Blog: Coast to Coast!

Well, almost a month to the day from Lima, where we had enjoyed a few hours of surfing in the Pacific, we have finally arrived in Rio de Janeiro; and at last the Atlantic Ocean. Monday we were in Belem, the port town close to the equator and 100km from where the Amazon spills out into the Atlantic Ocean, and a death wish: to travel 2500km on a B-Line through the center of Brazil, and the best part, we had 4 days to do it. So, we chose to start with a 19 hour bus ride to Palmas, roughly a third of the distance, and it wasn’t until we arrived in Palmas that we decided to just stay on the bus for another 14 hours and go straight to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. This had a lot to do with the fact that it was 9pm, and instead of trying to deal with finding a hotel – the power was out, and a major lightning storm had just broken out – we figured we would just sleep longer on the bus, and be that much closer to Rio. Fortunately this bus had air conditioning and seats that reclined, and i have since lost ‘some’ of the fear i had developed from my last bus ride through Bolivia.

Now Brasilia was a city that was built from scratch in 1960, and was designed to be the best capital in the world. Unfortunately, their idea of best capital involved having crisscrossing roads everywhere, and the layout was designed to look like an airplane – the center of town is known as “the pilot”. This must have made sense to the 4 people who approved it, but as a working city – unless you have a car – it sucks. We wandered around for one day, and spent one night, and the most memorable (well, frightening to be exact) was the clown that was trying to sell us crap, who’s conversation consisted of “I’m sorry, i only speak Portuguese” and when we didn’t want to buy his crap, “Aww, SHIT”, and with that he walked away leaving us terrified.

Our last bus lasted 17 hours, and was an overnight, so when i woke up on the bus, driving through the mountains just outside of the city at the crack of dawn, i figured we must be close. As the light grew, so did the surrounding buildings, and in no time the lush green mountainsides turned into Rio de Janeiro. This city, effected by the sprawl of most South American metropolis’, was a welcome change to someone who had just spent 3 weeks in the middle of the Amazon. There were skyscrapers and traffic,  mountains and ocean, so i could tell this would be a city with something going on. We arrived at the bus terminal and decided to try our luck with public transit (another plus of having small backpacks), and within no time we were on a shuttle to the Metro. The metro was surprisingly cheap and easy to use, and we discovered it, along with a bus transfer, would take us directly to the beaches where we wanted to stay. We got off the subway, and walked to the street, quickly determined which way the beach was, and marched straight there with our bags. Within 10 minutes, we threw our bags down, kicked off our shoes and marched into the ocean. We had finally made it. We went back to sit at our bags and enjoy the scenery, watching the waves crash over each other, and just as i said to Stewart “Hey, check out that double break!”, the double break in question crashed all the way up the beach, soaking our bags, and dispersing sand into EVERYTHING. We decided after that this was the Atlantic Ocean’s way of saying “go back to the west coast”, but we are determined not to let it have the last laugh.

From this point on, we wandered in the direction of our hotel, and some passerby without slowing or saying a word passed us a half joint, and it was in this light that we began to see the beauty of Rio. Unfortunately, the hostel we went to was closed for some reason, and we had to find a new hotel, and deal with the mess of trying to somehow tell Cam and Kyla, who were by now 3 hours from Rio on the bus and the only thing they knew was to meet us here. So, we emailed Cam and hoped that somehow he would just end up at the hostel he now had the address of, and after 3 or 4 hours (and a $80 taxi ride for Cam and Kyla) they arrived, and all was well. We celebrated by going out for a pizza and beer feast, a $8 26th of Vodka, and in the end a night out on the town. We didn’t leave the hostel until 1am (nothing happens in Rio before midnight), and all we knew was that “Lapa” was the place to be, and as the taxi neared the area of town, we found out why.  We got out of the cap in the midst of a couple hundred people sitting in a park, with loud music coming from all directions and everyone was either drinking or selling drinks. As we wandered down some of the small streets/alleyways where the street vendors and clubs were located, and found the other couple thousand people who were wandering the streets. Our night continued as such until we decided to head back to the hotel, and in a fit of exhaustion (Stewart and I from 4 days of bussing through Brazil, and Cam and Kyla from their 2 days of flights) passed out happily at 4am…