POA
After an ok 6h bus ride, I arrived in Porto Alegre (POA) thinking of finding a hostel and crashing for a day, before moving on to Uruguay. To be honest, I wasn´t looking forward to POA at all and just felt like moving on. One reason why I thought that was not hearing back from Marie-Eve, a Quebequoise who I contacted through Couchsurfing and who had said she'd offer me a couch. After a few emails I had given up and was mentally prepared to find a cheap hostel and not expect much of the whole POA experience. When I got to the bus station, I decided to try my luck and give Marie-Eve a call, hoping there was a slight chance she'd still put me up for a day or two. As it turned out, there was a problem with the CS email service and Marie-Eve didn`t receive my last few emails, yet was happy to offer me a comfortable couch. My mood lightened up in no time.
Marie-Eve (right)
The first night we grabbed some dinner at Marie's University's cafeteria. The food was alright and considering the 2.6R$ (€1) cost, very good value. After that we headed over to the cinema, joined by some of Marie's friends. We saw 'Volver', the new Almodóvar film. Being quite exhausted by the nuit blanche in Floripa, the travel and concentrating on the Spanish in the movie, I fell asleep during the last 5 minutes of it.
The next day Marie took me on a tour around the city, which was enjoyable, yet without any touristic highlights.
Mercado publico
During the walk, Marie met up with a hippie friend of her and took her to a crafts shop where she treated her to some new tools and stuff to make earrings and other craftwork with. Later, we went to another good value buffet and Marie treated her hippie friend and her son to a nice meal.
I spent my last day in town hanging out with these guys... the two guys on the left we randomly met and turned out to be tourist police officers from the North of Brazil, who were in town for a tourism conference. Bruno, the guy on the left, served in the French Armée Étrangère, so he spoke French as well. The other guy, in the yellow shirt, was a Swiss couchsurfer who was in town for the same conference, but who came to Brazil to learn Portuguese and do an internship with a Brazilian brand of skate shoes, which he did the PR for in Switzerland.
And so my days in POA came to an end, and my time in POA turned out like a lot more fun than I hoped for.