All my friends here advised me not to take the 22 hour bus to Rio because its one of the most dangerous cities in the world so I paid R$80 more to take the plane. I guess I got a good deal since its the holidays. I arrived and it was late and dark out so I thought it would be safer to get a taxi that's associated with the airport. Of course with that relationship, I had to pay more. Apparently R$30 more! I paid a R$62 taxi ride that usually costs $30? Oh well, at least I was safe right?
The first night everyone met up at a restaurant, almost all the trainees (people doing their internships in Brazil from different parts of the world) were there. Just the Dutch girls were missing. I was SOO happy to see everyone, mostly Eric (from Canada) and Lyn (from Austrailia) because I knew them best out of the people there. Then all 8 of us decided to go to Lapa (an old area of Rio known for their bars and dance clubs). We went to Democraticos, a famous club for dancing Samba. We had a lot of fun and I learned to kinda Samba so for those that are expecting me to be pro when I get back, be warned.
The next day we wake up not sure if our host was still asleep or had gone to school but my friend, Lyn and I knew one thing, that we wanted to go to the Beach today! We had no idea where to get the bus or which one we should take but with her Portuguese we managed to get ourselves there to meet up with the Estonia girls. I was so excited I was probably doing somersaults inside. I hadn't been to a real beach since I was 16 in New Brunswick? I can't remember which ocean I was in that time but this time I got to play in the Atlantic Ocean!!! It was just a gorgeous site. I wanted a tan so badly but the sun wasn't very strong that day and so the tan wasn't very evident. It was hilarious because it seemed like every vendor on the beach had approached our little group. Me and my pale legs probably told them we weren't from around there. After the beach, we decided to go to the Jardin Botanico (Botanico Gardens) after the beach since it was only R$4 and we heard it was pretty.
At night we went to Bukowski, a place that was a nicer version of the kildare house and The Loopo put together. It was basically a house turned into a bar with 80's music and some alternative music playing. I of course didn't know most of the songs but my attitude was to have fun so I just danced along. When we were leaving they started playing all my songs that I love to listen to on 89x (an alternative station in Windsor/Canada). Darn it! Anyways, it was late.
On Saturday we went to Corcovado, the huge Jesus Statue. It was like being in Heaven. There were clouds everywhere and it was just beautiful. As the day went on we were able to see more of the city and got a good view of some of the landscape. I never got to see Maracana (the world's largest soccer stadium) but I did see the top view of it. I wish I got to see a game being played there!!! Anyways, because the Corcovado is on a mountain, we drove by a lot of favelas( hillside neighbourhoods where all the poor people live). They are VERY dangerous because a lot of them have gun fights and a lot of violence there. Then we went to Santa Teresa to have lunch. We ate in this cute restaurant that had live music playing and I had shrimp with rice and real mango juice. This was the life. hehe The atmosphere was awesome, I felt like I was in Europe or something. Afterwards we realized we were really late to go to Pao de Acucar (Sugar loaf) to see the sunset. My friend, Patricia ended up driving 110 km/h in in the 80 km/h zone to race the sun so we could get a good view. We get there and there are about 150 people in line!!! But thanks to her connections (her dad's a tour guide and was randomly there) and jumped in front of the line and bought us tickets:) We were super lucky! We caught the last glimpse of the sun as we were riding up the tram to get to the first peak of the mountain. Then raced to the 2nd tram to get to the higher mountain with a better view. This sight was even better then the one we saw at the corcovado. Especially with the changing colour of the sky. It was just gorgeous. We stayed up there for an hour and then not waiting to make our host wait so long, we went back down to go home. After our daily nap at 6pm, we went out again to Lapa and who do we see but 2 of the guys from the Samba club! We asked them for recommendations and found a place that was cheap where we met up with the Dutch girls and Eric and his friend. It was AWESOME. They played everything from Samba, to Forro, to Funky (Brazilian funk), to American music and stuff like "Do the Twist"! hehe It was so much fun.
Sunday was the last day for the trainees to be together. We got to see the Estonia girls during the day at Ipanema beach and as Lyn left to go home Eric and his friends came and we stayed till the sunset.
Monday was my last day in Rio but that will be a separate entry because it was the day I was in Rio all by myself since everyone left to go home and my host was busy at school. Stay tuned...
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