Mother's Arrival

About one week later...
Many things have happened in the past week so I wasn’t able to/too lazy to finish my last entry. Things like my mother arriving, my computer breaking, getting a new computer, and dealing with a little cold...
But, first things first, the conclusion to the Rio trip. As I was saying, I grabbed a double shot and headed towards the consulate. I decided to walk because I still had about two hours before I needed to be there. After about an hour of walking, I started getting a bit tired. So I sat down, next to the peri, and started thinking to myself: wow, this now makes 24 hrs without sleep. Alright, after the consulate, find a place to sleep. And that’s what I did. The consulate wasn’t to eventful; I walked in, they gave me my new passport, I walked back out. I grabbed a bus and went to the bus station. I bought my ticket back to São João and found a quite place to catch a few Z’s. It was about 3:00 and at that time, I thought that my bus left at 7:00 so I slept in one of the most uncomfortable chairs ever created for about two and a half hours. After taking my little power nap, I went outside for a smoke. While doing so I double checked my ticket information. Turns out I was being a bit dyslexic or something because the actually left at 9 that night. “Ugg, two more hours of waiting...” So I can’t get back to sleep but I’m to tired to read or write anything. So now I have three hours to do nothing.. I sat there for probably about 15 minuets trying to figure out what to do until I just said fuck it, I’ll hit up Starbucks again! Hop on a bus(45min), get an expresso(10min), go outside to drink it and enjoy the night life of Rio(30min), get on a bus back to the station(45 min), and arrive having seen the city at night with an extra adventure to tell in about two hours. Shortly thereafter, I feel asleep on the bus and woke up in SJDR with a nasty little cold.

...The following week after that was a bit hectic. I had about three days to get over my cold because my mom was coming. I sat at home and drank ridiculous amounts of tea because as soon as my mother arrived, I knew I wouldn’t have any more time to rest. Unfortunately, that’s not quite what happened. The day I was supposed to pick up my mom, I slept in in way past my alarm; I missed the first two busses to Belo Horizonte. Finally after getting on one, there was a lot of traffic in Belo so the bus made me even later. So I’m at the bus station, my mom probably already waiting for me, and I still need to get to the airport. So I say screw, I’ll take a cab, it’ll be faster. Turns out that the airport is on the outskirts of the completely other side of town. So I gave the cab driver my arm and a leg and started franticly searching for my mother. After my first tour of the airport with no luck, I decide I should do this a bit more systematically. Good thing the airport wasn’t big or my one hour of searching could of turned to hell. After still no luck, I go to information to call her on the intercom. I wait, 5min, 10min, 20min... I think to myself: no way did she try to get to São João by herself, she’s either way late or stuck in São Paulo. Thinking that this was going to be a quick grab and go, I didn’t bring any of my things so I ended up paying R$5 to use the internet at an airport computer. Turns out that I received a message stating that she would be about five hours late. Well that was two hours ago so I had three more to go. I find another uncomfortable chair in a quite place in the airport and fall asleep. At about 6p.m., five hours after she left that message, I go back to the computer. Strange though, a two hour nap made me feel a world better in terms of my cold. Nothing new from my mom so I grab her flight number to see what I can find out about it. At information, they tell me that it had been cancelled and all the passengers were rescheduled for a different flight. When the flight came, no mother to be seen. I walked around looking, double checked the new flight number, nothing... I decided that I would wait until 9 and then just go home, what else could I do? But a good hour after her re-scheduled flight, she arrived.

Rio-epilogue part 1

1:00 A.M.
running to catch a bus that’s makin a pit stop...

10:12 A.M.
Oh god! I think I’m in heaven! Heaven, for some people, mainly people completely addicted to coffee having suffered withdrawals to good kinds, is also known as Starbucks. For the first time in Brazil,I ordered coffee, knowing exactly what it was going to taste like. Even at 7:30 this morning as I passed the mall I knew the taste of that caramel frappachino. It’s almost sad to think that in a country who’s main exports include coffee, I fee; such an urge to drink american coffee. But it is nice to know that wherever you are in the world there are places that can make you feel a little closer to home.
...And so, the story of how I arrived here. At about 10:30 last night I left my house in SJDR to pick up passport in Rio. At about 11:00, I found out that the bus I was going to take didn’t have any vacancies and the next one left at 6 the following morning.. After looking distraught and confused for a minute, the bus attendant told me that there was a bus coming from Divinopolis that was going to stop here real fast on its way to Rio de Janeiro. It would be here between 12:20 to 1:00 for about 5min. So I left to go eat a burger and came back around 11:50p.m. to start waiting. And so I waived. And waited. Then it started raining so I waited some more. And finally, as I start thinking of leaving and going home, I see a bus. Only, it wasn’t going where I had expected it to go. So I sprinted around the bus station and ask if I can hitch a ride with them. Turns out that I can and I ended up paying close to half the price of a normal fare! We arrived in in Rio somewhere around 6:30a.m. This being my second time in Rio, I knew my around a little better so I hopped on a bus and headed for Flamenco, a district close to downtown Rio. I walked around with one goal in mind: Find Starbucks. After about a mile of walking around, I finally found the mall that the Starbucks was in. Just one problem: The mall didn’t open for another two and half hours. So I decided to find the world renown beach; Copacabana. So I headed South. Now here is the point of the story where I introduce a new character. Like my previous adventures, I met someone along the way. He wasn’t an angel or an american burnout, but an intriguing person none the less. By the end of out time together, I was certain that he was home-less, family-less, and also, friends-less. He spoke super fast with an un-enunciated accent so I barley understood anything that he said, but that didn’t stop him from talking about everything in the world.. He also carried around a stereo from the 70’s that probably didn’t work but he kept a gospel CD in there anyway. Although I didn’t understand a single thing that he said, he accompanied me for about two hours showing me different places with our final destination being Copacabana. He took me to a few different ‘touristy’ places and another beach before reaching Copa. Copa however, wasn’t as good as I had expected. The water was dirty, it was rainy, there was trash everywhere, and my vagabond friend kept showing me all of his possessions. I will say that it did have some decent waves. Probably some of the biggest I have ever seen actually, measuring around 15-20 feet tall. The landscape too was nice. So after watching the waves and my friend washing his shirt in them, I said ‘Adieu’ and took a bus back to the mall. And in almost perfect synchronization, as I walked up to the entrance and the line of people waiting outside, the mall opened. Three floors up, I found my golden treasure...
R$12.00 Grande Caramel frappachino, that’s what I’m talking about! I’ve now been sitting here for about an hour, slowly sipping down that frothy deliciousness and writing this blog. Now, I’m off to the consulate to pick up my passport. But first, another double shot!

The never ending adventure: Part 3

12-02-09
6:24a.m.
The following day, yesterday as of now, was a bit intense. I had about 8 hours to study for a final and take it, print and fill out my passport application, and gather everything else that was needed to go to Rio. Despite unruly amounts of stress and impatience, everything turned out fine. I even think I did pretty good on my final. Although I’m still missing a few pieces of my application, I’m sure it’ll be okay. I still have about an hour and half before my meeting so I think I’ll watch the waves breaking on the rocks and the homeless being woken up by the police. After I finish my business, I’m going to try to find myself a starbucks.



12-02-09
11:30a.m.
...Sitting at the bus station waiting for my bus at 2:00 to go back to SJDR. Made it through the consulate alright. Funny, seems like there was only one American there and he was pretty much running the place. All the security, secretaries, and what not were all Brazilian. Not what I expected but that was fine. My final question to the guy when we were finished was: “Now where can I find myself a Starbucks?” He laughed. He told me where to find one and how to get there; the easiest way being by metro. So when I was outside, I started heading towards the nearest station. As I’m about to head down the stairs to catch a train, I hear, in English:”...And so we meet again!” It was a guy that I met in the consulate while waiting my turn. He told me that he’d been living in Rio for the past four years and when he heard that I was adventuring to a Starbucks, he told me “Man! You’re in Rio! You’ve got to try the coffee here, I know a real good spot; they pretty much invented the ‘cafezinho’, I’ll take you there...” And so we walked on. Strange character he was. He told me that he “taught english”, he came from Los Angeles, and his income came from a “family business”. He also told me he lived in a favela. He kind of looked like the main character in ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ looked in real life twenty years later. One lazy eye, both eyelids halfway shut, bald wearing a black baret. The kind of guy who laughs at his own experiences thinking: ‘damn that was a crazy freaking time’. Although vacant and appearing unintelligent at first glance, he did, at times, produce little blurbs of evidence that the gears were working. Every once in a while, he would state some kind of historical fact about a specific building or the city of Rio but then proceeded to mindlessly rant about it. So after he got us lost a few times, we finally made it to that cafe. I was unimpressed. Although this was the first place I’d seen in Brazil that made coffee naturally, it still didn’t meet my standards. Fun anyway, even though the coffee was no good, the company was nice and seeing a new city is always fun. Afterwards, he showed me which bus to take to the bus station and bid me farewell. So now I’m here, waiting for my bus back home, at the end of this endless journey. Another seven hours and it’s back to finals week. woot!

12-03-09
Cyrille Gindreau

P.S. I have to go back to Rio in a few weeks to pic up my passport. Maybe I’ll see our gardian angel, or maybe the sketchy, burnt out American...

The never ending adventure: Part 2

12-01-09
11:20p.m.
Ouf, crazy past 24 hours, got back to SJDR, crazy night with Susan, watched a movie, went to sleep, woke up five hours later, went to a meeting with my employer-to-be, ran around town doing errands, took a final, WAIT! I’m not finished with my last posting am I? I am now waiting for a bus back to Rio de Janeiro. Now, where was I? Right, Top of the world...
...It was wonderful. After promenading the top and the side of the mountain, I decided to check out the canyon that connected the back of the gulf and the main ocean. The gap in the land was only a mere 50 feet long, cliffs lining both sides with that impeccable turquoise-blue sea in between. Had I had the conhones, this seemed to be the perfect spot for cliff diving if you could get past looking down a 100 foot drop of rock and cacti. And so after absorbing as much beauty as we could, we started our decent back down to town. After a good mile down, we actually came across that restaurant we had been searching for earlier. A nice looking place, our stomachs decided to eat there. We ate shrimp and pasta on there back balcony over looking the marina and one of Arraial’s beaches. Good food, good alcohol, good view, couldn’t of asked for more for our two year anniversary.



12-01-09
11:54p.m.
Just got on the bus and am leaving for Rio...
And so after our little feast, we walked the rest of the way back to our hotel and went to bed. The following day, I made sure to set my alarm for 5:30a.m. to be able to go watch the sunrise on the beach but unfortunately, that wasn’t early enough. My first thought waking up was: “Fuck, it’s already light out.” So I grabbed my cloths and camera, booked out the door, down the stairs, and realizing that the hotel assistant was sleeping, scaled he front gate because it was locked. Two cigarettes later, I finally found the beach. Although it was safe to assume that the sun had risen above the water, it could not yet be seen from behind one of the islands. And so I watched the sun rise, on the beach, in Brazil.



Going home later that day was, well, interesting... Bus 1: Arraial to Cabo Frio. Piece of cake. Then, when we asked about getting to Barbacena, they told us that the bus only had one vacancy left and the next one wasn’t for another 12 hours. Thank god, we had our guardian angel with us. When we first arrived in Cabo Frio, he helped us find which bus to take to Arraial. Random guy, never even knew his name. But, with a bit of luck, we saw him again that day. We told him our situation and he simply suggested going to Rio first then taking a direct line to São João. Easy enough, and so we got ourselves tickets to Rio and headed there. Regardless of the size of the bus station, we eventually found our way around when we got there. We bought our tickets to SJDR and an hour later, we were off. Interestingly enough, as we waited for the bus, we saw our angel a third time, Coincidence? Maybe, but the rest of our journey went quite smoothly.

12-02-09
6:00a.m.
Sitting on a pier in Rio, watching the smog/fog starting to break around the surrounding mountains (insert clever metaphor). For a big city, sure is damn quite at 6 in the morning; the water quietly breaking over a small rock is the loudest thing around.
...And so as for my Cabo Frio story, that’s the conclusion. It was fun, interesting, beautiful, and relaxing. But, this is not the end of the adventure...

The never ending adventure: Part 1

11-28-09
10:52a.m.
On our way to Cabo Frio
This is the second bus of today that we’ve taken. I woke up at 6:30 in the morning, took a shower, are breakfast and we left São João del-Rei at 8:00. Hour and a half later, we arrived in Barbacena. 1.5 hrs down, 6.5 hrs to go.

11-29-09
5:44a.m.
As I expected, I woke up an hour before my alarm went off.. Guess I’ll start writing from where I left off. We reached Cabo Frio, then took another bus to Arraial do Cabo (only like 10min). Nice little town, not what I expected but seemed fun. Walked around until we found a decent hotel at a decent price and dropped off our stuff. After getting comfortable, we went off to find the beach. Eventually, we found it; completely deserted and dark, it was night time by then. We took a nice nighttime stroll in the water and played a little in the sand. Susan kinda got stung by a tiny jellyfish, nothing serious. On our way back, we stopped at a nice little wood oven pizzeria to eat, then proceeded back to the hotel to go to bed. As for today? I’ll probably let Susan sleep for another hour or two before we set off on our adventure. Our plan is to go on this hike to what seems like a nice, secluded beach. All of this was planned off of Google Earth so no idea what we’re going to find...

11-29-09
7:21p.m.
Sippin a caipirinha on the beach.

11-30-09
5:37a.m.
Watching the sunrise.

11-30-09
9:44a.m.
Even though I’m writing this as I go in a journal, I still can’t keep up with this trip...
We’re on a bus now, waiting for it to leave to Rio de Janeiro. No, not Barbacena, not São João, but Rio. Why? Because we kind of missed our first bus... But, this isn’t what you want to read, you want to hear about yesterday. Well, again, I guess I’ll start from where I left off from last time. After finishing that that last entry, I went back up to the room to get a few more hours of sleep. After waking up a second time and getting ready, we took off for the beach. The first beach that we hit was nice but we were just using it as a landmark to get us to the real thing. And so we got our feet wet and walked on to our final destination. We walked probably around half the town before coming to the entrance of the mountain we needed to hike to get to our beach. After a nice, long, steep, hot, hike up the mountain, we finally got to see the other side of the mountain and oh what a site it was:




We walked around that side for a while until realizing that being out in this heat with no water and not knowing when the next time we could find shelter was not the greatest idea. And so we turned back to find something to drink. On our way back down, we noticed a a sign for a restaurant and decided to try to find it. Well after a about a mile of walking in the heat, we started thinking that maybe trying to find this place wasn’t such a good idea given the circumstances. So we started waving down cars to see if they knew anything or had any suggestions. After a while, one car did stop and ended up giving us a ride all the way to the beach. God, that AC felt nice, so did those water bottles we chugged when we got there, only problem was, there wasn’t a beach here. “So, where’s the beach?” “You walk down that path there.” said the man selling the water. “Right, okay” I thought to myself. The path looked quite treacherous. It was almost like rock climbing though a forest. Bot eventually, the forest thinned, and then, at last, we found it. I’m no professional writer but I’m sure even a person like Thoreu couldn’t describe the beauty of this place. And so:



Heh, even the picture doesn’t even do it justice... And so we swam here for a few hours, built a sand, wall? Took lots of pictures and video, and generally had a wonderful time. After having our fair share of fun in the sun, we decided to explore the rest of this little peninsula. So we hiked back up the mountain path and headed further along the dirt road. It was amazing, after every curve, it just seemed to get more and more beautiful. That was, until we hit the grand finale: The top of the world! From here, we could see the ocean on our left, the peninsula in front, the little ‘mini-gulf’ with our beach to our right, and an island to our backs...........