Since landing yesterday morning, Rio has proved to be everything I remember it to be and so much more. Flight from New York to Rio went very smooth. I was fortunate enough to have two empty seats next to me on the plane. After arriving I flew through passport control and soon met up with my friend from Denver who was coming in on a different flight. After a quick cab ride from the international airport we arrived at our lovely hostel in Santa Teresa.
Our hostel is located along a beautiful cobbled road that runs through the hills of Santa Teresa with an incredible view of the Catedral de São Sebastião. Our hostel, though huge, is dug straight into the hillside, requiring a good 50 steps just to reach the reception area, a difficult trip with all of our bags. Both the guests and employees of the hostel have been great and our first night we roomed with an awesome assortment of people from France, Norway, and Germany.
View of the Street Outside Our Hostel in Santa Teresa
Though my spoken Portuguese still remains terrible, even being here for a single day has corrected some stupid but vital problems in my speech. I unexpectedly received a call from my host mother, who I had emailed several days prior, and in my flustered state I can only imagine how broken and incomprehensible I was. Nevertheless, I hope that I managed to get my major points across and I was able to understand most of my host mothers questions. I set the date and time for me to move into my home stay and I feel relieved to have finally made contact with my host mother who seems extremely nice.
Upon trying to unpack I had trouble opening the lock on my bag. I didn’t really need anything out of it so my friend and I headed off to explore. Instead of heading down we climbed higher into the hills getting some of the best views of Rio I’ve seen yet. We eventually worked our way back down to Centro where we stumbled upon an awesome little cafe where I feasted on a delicious sanduíche carne assada com um chopp de Brahma.
Upon making our way back to the hostel the night manager manged to find a set of pliers to break the lock on my bag that I had still not been able to open. Upon breaking into what I thought was my bag I swiftly realized that in my haste I had taken someone else’s bag! As Murphy’s Law goes, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The bag I took was identical to my own down to the very same lock! A quick call to AA confirmed that the airport had my bag and I would just need to run to the airport to do the switch. As I breathed a sigh of relief my friend and I grabbed a cab from the street and headed back to the airport to switch my bags. Though a rather stupid and costly mistake the cab ride to the airport proved to be an awesome one as my friend and I conversed with the coolest cab driver I’ve had yet.
Upon getting back to the hostel my friend and I settled down to a couple of well deserved cold beers on the rooftop terrace of our hostel. Though it was certainly a crazy day I wouldn’t have done anything over if I could. Life in Brasil just always seems to work out that way.
Cheers,
Mike
