The Update About Brazil (excluding Iguazu Falls)

So I´m gonna wait before I ever give Wake any praise again. Oh well. So we´re in Brazil now and it is amazing, but expensive on my backpacking budget! The luxuries of being in a developed nation are very welcome after Bolivia. Immediately upon crossing the border I knew we were in for a pleasant change of pace and scenery!

We crossed the border into Corumba, Brazil from Puerto Quijarro, Bolivia after the bumpiest ride of my life on my first ever passenger train. During meal time I had more rice and chicken in my lap and on the floor and seat around me than in my belly. This attracted some attention and stares from the Bolivianos around us. The train was fairly uneventfuly other than seeing a few Toucans as we bounced on down the line.

During the train ride we had sort of met the old lady sitting across the isle from us. She was from Uruguay and spoke English and was pretty funny. She reminded me of an old New Yorker widow that was full of wisdom and one liners. She also ate all of the food that I could not manage to man up for! Anyways, at the border, she came over to us after getting our exit stamps from Bolivia and hurried us into a taxi with her because she said it would be cheaper if we went into Corumba together. Lauren and I exchanged skeptical glances and asked if our Australian friend we had just met could ride with us. No was all she as she rushed us towards the taxi. It was amazing to ride in a taxi that would probably pass US inspections. This was a first in this continent. When we zoomed past Brazillian immigration Lauren and instantly started to worry that we were being smuggled into the country illegally. We both watch entirely too much Locked up Abroad to think that skipping immigration was a good thing. At this point we thought we were both going to have to do a lot of explaining to the Brazillian immigration officers. As it turned out you don´t have to get a stamp until you´re there for more than 24 hours so we were ok, but the awkwardness of the strange Uruguay lady, the speedy taxi driver, and Bolivia in general, made us really question our decision!

We got settled into our DUMP of a hostel in Corumba. Lauren took a nap and I flooded the bathroom trying to take a shower. The shower here was in a bathroom not made to have a bath or shower, but Hostelling International decided it best to just throw up a shower curtain and a electronic shower head to section off a 3ft by 4ft section of bathroom. There was nothing stopping the water from going into the rest of the bathroom. I don´t know why, but my whole life I have been the type to get water everywhere when I shower so I have to make sure I´m sealed in wherever I shower. Well between the shower and shaving in the sink that was as big as a cereal bowl, I managed to cover the floor in a 3 inch layer of water. Pretty amazing. After that I tried to go to sleep in the 100 degree dorm room that Lauren and I had to ourselves. 10 minutes into laying there, wondering when my brain was going to start boiling, I convinced Lauren that we needed to upgrade to and A/C room. It was the best $2.50 I ever spent. The following are a few more highlights of Hostelling International Corumba:

• Kitchen was infested with winged red ants. Looked deadly
• First non a/c room was infested with small ants until I unloaded a whole can of OFF around the door and floor. Problem solved
• John and Lauren´s combined portuguese vocabulary= not a damn word....The hostel workers english= non-existant
• claimed to have internet and cable. nope
• Most expensive hostel we stayed in so far
• Saving grace = they have frozen pizza in the grocery stores

We decided that the Pantanal of Brazil would better be seen on another trip, not during the dengue fever season, so we headed off to Sao Paulo. We traded a Dengue fever epidemic for the worst AIDS crisis outside of Africa. This is due to the high concentration of bisexual men here. Neither of us knew this before but we quickly learned when the majority of the couples we saw included two men. We stayed at a really cool ´Pousada´in the Italian area of Sao Paulo. This city is HUGE. There are 17 million people here. Thats twice as many as NYC+1 million. I kind of wanted to stay another day here to check out one of the largest gothic cathedrals outside of Europe and to take a tour of the Bovespa, Brazil´s stock exchange. Niether of us could wait to get to Rio so we hopped the shuttle up to the beach.

This was a beautiful ride. When we finally got off the interstate and started descending down into Rio de Janeiro, we came down a huge green rain forested mountain. There were waterfalls and natural orchids and huge banana trees. It was pretty amazing. Once into the outside of Rio we were met with a horrible looking city and we started to question the greatness we had expected here. After an hour or so of staring at slums, called favelas here, we made to the Bus station. This was also in a seedy area. We figured that taking a taxi would be the best bet to get to our hostel since we had our huge backpacks. Wrong! The asshole basically robbed us. 48 Reais to get to our hostel that we were only staying at for one night!!! Thats like a $24 taxi ride that only took 10 minutes. It was easily our shortest ride in all of Rio. That first night we stayed in the bohemian district, Santa Teresa. It was pretty cool because it was flanked by favelas but inhabited by the Asheville crowd. It was up in the hills with cobblestone streets running through the district. It had a real trolly cable car that ran through the street up past our hostel. I was pretty glad to only stay here one night as I don´t get along real well with the peaced out hippy crowd. There´s only so many times you can tell the bros you don´t wanna smoke with them or try some of their gnarly homemade vegan food.

The next morning we went to the Apartment we had rented for the week in Copacabana beach. This was the best score yet! Valeska, the lady that owned the apartment lived there and rented out bedrooms. She was an amazing host and arranged us a tour of the city for that day. A tour of the city in one day in Rio is a big task. There is sooooo much here to see. It really is an incredible city. First we went to the Christ Redeemer. A huge statue of christ that looks over the beaches, perched high on a mountain. This thing is incredible. It was named one the 7 wonders of the world in 2007. We also saw one of the biggest spiders I hope to ever see in the wild again. Next we went to Marancana stadium. Its a soccer stadium that was built for the World Cup in the 50´s. At the championship game that year, Brazil hosted Uruguay and 199,000 people were there in the stadium. Its a world record for a sporting event. They its the day Brazil went quiet because Uruguay won in the final minutes. They have since installed safety features and it now seats just under 100,000. The next stop on the tour was the Cathedral. Not really what I expected but extremely unique. It is a giant concrete pyramid. Meade Willis would be impressed with this giant hollow structure. It had stained glass going all the way to the top from the ground level. Definitely a wierd Cathedral. It was designed in the 60´s so who knows what they were thinking. The next cool stop was the Pao de Acucar, or Sugarloaf Mountain. I was realy excited to go here because I had heard so much about the views from up here. Upon arriving I saw the cable car that hung what looked like 1000 feet off the ground from a little cable and started having second thoughts! I´ve been on some cable cars I haven´t really liked before at ski resorts (squaw Valley, California and every single lift apperatus in the Alps) but this was different. I don´t know why, I am just skeptical of foreign safety precautions. I went up anyway and it was incredible. It made me realize that there is no other major city like this in the world. Giant green mountains, skyscrapers, rainforest, tropical beaches, 8 million people, I even saw some howler monkeys, all living harmoneously together. I´ll post some of my pictures I took from up there.

Next day we did the beach thing. We spend a couple hours down on Copacabana beach. It was really cool and I just kept thinking about how beautiful it was and amazing it is to sit in a city the size of NYC and feel like I´m in Hawaii. Rio de Janeiro should be on everyones´bucket list. Don´t stay too long though. The beaches up north are much more secluded and more tropical.

Christ Redeemer





Sketchy Cable Car to Pao de Açucar....probably 1000ft off the ground






Pao de Açucar








The strange Rio de Janeiro Cathedral







Huge Maracana Stadium





We are now in Curitiba, which is a pretty modern city with very clean architecture. We are going to Iguazu falls from here. We´ll have a new update soon. Leave some comments so I can know what you guys think and what kind of stuff ya´ll might wanna hear about.

-John