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.