Goodbye Rio de Janeiro...

Today we will leave Rio and journey through the rest of this continent. It might seem silly after spending only a day in Rio, but we only have two months and a million things to see. Next stop Iguazu falls.

The day started very nice, by waking up at 5 a.m. it was a combination of jet lag and a bird that had an annoying alarm clock-like tweet right outside our window. (Or was it an alarm clock with a bird-like appearancesitting in the tree?)

Breakfast was delightful, with fresh fruits that I have never seen before, nice and healthy start.

We ventured out into the city to explore and If first impressions are anything to go by, then Rio is maybe not for me. Or perhaps it is just the area that we took a stroll throught that did not fit my perception of what the name of Rio de Janeiro promises. The atmosphere feels most of all hopeless and the borders between rich and poor seem to blur in the urban living chaos.

We ended up riding a tram back to the hotel for 60 cent(thats about 20 eurocent)including the thrill of watching school kids jumping on and off at full speed. There we hung around in hammocks drinking beer and eating cheesy puffs...and waited for the taxi to go to the airport again.

After surviving another Ayrton Senna worthy taxi driver performance with a major malfunction of a left front tire, we found out that our worthless piece of shit travel agency had made a mistake in the booking of our tickets, so that even thought our ticket said we where going to Iguazu falls, it was actually sending me toParaguay and Miriam to Iguazu. After a nice swipe of the visa I had a new ticket and a promise of going jihad on the ass of one travel agent.

Allan

Wehebben Rio dus weer achter ons gelaten en zijn nu in Foz Do Iguacu, het Braziliaanse stadje bij de Iguassu Falls. Onze indruk van Rio is inderdaaddat het erg chaotisch is,met veel vervallen huizen. We zijn in het centrum geweest en in de wijk Santa Teresa, wat de
'bohemian' wijk van Rio is. Op zich wel leuk om te zien hoor. Maar als wehier terug komen gaan we waarschijnlijk alle toeristische attracties af en hebben we vast een ander beeld van de stad.

Ik zit nog steeds een beetje in werk-mode en misschien dat we daarom al zofanatiek aan het schrijven zijn geslagen. Hebben we toch nog eenbeetje het idee dat we wat aan het doen zijn zo achter de computer...En het is leuk om de reacties te lezen. Maar ik hoop dat ik toch binnenkort in relax-mode zit (en niet meer denk: hoe zal het zijn bij MTV, hoe gaat het met Thessa?

XMiriam

The joys of travelling

When you start along journey, you kind of prepair yourself for long waiting times in airports, endless lines at the passport control and the ever so charming personnel who seem to hate every second of every day they spend ontheir job. One thing we did not prepare for, was the other passengers.

As we sat downand prepared ourselves to spend 10 hours in a horribly outdatedIberia plane, we are talkinginterior design from the seventies, we heard an almost hypnotic sound coming from the row behind us. It turnedout that there was a girl with extreme fear of flying who was conveniently sitting right behind us. She droned on with sobbing for 45 minutes straight until the plane finally started moving. Then she started screaming (great..just fucking great!) No puedo! No puedo!por favor! which roughtly translated means, I can´t do it...or we are all gonna diedepending on how she screamed it. At this point we found other seats further to the front of the plane...There we found a chinese elderly couple who seemed to communicate better while wearing headphones and screaming to each other. The joy...oh the joy.

On the bright side, we where now closer to one of the television screens...we imagined that we had to vote with the other passengers on what movie to see, but it wasn´t so democratic and we where first tortured with Eddie Murphys new Nickelodeon movie before watching Wolverine again, again and Star Trek that actually wasn´t that bad.

Finally in Rio, the cab driver had no clue on where our hotel was and stopped about 15 times to find out where to go. After shouting into his walkie mobile for a long time, and a small fight with a driver of another car we arrived and all our stress of travellingwas finally over when the nice lady of the house introduced us to the help yourself bar.

Cheers!

We zijn aangekomen in Rio! Het is allemaal nog een beetje onwerkelijk, en toen we net in de taxi door allerlei kleine straatjes met vervallen huizen scheurden (alle mobilisten hier zijn gek!) had ik het gevoel alsof ik het allemaal aan het dromen was.

Het hotel is super relaxed, met een mooi uitzicht over de stad.Een beetjejammer was dat ik een stap op het terras deed en ik gelijk werd aangevallen door een of ander vies en heeeeel groot beest... Maar goed, we gaan zo maar eens even de buurt verkennen. Kijken of er in de buurt nog wat leuke barretjes te vinden zijn. Onze reis is begonnen!

Liefs,
Miriam