rio I

this entry (and all those after this) were written a long time ago. i had obstacles to gain access to the internet while in rio and sao paolo. then i got lazy. lol. but finally i am posting them.

August 7, 2004-- we (O and i) arrived in rio on thursday morning. i had no desire to come here. however, jason (my buddy from law school) wanted to visit me and he insisted that we meet in rio.

my initial plan was to travel down to rio solo. but somehow my inquiry for info on rio turned into an invitation to O. i am still trying to figure that one out. normally i am comfortable facilitating connections between friends from different groups. but i think it is usually a good idea not to do so when travelling. but O was travelling to Rio and she was very excited about joining me.

sidenote: i like O. she is a very smart person. she is also a closet freak, which makes her fun at times. but she is not a "fun" leader. meaning her lack of "fun" energy puts the burden on me to find the fun. does this make any sense? anyway.

the cab driver from the airport ripped us off. he charged the "normal" set fee. which came out to about $30!!! meu deus. he also tried to bait us into going to a different hotel. now already i am paranoid about rio. i mean i didn't see that movie "city of god", but i have heard about some crazy things going on here. just like any big city. cab guy told us that our hotel was next to a favela. a favela is like a big community of homemade homes. they have a bad rap in brasil. but they are plentiful indeed. so i told him that were lived in salvador for the past two months and were very familiar with favelas. which is true.

when he dropped us off at he failed to point out the favela. big fat liar!!!

we had reservations at mar ipanema in the muito famous area of ipanema. the hotel is pretty standard. no frills. very small living quarters. but whatever. it is only $45 a night each. after unpacking we took a very scenic cab ride up to barra de tijuca where jason's hotel is. the road out to barra reminds me of the blue ridge parkway (which is a scenic road through the blue ridge mountains in virginia, nc, tennessee, and georgia.) very, very beautiful. you can see the big blue ocean with white waves crashing against the often rocky coast line. there's all sorts of little oddly shaped mountains in the ocean and on land. not as many people out on the beach as i imagined. in fact. the beaches were virtually empty. but it is winter.

barra is a very wealthy area of rio. it kinda jolted me to see modern, fancy homes and hotels as you don't see this in salvador.

jason's hotel is very nice and modern. it has been two years since i last saw him (law school graduation). but we usually keep in touch all the time and i feel like we had no feelings of awkwardness. for O it was love at first sight. but that is all guys.

we ate lunch in the restaurant in jason's hotel. then took a walk along the beach. rio's beaches are very wide with lots of sand. then there is a big wide sidewalk between the road and the beach. this is for pedestrians and folks on bicycles. pretty cool.

later in the afternoon we went up Pao de Acucar. better known by gringos as sugarloaf mountain. it was pretty damn scary going up in a heavy cart on a light string. but at least it was quick. lol.

from the top you can see a lot of rio. copacabana. ipanema. tons of favelas. the marina. the sun was setting and the water appeared golden. jesus (the statue of) was way across the city on top of an even taller mountain. even with my super zoom (10x) i was only able to get a small version of him along with some radio towers that are located to his left. lol.