Everybody On Tha Move... Na Na Na

After completing the Inca Trail Devon and I decided to see heaps, Australians say that word heaps of times when trying to describe something in a large quantity, of cities/ sites in a very small amount of time. On paper this decision was awesome, we were going to knock out a lot of the cities, and natural wonders we wanted to see/ experience in a very short period of time. After deciding to carry out the decision that looked so good on paper, we realized seeing lots of different cities and sites in a small amount of time involved loads, English people employ that word quite often when trying to describe something in a large quantity, nevertheless Austrailians say heaps, heaps more times than English say loads when trying to describe a large quantity of something, anyways seeing lots of different cities and sites in a small amount of time involved loads of our least favorite aspect of traveling, which is traveling. I know that might sound weird to you, I bet you might even be thinking to yourself how can two boys who claim to love traveling so much, hate traveling. I will explain how this strange phenomenon works.

Traveling requires quick movements, not quick movements like AI but going to different places quickly, and long bus rides, Devon and I were never too enthused by long bus rides, after taking a couple long bus rides in Peru and Bolivia our lack of enthusiasm for long bus rides turned into a pure despise for 10+ hour bus rides. Three events lead to my hatred of long bus rides, here is the break down.

Long Bus Ride 1: Cusco Peru---- Puno Peru

This technically wasn’t meant to be a long bus ride, only 6 hours, however I am convinced that punctuality and timeliness are relatively insignificant in Peru thus the bus ride took 8 and ½ hours because the Driver stopped at just about every city between Cusco and Puno with a proper bus station, so the ride took nearly 9 hours, but that didn’t faze me. The activity inside the bus was/ is the main reason I started to hate buses. First, the bus was stinky, it smelled like dirt, fried meat, and nastiness all mixed together then sprinkled on top of Body Odor. The best description of that nasty smell would be dirty meaty, nasty, Body Odor. Second, not only did the bus driver stop in heaps of little cities, he also pulled over for just about every vendor on waiting to peddle their goods on these stinky, crowded, uncomfortable buses. Normally highway vendors wouldn’t faze me, but one duo of bus vendors took it to a new level of straight nastiness. Here is the story…

Devon and I are sitting on the bus pleasantly watching Apocolypto, a masterpiece indigenous slasher movie directed by Mel Gibson, when two Peruvian women dressed in the traditional Peruvian women outfits composed of multiple layers of sweaters, a long skirt, braided hair, some sort of top hat, with a large bag strapped across her back, board our bus. One woman immediately starts selling thin transparent plastic bags filled with strips of meat accompanied by boiled potatoes. Well everyone on the bus goes nuts for this plastic bag filled with nastiness, so bus vendor number two takes off her large bag sets it down right in front of me and Devon, opens the bag, grabs a huge butcher knife and starts straight hacking large strips of meat of the half cow in her bag. I am not even kidding this woman was raising the gigantic butcher knife above her head and crashing the sharp blade into the stinky, juicy flesh of the dead cow in a Peruvian Bag. After she cut a sufficient amount of meat, she would grab the bloody, gooey, drippy, nastiness with her bare hands, stuff it into a plastic bag, then she would reach into another compartment of her bag grab some potatoes with her greasy, bloody hands and stuff the taters into the bloody nasty plastic now somewhat transparent bag.

My eyes were fixed on this odd situation like a rubber neckers eyes are fixed on a car crash in the shoulder of a road, you know you probably shouldn’t be watching, but you just can’t help it.

Anyways this continued for 5- 10 more minutes, and then the Peruvian meat peddling duo finally jumped out of the bus. After this strange bus selling event my stomach never felt 100% for the rest of the journey.

Long Bus Journey Number 2: Uyuni, Bolivia ----- La Paz, Bolivia

Welcome to Bolivia, thanks to Chile and being land locked, the most underdeveloped nation in South America. The lack of development in Bolivia means, lack of paved highways, and adequate buses. Story…

Well I explained most of it, 85% of our bus Journey from Uyuni Bolivia to La Paz Bolivia was spent on unpaved dirt highways. Unpaved dirt highways = very very bumpy roads = hard to sleep. This formula is already less than ideal, but it gets worse for my boy Devon, his seat did not recline and inch, so a new formula was created for him.

Unpaved Dirt Highways = Very Very Bumpy Roads

+Seat that doesn’t recline an Inch = No Sleep.

I am going to give another Gold star to by Boy Devon for putting up with Bolivia’s underdevelopment in an all-star manner. I don’t think he even complained once.

Long Bus Journey Number 3: La Paz, Bolivia ---- Cusco, Peru

After buying our ticket Devon and I were kinda excited for this bus ride. The woman told me we would have cama seats, which are seats that recline pretty far I would say about 150 degrees, and we would also have a snack and a desayuno. Omgosh that sounded amazing.

The seats were pretty comfy, but 30 minutes into our journey our driver discovered a group of political activists had shut down the highway so they could protest something. I thought countries with socialist presidents didn’t have to protest things, because socialism is the perfect form of government thus everyone is happy and no one protests. I guess I was wrong. Well this protest caused a huge detour for our bus, so we spent 2 hours driving through unpaved back roads trying to find a way around the protest.

Our bus driver was doing work through the back roads until we came across a river… which was actually a very small puddle like thing between to medium sized puddle banks of rocks.

Well our bus driver decided crossing this puddle like body of water was going to be difficult so we had to get off the bus, bajarnos del bus, to lighten up the load. Once the load was lightened he tried to cross this puddle of danger, but his first attempt was unsuccessful. So all the bus experts deliberated for 15 minutes and they decided the best solution to this problem would be to throw medium sized rocks into the puddle of death. Slowly but surely 50 people started tossing medium sized rocks into this puddle because somehow that was going to get the bus across the puddle of death I don’t want to come across as a neoliberalistic meanie face, but I have a theory Underdeveloped nations = somewhat underdeveloped thought process. All I have to say is thank the big man Devon and I had so much practice tossing rocks while playing rock toss in Chiloe, Chile. After we tossed rocks into the puddle for 15 minutes our Driver decided it was time to try and cross the puddle of death. After some skillful driving our driver successfully made it across the puddle of death, woo hoo!!

The rest of the ride was okay but spending more than an hour watching a bus trying to cross a puddle set me off a little bit.

Traveling also means one doesn’t have sufficient time to develop strong friendships within the hostel community. Example, Devon and I stayed in Rio for 11 days, and during these 11 days we accumulated heaps of friends on Facebook, I am talking at least 14+. During our brief stint in La Paz, Bolivia we met a lot of great people, but we didn’t have sufficient time to take our friendship to the next level and become friends on Facebook. We gained zip zero friends on Facebook during our brief stints in La Paz. This may seem insignificant, but let me assure you friends on Facebook = Friends Forever.

Those are the central reasons why my least favorite part of Traveling is Traveling.

Now onto more interesting things, first let me give you a breakdown of where we were and dates that corresponds.

March 6^th- 8^th Cusco, Peru

March 8^th-10^th Puno, Peru

March 10^th-12^th La Paz, Bolivia

March 13^th-14^th Uyuni, Bolivia

March 15^th-16^th La Paz, Bolivia

March 16^th- 18^th Cusco Peru

March 18^th Lima Peru

March 18th Quito, Ecuador

As you can clearly see we were on the move, hence the Title of this Blog Everybody on Tha Move, which is a song by Michael Franti.

Anyways let me give you some highlights of the many different places we were.

Cusco, Peru- The city served as the Capital of the Incan empire, it’s buildings are gorgeous, there are lots of neat ruins, the nightlife is great, actually I have just heard the nightlife is great Devon and I never actually went out in Cusco, and there is an amazing restaurant called Jacks.

Puno, Peru- This town is freezing cold at night and there really isn’t much to see as far as the town goes, but it is borders Lake Titicaca which is gorgeous. Since the only thing to do in Puno is see Lake Titicaca Devon and I thought it would be a good idea to take a little tour of Lake Titicaca, isn’t that fun to say “Titicaca.” Anyways our tour was quite neat they took us to a little area of the massive lake called Uros. Uros is famous for having floating islands. You might be asking yourself floating Islands what are those… I will explain.

When the Spanish came down on their bloody conquest a group of people fled into Lake Titicaca and they constructed Islands which are made solely out of reeds. A small group of people still live on these 2 meter thick reed islands. Pretty neat huh?

La Paz, Bolivia- The world’s highest city. Gazing down at La Paz from a hill top is fascinating. It appears the city was originally built in a large valley, and when the valley ran out of room, people started constructing buildings along the mountain sides. Now the city looks like a mountain range covered in buildings rather than trees. I am not sure if that explanation makes sense so I will post two pictures of the city so you can see for yourself.

Anyways La Paz does a great job of segregating Gringos, Anglo-Saxon foreigners, from the rest of the city. There are Gringo Hostals, Gringo Bars, Gringo Restaurants, Gringo Clubs, and Gringo Extreme Activities, and Gringo Tourist Attractions.

Example- The map our Gringo Hostel provided us conveniently had numerous tourist attractions marked on it, and somehow all of these tourist attractions were Gringo related. Since Devon and I aren’t really creative do it yourself backpackers we followed the map and went to the different Gringo restaurants, bars, and tourist attractions. We definitely had a nice Gringo experience in La Paz.

Although we did take part in a lot of Gringo activities such as A Bunch of Gringos watch Cholitos wrestling, Gringo vs. Gringo paintball, and consuming Gringo food at Gringo Restaurants. We also, saw a lot of the city on our daily epic walkabout.

The Highlight of walkabout was mos def, that means most definitely but it kinda sounds a little more edgy, the markets in Bolivia. Everything you would ever want is sold in Bolivian street markets, Shampoo, Lotion, Chewy Gobstoppers, Fake Designer Clothing, Alcohol, Soda, Towels, Meat, DVD’s, CD’s, Sunglasses, Books, Electronics, and anything else you may find at a Target or Wal-Mart. Also, the layout of the of the markets are hilarious, one block will be all shampoo, and lotion, then the next block will be all candy/ cookies, to your right is a lane full of nasty meat, then to your left could be 10 different shops selling sneakers. Honestly, it is kind of hard to explain the street market madness in Bolivia, but if you want a more local less Gringo experience in Bolivia mos def check out the street markets.

Uyuni Bolivia: Home of the world’s largest salt flats, Salari. After doing a little bit of research I found out the slat flats were created after a gigantic lake dried up. Honestly, I am glad the lake dried up because the salt flats are stunning. When we finally entered the salt flats, I felt like I was in a desert covered in Snow. It is really hard to describe the Salari so hopefully the pictures do the talking.

The tour of the Salari de Uyuni, was somewhat unorganized and kinda strange but hey I was in Bolivia, what could I really expect. Here is a break down of the tour.

Our Salt Flat group was composed of one Brazilian Man, Two Japanese Girls, Two Argentinean Girls, and Two American Boys, Devon and I.

Stage 1: Our not so friendly Driver took us to a “Train Graveyard” and everyone there took cheesy pictures next to rusty trains.

Stage 2: Our not so friendly Driver took us to a little market where Bolivian ladies sold things made out of Salt.

Stage 3: Our not so friendly Driver took us to the first area of the Salt Flats where locals gather salt to be processed and sold. Absolutely Stunning.

Stage 4: Our not so friendly Driver took us to an area called Isla Del Pescado, which was a big cactus covered land mass in the middle of the Salt Flat Abyss. We sat down around tables and chairs made of Slat and ate a sub par lunch. After lunch Devon and I walked around the huge Cactus covered land mass, and took a bunch of pictures of the slat flats.

Stage 5: Our not so friendly Driver took us back to our hotel.

Doesn’t sound too exciting but it was awesome.

We spent the rest of our time in Uyuni in our hotel room watching an HBO television series called The Wire.

After Uyuni we went back to La Paz, stayed there one night. We slept for a total of 3 hours in La Paz, then took a 16 hour bus ride to Cusco, stayed in the beautiful city of Cusco for one day and two nights. Then took a flight to Lima, waited in the airport for 3 hours then flew on up to Quito. Lots of traveling but lots of good times and great memories.

Inca Trail

Day 1

Devon and I woke up at 5:47, I like to set my alarm clock in non conventional times, packed up our stuff, stored our bags in the luggage storage in our hostel, and waited in the lobby of our hostel for approximately 44 minutes. Our patience started to become tested because we had expected to wait around 21 minutes not 44 when we finally started to get a little bit squirmy around 6:45am our guide knocked on the large wooden door keeping unwanted intruders away from our hostel. We opened the large wooden door, lightly placed our stuff in the back of a 15 passenger Van, then took a seat in the Van, which would eventually take us to the start of the our Inca Trail adventure.

We made a brief thirty minute stop in a little village to grab a quick breakfast, or to buy anything we may have forgotten. Devon and I decided to buy a small brick of crackers, two sprites, and a bag of coco leaves, coco leaves help both stomach problems and altitude sickness.

We drove for another thirty minutes and then were dropped off at the entrance of the park. After passing through the entrance, our guide gave us a brief introduction to the trail and what to expect for day one. He ended his brief monologue by saying there will only be one Incan Ruin on the first portion of our trek so we could hike as fast as we wanted until we reached the area where we will be eating lunch. Right after he finished saying we could go at our own pace Devon and I took off. The first Incan Ruin was hard to see, so we didn’t dwell on it for too long.

It was supposed to take us around two hours to make it to the place where we would be eating lunch, well we hiked relatively slowly and still made it to the lunch spot in about 1 hour and 25 minutes. 20-30 minutes before anyone in our group arrived to the lunch place.

We ate a nice lunch composed to soup, rice potatoes, and a banana for dessert. Also we took this time to get to know everyone in our group. Here is a breakdown.

Me- I am a 21 year old young man, from Colorado with blond hair, and blue eyes.

Devon- He is a 21 year old young man from Colorado with brown hair and blue eyes.

Ricky- He is a 48+ man originally from Cuba, grew up in Spain/ The states but it currently hailing Connecticut a father of 4, owns a tree cutting business, fluent in Spanish, used to play professional highlander, likes dirty jokes, and becomes a very important player in the rest of our Inca Trail Adventure.

Kody- He is a 14 year old from Connecticut, the son of Ricky a nice young kid, who is often outspoken by his father.

Ana Maria- A 45+ born in Peru, but has lived in Ireland since the age of 16, he is a very kind women with an Irish/ Peruvian accent.

David- A 16 year old hailing from Ireland, he is extremely soft spoken, thus I cannot tell you much more about him.

Augustina- A 22 year old girl from Argentina, the girlfriend of Lucas.

Lucas- A 27 year old from Argentina, the boyfriend of Augustina.

Tom- A 25+ man from China, he had a stomach ache most of the hike and he also asked many irrelevant questions.

Robert- A 30+ man from Peru, he was our guide, and had one of the best laughs I have ever heard.

There is the breakdown… quite a group don’t you think? A picture of the group can be found at the top of this blog entry.

After lunch we were told that there were going to be no other archeological sites on the way to our campsite, so Devon and I of course hiked very fast and made it to the camp site 30 minutes before anyone else.

We occupied the rest of the day playing cards, eating snacks, and eating dinner. We probably fell asleep around 8:45pm because we had to wake up at 5:30 to start our next lovely day, which was going to be the most difficult day of our trek.

Overall Day 1 was good and easy.

Day 2

Well Day 2 started our really messy… I woke up around 3:30am, which is a complete guess I really have no idea what time I woke up, but my internal clock told me it was 3:30am when I woke up. Anyways, I woke up and my stomach was feeling far from good, and I had to remedy the situation. So I grabbed a flashlight, and a pair of socks, because Devon and I neglected to bring an important object used in bathrooms. I stumbled out of our tent and followed the path illuminated by the light in my right hand, to the outhouse in our campsite.

The outhouse was less than ideal, there was no toilet bowl… just a hole in the middle of a porcelain sink like object. Well I am going to skip the details… but I squatted over this hole for about 15 minutes, until my body told me I gotten rid of enough stuff staying inside my body.

Well I guess the 15 minutes wasn’t long enough… because I was back in the outhouse two hours later, and before breakfast had ended I had used the hole in the porcelain sink like object 6 times.

This is how I felt...

Before we started the hardest day of our trek, Ricky supplied me with a roll of toilet paper… some wet wipes, Imodium, and anti-bacterial tablets. Thank you for being a prepared parent.

The first hour of the hike was straight uphill but Devon and I cruised through it, because the altitude wasn’t at an unreasonable level. The next thirty minutes was really rough, my stomach started acting up again, and my body started to become fatigued because I had only eaten two pieces of bread, and I am pretty sure everything I had eaten the past three days was flushed through my system. After the first 90 minutes of straight up hill trekking we decided to take a large break to let the rest of the bacteria in my stomach flush every last thing lingering inside my colon. I have to say I am now an expert at using the holes in porcelain sink like objects.

The next 90 minutes were pure agony. We had to hike up huge stairs until we reached the zenith of our hike, which was just shy of 14,000 feet. Each step got harder and harder, because we were getting higher and higher thus making it harder and harder to breath. Also, my body was running on pure fumes, and Devon had to carry the 12 kilo backpack the entire trek up the beastly mountain.

Despite the less than ideal conditions we chug a lugged up to the highest point of the Inca Trail, relatively quickly.

Getting to the top was great but we didn’t hang out long because it was cold, and there were bathrooms with real toilet bowls at our campsite for the night.

This is how we felt once we arrived to the top

Although Devon had to carry the bad the entire trek and I had released every piece of nutrition from my body, we made it to our campsite 90 minutes before anyone else in our group. Our group was not the quickest.

We spent the rest of the day/ night playing cards, visiting the bathroom, talking and sleeping.

I would like to give Devon a big gold star for being a good friend and helping his poopy friend, by carrying the communal backpack the entire trip up the mountain.

I would also like to give Ricky a gold star for supplying me with everything I would ever need to zap away the bacteria which made me use the bathroom 12 times in one day.

Overall not the best day.

Day 3

Thanks to the Anti-Diarrhea pill cocktail, I woke up feeling pretty darn good. I finally had an appetite, so I ate a huge breakfast, an omelet, two cups of tea, and 4 pieces of bread… with butter and jam. After that breakfast of champions I was ready to rock the third day.

We woke up at 5:30am ate breakfast at 6:00 and were off on the trail by 6:45. Our guide told us the first uphill legs of the hike would take us around 1 hour… it ended up taking us 25 minutes. Although we were moving at a fast pace, we managed to hear the different explanations of the all archeological sites from guides leading groups moving at a faster pace.

We explored a few Incan ruins from leg one, then made a small decent to the place we were going to eat lunch. Our fast paced walking did not pay off, we didn't get a gold star or even a pat on the back, in fact we were rewarded with a two hour wait session. It took two hours for all of our group members to show up once the last snail showed up we finally ate lunch. After we finished lunch, we quickly packed up our stuff and set out for the last leg of day three.

We moved at a pretty fast pace, but to our surprise Kody the 14 year old, pretty much kept up with us the entire way, it was nice to have somebody else to walk with for a little while.

We saw one more huge Incan Ruin then walked to our final campsite. Once we arrived at the campsite Devon and I decided to reward ourselves with a Gatorade and Snickers. Both of us agreed that the Snickers we munched on after our Day 3 trek was the best Snickers we have ever eaten.

We spent the rest of the night talking and playing cards with Kody.

Day 4

The day everyone was waiting for, the final 90 minute trek to Maccu Picchu.

We were awoken at 3:45am, got dressed, packed up ate breakfast, then stood in a large line until 5:30am.

Background—the Inca Trail doesn’t open until 5:30, so on the final day groups stand outside a huge gate until two guards open it at 5:30. Once the gate was opened we grabbed our entrance tickets from our guide, and then cruised to Maccu Picchu. I don’t want to seem too conceited but Devon and I were the first two people from the Inca Trail to reach the Holy City. We accomplished this by being “those guys” and passing every single person ahead of us on the trail.

Maccu Picchu is gorgeous. Since it is sooo gorgeous we did what every person does and took about 50 pictures. After taking tons of pics, we decided to climb to the top of Wayanu Picchu, the huge mountain overlooking Maccu Picchu.

We climbed up this mountain extremely fast, hung out at the top for about 30 minutes, walked half way down, walked another 45 minutes to see some cave the Incas built, walked 45 minutes back up to the Wayanu Picchu trail, walked down, and then found our group.

When we finally found our group my legs were about to give up on me… so we decided to head back down to Aguas Calientes, to watch everyone in our group eat a nice lunch in a restaurant.

The Inca Trail was a lot of fun… if you decide to go, remember to bring Toilet paper.

Lima

Lima is the capital of Peru, it borders the Pacific Ocean, although they claim to have beaches, they are terrible, they are made of rocks… not sand, and the sun had a hard time poking through all the fog surrounding the ocean. When referring to a beach… No Sand + No Sun = No Fun


Peruvian food is priced economically, very unique, and quite good (rico). Devon and I ate 2 or 3 course lunches, mainly composed of ceviche, a tangy dish made from raw seafood, chicken or fish accompanied by rice and beans, then some sort of dessert for approximately $2 USD. Peruvian food is amazing, but it did wonders to my stomach. I spent a lot of time on the toilet during my brief stay in Lima.

The buses are crazy, the markets are great, and the plazas are beautiful.

Here is one story from our brief adventure in Lima.

I made a reservation for a hostel which was nice enough to offer a pick up service from the airport. A representative from the hostel told me a driver would be waiting for my group (grupo) at 11:45 in the Lima International Airport. I was so excited to walk out of customs, and scan through the myriad of driver’s holding up signs with important people’s names on it, until I found mine, then slowly stroll up to the driver and say (Si Michael es mi nombre. Gracias por manejarnos) Devon and I waited in the pickup area for 45 minutes it’s safe to say my airport pickup fantasy did not materialize. After waiting for what seemed like forever, but was actually 45 minutes, an Israeli girl asked us if we wanted to share a cab. We really have a knack for becoming friends with Israelis. We said okay, the Cab driver dropped her off, and I kindly asked the driver if I could get out of the taxi for a split second to find the address of our hostel, because I neglected to write down the address to our hostel assuming they were picking us up.

Finding the address took more than a split second, but after 10 minutes of internet searching I found the address. I ran back to the cab and happily presented the address (direccion) to the taxi man. He looked at the address and told me he had no idea where our hostel was. So he pulled over and made about five different phone calls to find out where our hostel was located. Meanwhile between phone calls he kept guilt tripping me saying I should have wrote down the main roads our hostel was next to, that I should have brought a map… etc. I guess I assumed a man whose job is to drive people around a city would know where streets were… Silly Me! Peru and assumptions must not go well together. He finally got us to our hostel and decided to charge us an absurd amount of money for the ride, in Peruvian Standards, because he had to do so much work to find our hostel. I am definitely going to try this technique when I get back home.

“Oh you ordered the steak and I brought you the salmon…” “I’ll replace that salmon with the steak you ordered but I am going to have to charge you extra.” “You might be wondering why you will be charged extra… well I will explain since I made a mistake with your order and gave you a salmon instead of a steak, I am going to have to tell the chefs the situation, and then make sure the chefs make your steak faster than they normally would, after they make the steak faster than normal I am going to have to grab the steak, and bring it to your table. As you can clearly see I am going to have to do four extra things I normally would not have done if you would have been content with that salmon I brought you.”

That’s some good Peruvian logic.

Well I don’t have much else to say about Lima.

Rioooooooooooooo

Pictures will be put up soon, maybe tonight maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day... Who Knows?

Sorry reading this blog entry may take up more time in your day than you originally had planned.

Where to even start… Agree or Disagree… I’m pretty sure the beginning would probably be the most logical place to start.

With that said in the beginning there was a BANG! I am not trying to get scientific on you and No I don’t mean the trip started off with a bang, in the beginning there literally was a BANG. I’ll explain. As our bus was centimetering (I would say inching but like every other country in the world Brazil uses the metric system, so I am going to do what the locals do and say centimetering instead of inching) towards the Rodoviario bus station, a huge BANG rang throughout the highway and people hanging out on the sidewalks and in the roads near the bus station scattered like ants when a droplet of water splashes on their cluster of black nastiness. I am still unsure what caused the deafening BANG in the middle of the street neighboring the bus station, but judging by the reaction of the locals in the area, the BANG most definitely wasn’t a playful firework. I’m sure my parents are shaking their heads wondering what is my son doing… well the “start” of our Rio de Janeiro adventure gets better.

Thanks to a cab driver who gladly charged us double the normal piece to take us to our hostel, Devon and I made it out of the bus station and into the “security” of our hostel in one piece. Our check-in at the hostel was a huge debacle because the employees thought I was a girl, due to my name being Mickey, so they placed Devon and me into the all girls’ dorm room. 10 girls, 2 guys. As long as Devon and I don’t fart a lot how could this be bad?

Well… being in the all girls’ dorm started off in cloud nine then quickly plummeted to rock bottom. Explanation, a girl decided it would be nice to open up both Devon’s and my backpack’s and take all of our cash out of our wallets. Devon had 70 reais (pronounced he-ais) stolen from him and I had 400 reais (still pronounced heais) 150 Argentinean pesos, 40 American Dollars, and 5000 Chilean pesos stolen from me. The equivalent of about $300 US Dollars stolen from us. The worst part is, this robbery happened around 11 am in a 5 minute time frame which I grabbed 50 reais from my wallet, went to talk to Devon then returned to the room to put my bags in the nice large lockers the hostel provided to us. After I found out this girl robbed us then ditched the hostel I was upset, to put it both bluntly and nicely. I have come to the conclusion this girl really didn’t like having two guys in the all girls dorm, so she robbed us to prove a point and nothing else. Luckily no other robberies occurred to us, and I learned an important travel lesson… to always lock up my stuff.

Well that was the beginning and our experience in Rio only got better from that point forward.

Now that the beginning is out of the way I am going to organize the “middle” as follows.

1. Devon and Mickey’s Awesome Christ the Redeemer Adventure.
2. Carnaval
3. Cultural Observations
4. A Few of My Favorite Things

1. Devon and Mickey’s Awesome Christ the Redeemer Adventure.

Yes, Devon and I are still “Ballers” when it comes to walking. Although we are probably some of the most, if not the most Baller Walkers I have come across, we decided we would become All-Star Baller Walkers, and make the trek from our hostel, up to the Famous Christ the Redeemer Statue, then back to our hostel… a 15-20 KM (kilometer) trek…without a Map.

Becoming All-Star Baller walkers wasn’t our only reason for making this huge trek in 34 degree (92) weather with 80% humidity, due to the robbery that occurred the day before we only had 40 reais to last us the entire day.

Onward… we had a generally Idea of where to walk, because the statue was visible from our hostel, so we made our best attempts to walk toward the huge white statue on top of a huge hill in the Middle of Rio. We walked around the city for about 40 minutes then we saw a huge hill that we thought could have maybe been the huge hill where the statue was located. After getting to the top this huge hill was not the huge hill in which the statue was located, so we decided to walk down the huge and to try and find the other huge hill. Devon and I walked for another 30 minutes, until suddenly a man approached us and asked us if we wanted to take the train to get to the Christ the Redeemer Staute. We declined the offer for the train, and asked him the best way to walk to the statue. He told us there were two options to hike to the top of the statue. Here is the break down of the options.

Option 1: We walk up a less steep more conventional path 9 km in distance to the statue.

Option 2: We walk up a really steep, less conventional path 3 km in distance to the statue.

We opted for Option 2, because we are from Colorado and steepness and less conventional does not intimidate us. To our surprise option 2 for getting to the statue was both illegal and extremely difficult. The 3 kilometer path was along the train tracks which take you up the mountain and was not actually meant for trekkers.

We chug a lugged up the train tracks for roughly two kilometers, until we saw a group of taxi’s next to a large road. Since we both dripping wet with sweat, and breathing like old men without there respirators, we decided to ditch the steep path and walk the remainder of the trek on the longer and more conventional path.

While we were walking up the more conventional path, a guy kept yelling at us and pointing to his van.

Background-- Devon and I speak zero Portuguese so we assumed this Brazilian man was trying to convince us to take his one of his companies Vans up the remainder of the path so he could earn some more money. We didn’t want to fall for his money making trap, so we decided we were going to continue our trek up the mountain. 45 minutes later, we finally made it to the top, and to our surprise we couldn’t actually enter the area to see the statue because you had by a ticket from the Van companies, who then drove you up the remainder of the mountain. Woops! So I took a Van down a portion of the mountain bought two tickets, took the Van up the mountain, gave Devon his ticket, and entered the area where we could see the Christ the Redeemer statue and all its glory.

We spent a whopping 20 minutes at the Statue, took a few pictures of the amazing views of Rio, and then started our decent.

The walk back was not nearly as adventurous as our walk towards the Cristo, so to put it to make this story quick, we walked for another 2 ½ hours back to our hostel. Overall, we walked a little more than 6 hours that day.

We decided to reward ourselves with some Banana Pizza from a Pizza Joint next to our hostel. Overall it was an amazing day, and good training for the Inca Trail.

2. Carnaval

Costumes, Samba, Dancing, Parades, Imbibing, Kissing, Craziness, or it can be better described as one huge party… everywhere.

Carnaval officially started Friday February 20^th, but we started celebrating Thursday February 19^th.

Here is a day to day breakdown.

Thursday: We started our day with a nice breakfast provided by our hostel, then we took a short walk to a hostel our friend Hannah was staying in, then we decided to make our skin a little darker at the Copa-Copacabana beach. I was planning on laying out on the beach for 4-5 hours, but the beaches in Brazil are too hot, after laying out for 15 minutes I was glistening in sweat. It also didn’t help that Devon and I had to take turns standing and lying because we only had one towel to share amongst the two of us.

After a brief stint at the Copacabana beach, we walked back to our hostel to prepare for our first Bloco, a large organized dance party on the streets of Rio. We made it to the Bloco around 7:30 and after taking a quick glance at the scene where the Bloco was going down I was in complete shock. Thousands upon thousands of people were dancing, drinking, talking, and partying in the middle of a huge street. The crazy party was flanked by hundreds of people selling soft drinks, beer, hard alcohol, friend food, candy, costumes, and other stuff.

We danced for about 3 hours, and then took a cab to an area of town called Lapa to see a concert with Manu Chao, a famous Spanish speaking musician. Background— most the music I had heard from Manu Chao was a relaxed infusion of reggae, ska, and Spanish style music. The music he played in his concert was fast paced and crazy. People were moshing all over the concert venue, and after 2 and ½ hours of being shoved around by men with dreadlocks our grupito decided to call it quits for the night.

Friday: Thursday night was tiring, but Friday was the official start of Carnaval, so we had to get our party on. I spent the beginning of the day trying to find a good costume for my Carnaval experience. All I found was a pair of fairy wings, but I have to say I rocked them pretty well.

After finding a costume, we meet up with a huge group of “Gringos” from our hostel, we were rolling about 25 deep, which in normal people talk means we went out with approximately 25 different individuals. After trying to leave for about two hours we all finally set out for another Bloco in an area of town called Santa Teresa. Getting our whole group organized was quite a task and we ended up missing the actual Bloco, so we spent the majority of the night hanging out in Santa Teresa. After hanging out in that area for 5-6 hours we all decided to head to Lapa to see if anything was going on there. We walked around for 20 minutes and didn’t find anything really exciting, so we decided to take a cab home. While we were in the process of hailing a cab, I heard some live music coming from a nearby street so we decided to investigate.

We turned the corner of the street and to our surprise thousands of people were parading behind a huge truck filled with Samba musicians. We paraded behind the truck of Samba, for 15 minutes then unanimously decided it was time to call it quits for the night, because it was really late and we were all beat from the night before. To my surprise we“Called it quits” extremely early, we ended up back at our hostel at 11:30pm and I was asleep by midnight. Good thing I fell asleep so early, because Saturday was probably the most dance, party filled day of my life.

Saturday: This was the most party filled day of my life. After going to bed at 11:30pm the night before our groupito woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 8:45 in the morning. After eating a nice hearty breakfast composed of coffee, bread, sweet bread, fruit, and various freshly made fruit juices we decked ourselves up, I wore my fairy wings and one lady was nice enough to draw a huge silver mask on my face with various silver designs across my chest. After getting “done up” we united the troops and took the metro to the biggest bloco of Carnaval. Over 1 million people poured into a plaza near the center of Rio to dance, imbibe, talk, and do everything else people do at a Bloco with 1 million people.

We squirmed through the giant crowd for about 15 minutes until we found a spot where we could actually move our hips a little bit. A minute after we arrived in our “spacious” destination, BailiaFunk started blaring from the PA system. So I started dancing all over the place, lots of people started laughing and taking pictures, but I wasn’t embarrassed because I love to dance. I swung my hips left, right, forward, and back while slowly breaking down to the floor then bringing it back up slow. I’m not going to lie, my hips were moving like Beyonce, and slowly but surely my hip swings won the affection of two Brazilian women in our little groupito.

After dancing for a while one of the Brazilian girls asked me if I would accompany her to the bathroom so I did, after returning 30 minutes later, Devon and the rest of the group was nowhere to be found. So my little groupito composed of me, and two Brazilian women, decided to head out to another Bloco in an area of town called Lapa.

After a while Brazilian girl number two decided she was going to leave, so that left me with just Brazilian girl number one. Brazilian girl number one and I ate a quick lunch then danced for a while, then headed back to the hostel, because she had to start her shift in the hostel. DRAMA?

I finally returned to the hostel around 5 o’clock in the pm, and Devon was still nowhere to be found, so I rested up for approximately 1 hour and 37 minutes then I went to another Bloco with a huge group from the hostel.

The Bloco just finished when we arrived, so we danced to the music playing over the PA system for a little while then walked to Lapa.

We hung out in Lapa for about 3 hours, until Brazilian girl number one, the hostel employee, found me and I decided to go to a Samba and BailiaFunk concert with her, two other Brazilians, and a 50+ year old man from our hostel. Well we danced our little hearts out until 5 o’clock in the am, and I finally went to sleep at 5:30, or (half five…that’s how british people say five thirty).

Sunday: I woke up at 11:45 and still no Devon. OMgosh we went 24 hours without seeing each other and it was really sad. We finally reunited around 12:45, and it was glorious.

We both rested in the hostel all of Sunday until we went to Sambadrome, the huge parade, with huge floats, bright shiny costumes, and lots of Samba. Despite the terrible seats Sambadrome was fascinating. I cannot imagine the amount of time each Samba school puts into their parade. I would give you a long description of the parade but… I am tired of writing you are probably a little tired of reading.

Monday: I went to the beach with Brazilian girl number one, got pretty tan, met a nice guy from New York who I chatted with for no less than 4 hours. Then we went to some bar in Ipanema, went home and went to bed.

Tuesday: The last day of Carnaval. We rested up during the day, then a huge group went to Lapa for one last Bloco. We did a lot of the same, dancing, singing, laughing, a little bit of Brazilian dance fighting, etc. Then later that night we went to a club called house, where Devon and I danced our little hearts out. His goal was to out dance me at the club so my goal was to out dance him. It’s safe to say we out danced pretty much everyone in that club.

Carnaval was great.

3. Cultural Observations

I am only going to provide you with three very necessary cultural observations.

1. I thought Uruguayans wore small swimsuits. Hold up! Uruguayans are practically as covered as Muslim women, in comparison to Brazilians. Both Brazilian men and women wear the tiniest bathing suits I have ever laid eyes upon. I promised I didn’t lay my eyes on anyone person for an inappropriate amount of time. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures of these little bikinis because it is very dangerous to bring your camera to the beach.

2. Brazilians can dance. Watching a Brazilian women Samba is similar watching the Tazmanian devil move about its cartoon scenery. It’s a huge blur of hip shaking awesomeness.

3. Brazilian men are both jacked and tan. Seriously I have never seen so many jacked and tan men in my life. Here is a cultural inference of why they are jacked and tan. All the time they spend at the beach and genetics makes their skin nice and tan. All the steroids and weight lifting they do results in them being very jacked.

4. A Few of My favorite things

1. Acai, the best drink ever. It is full of antioxidants, and sold all over the place. Devon and I had one huge cup of Acai each and everyday.
2. The Beach- It’s hot, it made me pretty tan, and it’s awesome.
3. Dancing- Brazilians love to dance and so do I. My dance skills went up at least 10 points in Brazil.
4. Music- I love BialaFunk, it is great from breaking it down.
5. Brazilians- Brazilian women are tan and beautiful, two things I enjoy.
6. Our hostel. The employees were great and all the people who stayed there were good spirits for sure.

Well that does it for Rio. Thanks for actually reading this. Inca Trail here we come.