Rio!

We slept in a little bit in an attempt to catch up on some lost sleep, but still tried to get an early start to the bus terminal to catch a bus to Rio de Janeiro. Once we were packed up, I needed to call my credit card company and get them to FedEx me a new credit card to the hostel we would be staying at in Rio since my card had recently had fraudulent activity on it and they needed to close the current account. I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with them going over the details of where to send it and what other countries they should put on the travel advisory for my account in the next few months. It has been a little complicated to figure out how to get a new card since we are never in one place for very long and it takes a few days for them to send the card internationally, but since we are spending some time in Rio and then returning to the city for our flight to New Zealand, it gives me two opportunities to pick it up depending on when it arrives.
Once that was all sorted out, we took the metro to the bus terminal where we could buy tickets to Rio. This terminal was different than the one we had come into from Iguazu Falls as apparently the city is so large, they have multiple terminals, each only serving certain destinations. There was a bus leaving 20 minutes after we arrived, so we bought our tickets and quickly grabbed a sandwich at Subway to have as our lunch on the journey. This bus called "Expresso Brasileiro" was very nice, nothing like the terrible bus we had taken into Sao Paolo.
It was only a 6 hour ride so I spent some time catching up on the shows I had downloaded from iTunes while Alyssa tried to sleep. When we arrived, the tour agency in the bus station recommended that we take the bus which would be $7 Reals instead of the $60+ Reals it would cost to take a cab. We waited and waited and finally after an hour and a half our bus showed up. It was so annoying but I couldn't justify the expense of a cab when the bus was so much cheaper. The bus was able to drop us off just one street down from our hostel and we were easily able to navigate from there. The hostel we were staying at was called "El Misti" and I instantly liked the ambiance although we were the only women staying there. We were going to be in a 9 person dorm room (so 3 giant 3-bed bunk beds) which Alyssa was not thrilled about, but luckily most of the people were leaving that evening and it would only be us and one other guy in the dorm that night. Alyssa began meeting everyone in the hostel while I unpacked. She is very good about being friendly and making people like her right off the bat which is a valuable skill. I think I take a little bit longer to warm up.

The French boys we had met in Florianópolis were already in Rio and had invited us to meet them for dinner at 8:00pm. We didn't even get to our hostel until 8:30pm so we obviously weren't going to be able to join them for dinner but since we really had no bearings for the town, Martinho offered to come pick us up and take us to a club in Lapa (a neighborhood in Rio known for its nightlife). We agreed and he picked us up at 9:45pm. Thomas had apparently drank too much during the day and threw up outside the cab on the way from the restaurant (a very responsible 33 year old, lol) so Martinho had taken him back to their hotel before picking us up.
We went to a club that he had gone to a few nights earlier that had a great live band. We were starving but sadly the place only served Brazilian bar food, so we had to eat fish balls (deep fried cod) and shrimp puffs to balance out our caipirinha intake.

The band was awesome and we all went to the dance floor to dance and listen to the Samba. Martinho teaches dance back in Geneva and is an amazing dancer. He rotated dancing with Alyssa and I, which was a lot of fun because you didn't really have to do anything, he could lead you around the dance floor and make you look like you knew what you were doing even though you didn't have a clue.

After a few hours, I was getting a little annoyed with the very persistent Brazilian men and decided we should leave. Apparently people in Rio operate a little differently and they think you barely need to speak to each other before deciding to make out and go home with each other. I was not into this idea and could only make this known so many times before I had to get out of there, lol. It was good to get home a little early though (it was 3am) so that we could get some sleep and explore Rio the next day.

Posted with Blogsy