We arrived in Rio late, around 11 at night. We got a cab and told him to go to our unknown hotel in our unknown location. He looked at the address and told us he knew about where it was so we took off. After a nice hour long cab drive through the industrial side of rio, around the bay, downtown rio, and finally up a steep, curvy path up to the top of a hill, we arrived to our "hotel". There were no signs, nothing looking hotel-like, just looked like somebody's house. We rang the doorbell of the house that was supposed to be our hotel. A few minutes later, a man appeared saying: "You must be Jean!" So we went in… We learned that this was the right spot; a very nice, tucked-away, bed & breakfast. We had a drink with the owner and he showed us to our 'house?' It was across the street and we had a full kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, the works… We later learned that this place wasn't a regular place to be rented out, it's just the people that lived there were away and wanted to make some extra money. So after unpacking and checking out the beautiful view, we went to bed.
Thursday, New Years Eve
The first order of business today was getting Susan at the bus station. two busses and a few hours of waiting later, we found each other. We went straight back so that she could drop off her stuff. At around 5ish, we went across the street to the main hotel to have champagne with the other tenants and just hang out talking about what our plans were for the night. Two hours later, we left on our adventure to Copacabana; one of the most crowed places in the world for new years. Step one was to get food. Well the only thing we found was this little asian restaurant. We were the only people there. Then we proceeded to the nearest subway to go to Copa. Packed crowded and uncomfortable, we got there only to find that we needed to walk about 10 blocks to get to the beach. Even that far away though, it was super crowded. After shuffling through ridiculous amounts of people we got there. I heard later on that there were two million people just on the beach that night. I think they understated. We walked around for a while until we finally found a nice spot the watch the fireworks. Little did we know we were pretty much dead center for the show. It was a wonderful show; imagine a fire work show, thats what came out of one boat in Rio, and there were I think around five of them. Now imagine the biggest sporting event you've gone to, what we heard was like a goal or a touchdown in the main event, but for 3 miles wide.
(A few little snippets of what the fireworks were like...)
After the show, we didn't really stick around so we just headed back to the hotel to drink with whoever else had come back from there escapades. We were the first ones home to everyone else's surprise who showed up later saying they'd lost a shoe or the subway line was horrible. Not for us, we kind of cut the entire line, weaved through people, and that was that. After having a few drinks, we went to bed.
Friday
Having gone to bed pretty late the privies night, we also woke up late. Didn't really do anything during the day except go to the pool and hang out in there garden/jungle. Later that night though, the hotel owners invited us to go to a party with them. What a strange concept… So there's this guy who owns a chain of jazz clubs in Rio, what makes him famous and his clubs successful is there location. Honestly, the drinks were mediocre and the food could barley pass as edible. But the view? The way to get there? Just the general idea? Impressed… So we left the hotel in two sets of cabs and met at the bottom of this other mountain in Rio. We then took an unmarked white bus up this slope of Rio ghetto also know as a fovea. Aside from the sketchy-ness of the place, it was actually quite interesting. Then when we got out of the bus, we had to walk the last few blocks because the alleys were to small for any kind of car. Although the insides of the houses looked decent, the outsides were dirty, falling apart, and crowded. We get to the place to find out it's called "The Maze". At first I thought they just called it that because it was like a maze to get here but then I learned that this place, the owners house, is itself a maze to some extent. It was a very "alice in wonderland" kind of place with disproportionate rooms, dead-ends, and secret corders. We stayed for a while but then took off cause it was actually kind of boring. We left with this other couple and decided that we should go get some food before going home. So we ate as much as we could and went to the hotel.
Saturday
Today was check out Rio day. We planed to go around and check out downtown, the beaches, and the malls. So we started by taking a tram down our mountain to the center of the city. We then walked around a deserted downtown seeing how it was the week end. Ate lunch and headed for the beach. We walked along the one of the beaches and then a boardwalk around Flamenco. Then one of those things that you never expect, never prepare you happened to us. Strangely enough, the beginning happened to me as if through a slideshow. Slide one: I am smiling, enjoying the ridiculous heat but I am looking at my mother and behind her, there is a six inch blade behind her. "hmmm, there's something wrong with this picture." Slide two: my thoughts are: "I will teach you how to defend against knives but when it comes down to it, your life is never worth a camera or a few bucks, give them what they want and leave." (Jay Elson, my jujitsu teacher when I was around 15 years old) My vision is that off this guy with knife in his left hand down and his right hand holding on to my mom's purse, my mom at the other end holding on to the other end of her already cut strap testing her courage against a blade. Slide three: my thoughts are now calm and collected, I understand the situation, I know only to just be aware and go with whatever this guy wants. My sight reveals Him walking towards Susan and her just holding out her purse for him. Slide four: He's crossing the street and a slow sprint, Susan to my left and my mother in front yelling. All I think is that could of gone worse, good, we're alive and well. But that's not what was on my mom's mind. She wanted her stuff back, and she wanted it bad. As she was starting to go after him I realized that I had two choices, I could either try to convince my mom not to go even though she was quite determined or I could go after the guy myself. I immediately knew that if they went without me going first, it could turn to disaster real quick. So I sprinted after the guy. I crossed three busy streets trying to gain as much distance on the guy and loose Susan and my mom as much as possible. Maybe I read to many books on war strategy but my plan was not to confront him face to face but to take him on his flank, use surprise, as he did, to my advantage to at least disarm the guy. I wasn't angry with him, I just wanted to get the stuff back so my mom would quit bitchin. So after a few failed flanking maneuvers and a good ten minutes of dead running after the guy. He now understood that if he wanted to get away, he would have to something drastic to loose us. he crossed back over the streets and when I caught up to him on the other side, he was in the water. A few minutes later, mom and Susan caught up. We watched him swim, along with a steadily growing group of locals. Everyone shouting at him different things in different languages. After the police were called, all we could do is watch while he was swimming further and further away. We decided that I would stay and wait for the police and keep an eye on him while my mom and susan went back to see if they could retrieve anything he may have dropped or thrown away. I watched the guy slowly swim to a boat, take a raft from it and start rafting to the other side of the shore. The police arrived and well, I wasn't to reassured by there presence. The place where he was heading looked about a mile away and he was getting closer. When he was about five minutes out, the cops speed around to try to get there before he did, I looked around, and knew what I had to do. The police were going to be to slow, and the people over there didn't know what was going on so I told one of the guys next to me: "hey, I'm running there, tell my mom." And then I ran. Assuming it was a mile, my high school gym teacher would of been proud running it in under six minutes. I was the first there arriving as he was coming to shore. He saw me and started going behind the boat, 3.4 seconds later, two police officers arrive running. One shoots a round into the ground as the other is yelling: "Get the fuck over here!" He knew it was over, and so he slowly waded through the water over to us. One officer grabbed his right arm while the other officer smacked him in the head with the butt of his gun taking him down to the ground. They handcuffed him while another local arrived screaming with rage about how he was such a disgrace to Rio and Brazil and what not. Once he was handcuffed, the local smacked him again in the head knocking him out for a few seconds and you could see a small smile on the police officers faces. We brought him to the neighborhood police station only to find out that we needed to go to the tourist police station. After arriving there we filled out paperwork for a good five hours but at least the cops offered us a ride home. Lights and sirens blaring, they took us home. Back at the hotel, we then proceeded to drink a lot of booze and try to make the best of what had happened. We were all safe and got all of our stuff back, wet and mostly ruined but we were safe. Guess we did see Rio at it's best; one bad apple for every fifty good and helpful ones.
Sunday
Unfortunately, today we were leaving after not to much sightseeing in Rio but at least it was to go to a super nice place. We spent a good four hours in the bus station because we didn't know when the next bus to Búzios. It was a nice trip there and on arriving in a confusing location, walked to our hotel. We unpacked our stuff and walked out to the marina to find a place to eat. We ate pizza and drank Sangria watching a cruise ship come close by to check us out and leave. Went back and went to bed.
Monday
I woke up at 5 in the morning to video tape the sunrise like I did in Arraial but when I got outside, it was cloudy and misty.
So I decided to walk around a bit since I was awake. On my journey around the marina, I ran into some leftovers from the night before. Two guys drunk and high, still drinking and smoking, trying to sell me some weed. I did however see some cool sights regardless of clouds. When I went back, I found Susan and we went and ate breakfast. When we came back up, we woke my mom up to start the day. Because we didn't have any time, Susan and I went swimming while mom went around to check out the neighborhood. After a while, we went back to the room and packed our stuff. After a long 2 hour confrontation between my mom and the manager debating prices, she finally told Susan and I that we were going to wait for a rental car and just drive back to São João. We did have like 3 hours to wait though so we decided to at least go see one of the beaches. They were all pretty nice but kind of crowded. After going back to the hotel, we took a cab to the rental car place and drove all the way back to São João. After dropping Susan off at her place, my mother and I drove back to mine only to be welcomed by one of the most obnoxious and loud sounds I've ever heard. It was late, maybe around 1 in the mooring but god damn, that alarm for my house is loud. Hell, I didn't even know that the alarm system worked. After being scared shitless and Angela turning it off, we finally got all of our stuff in.
Tuesday
We started off the day by buying our bus tickets to Belo the following day. Then we dropped off the car and walked to Susan's house. We hung out there for a little bit and then left back to my place because my mom had packing to do. That night we went out to a cafe and had dinner and went to bed relatively early that night.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Woke up early, got a cab to the bus station, got on the bus to Belo Horizonte. got to the bus station, got on another bus to the airport, said our fair-wells, and I hoped on a bus back to the bus station forty five minutes later. Got to the bus station, got another bus to São João, and walked home. She left Brazil around 10 that night and returned to the States well.
