our travellers cheques, and through my bank withdraw receipts, I have calculated there must not be more than $200 left in my CIBC account. Since Juliette lost her wallet in Panama and her credit card, she could not withdraw any money from her French bank. We shared our finances throughout our trip practically 50/50, now we have to find a way to purchase the plane tickets. These past three days since Mardi Gras was to be our darkest valley.

Wednesday -- we shopped around for plane tickets, the regular one way prices were US$700 per person. We didn't have that kind of money. After the initial panic attack, and thanks to Juliette's brilliance, we found the STA (student travel agency) in the posh Ipanema district. The price quote was much reasonable at US$370 one way to Toronto. Next step is getting the money. Even though Brazil is a modern country and Rio is a cosmopolitan international city, getting the money proved to be nearly impossible. Our(mostly Juliette's) attempt to transfer money via Western Union from her French bank was like begging for water in the Sahara desert. The language barrier of Portugues was still difficult. Finding the correct bank to receive the money was confusing. First we tried the international CITI bank, but they were useless. Next we tried Banco do Brazil and its many branches and were told conflicting information of either no Western Union service, or the person in charge was on holidays, or we had to wait a few days. We were desperate by now, our remaining money was slowly shrinking to zero, the only thing we could afford to eat was tuna sandwiches and a cold can of Coca Cola from the vending machine for dessert.

Thursday, we impatiently waited....

Friday, we impatiently waited....

Saturday -- we took our usual metro from Gloria to Cinelandia to meet with Banco do Brazil once again. This time we were determined to get our money to die trying. Juliette did the most of the talking, with her passport in hand, she was determined and after an hour of arguing and waiting, Juliette came back from the bank teller with 2500 Reals (US$1000) in her hands. The money were green and red, large denominations and small, we double counted, looked at each other, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't want to get robbed as soon as we step out of the bank so I put all the money in my shoes, the classic way to carry money around.

We went to Ipanema to buy the plane tickets from STA. The young travel agent was a classic Brazilian beauty, long sandy blond hair, well tanned, slim figure, hazel eyes, and I wondered how she would have looked in bikinis on the beaches of Ipanema. She looked at my suspicious student card for a moment, talked over with her boss, and took our stack of money (almost as a semi-bribe) and gave us the 2 one-way tickets to Toronto. Money come and money go. In the past three days it took us great stress and hard work to get the money, and in less than an hour, puff, it was gone, we have never spend so much money so quickly, but we were happy that we got the tickets.
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