Rio Day One - February 21st

We are back from Rio. Instead of lambasting you all with one big, long blog with a whole bunch of Rio stories all at once, Boy has suggested I split up my entries and post them day by day. I think this is a wonderful idea...so, over the next 12 days I will post our Rio adventures as they occurred. Happy reading!

Our Rio trip started out a bit bumpy, as the cab Nancy had called for to arrive at 4:45 didn't show up. After a call to dispatch, she was told it was on it's way. 5am the cab shows (she's supposed to be at my house by this point), and part way it breaks down. Cabbie thinks it's either a mechanical problem, or out of gas. Um...I think you have to put in the gas for it to work, wonderbrain. After some deliberation (Nancy had to tell him 2 or 3 times to call dispatch to send another cab - not really sure what he thought they were going to do hanging out on a street corner at 5am, but he didn't seem keen on having another cab sent) at around 5:15 they get to my place. At the airport, we find that despite asking our travel agent to reserve us window seats, we find that no seats have been reserved for us at all...not that big a deal until you realize that the flight is completely full, and un-reserved seats are the first to get bumped on an overbooked flight. We weren't bumped, but I wasn't pleased with the prospect that we could have been.

After many long hours of flying, sitting in airports and flying again (it's not easy to kill 6 hours in the secure area of an airport...thank goodness for walkie-talkies and pointless range testing...can you hear me now?...and pocket-sized Cranium) we arrive in Rio noon Tuesday. In total, house to hostel took about 26 or 27 hours. Ah...the hostel. We knew from photos on their website that the hostel was small. What we didn't know was that it was the size of a single-family dwelling into which they fit 63 adult bodies. As you can imagine, the space was...confined. We had a 4-bed dorm. A typical twin bed is apx 6 feet by 3 feet. Our room had two sets of twin-sized bunks, and was a grand total of apx 9 feet by 8 feet (I may even be overestimating here). I cannot imagine living in that confined a space with 3 strangers! Our 5th travel mate Jang was in a 16-bed dorm. I never did get a change to check it out, but it was apparently just as cozy.

After storing our bags below our beds and changing into shorts and tees, we braved the mid-day heat of 34C for a walk around the neighbourhood. We found some lunch and wandered down to the beach to eat. After a little while longer wandering around, we decided we were likely to melt, so we chose to head to the mall. Little did we realize that the mall was a long walk away, through much heat and dank smelly traffic tunnels. And all uphill. Finally we reached the mall and cooled off a bit in the lovely airconditionedness of it. There had to be at least 5 ice cream places in the mall, and McDonald's even had a separate counter for it's ice cream. Finally deciding to brave the heat once more, we headed home for an early night, with a stop in at the grocery store for water and fruit. On our way out, we hit a tropical rainstorm. For those who have never been in a tropical rainstorm, it is like a normal rainstorm, only the raindrops are gigantic and there are many more of them. Boy and I walked the 1.5 blocks home and were drenched before we crossed the first sidewalk. There were rivers running down the street. It was wonderful!

We were all in bed by 8pm with plans to be up by 8am for breakfast then brief morning touring. I had to be back in the hostel by 11am to meet with the dude who had originally booked us at the hostel - he no longer worked there and had left the bookings in a mess. As the hostel had no written confirmation of our deposit, I had asked him to meet me at the hostel at 11 in the morning to get me the bank papers so I could settle the bill. We were awoken at 10 by a phone call. Dude had already been hemming and hawing trying to get me to go to his new workplace to pick them up, and now here he was on the phone, and he wanted to drop the papers off TOMORROW morning. I lost it on him, telling him I was only around for 10 days and didn't have the time to be hanging out at the hostel day after day waiting for him to grace me with his presence. I told him to get his ass there by 11, with or without the papers, and explain the situation to the current staff. When I went back to the room, I asked Nancy how we had managed to sleep through her alarm...and she told me it was 10pm, not 10am. Oops. Oh well, he got there at 11 (pm), nothing was truly straightened out, but I told him to just drop off the papers the next day when I was out, so I didn't have to wait around anymore. Spent the rest of the night sleeping badly, as by then some partiers had come home, and our room opened into the foyer - noisy!

Wow...long post! Tune in tomorrow for day 2!!