Day 60
Originally published at MAMiKO!. Please leave any comments there.
Sexta-feira, 17 de agosto
- I woke up and got ready to go to Centro with Sarah and Tony. We all split to go our separate ways. I had to go to the LAN office to extend my flight, but I didn’t. It’s going to cost me around $300 to change the flight, so I had to think about it.
- When I walked out, Sarah was walking towards me so we decided to do a little shopping in Centro together. I bought two dresses for around R$60. They are so cute and comfortable.
- Then we ate at the vegetarian kilo buffet (everyday for the past three days). I love it!!!
- After that, we headed back to Santa Teresa. I washed some of my clothes and packed as much as I could for the Ilha Grande weekend trip with Dasha from Moscow (who also works for Deloitte) and Colm from Ireland.
- Colm came over around 6PM when I was washing my dishes from dinner to tell me that we had to leave soon. So I grabbed my backpack and headed out to Casa Aurea to pick up Dasha. Then Colm asked me, “How much money are you bringing?” I realized I didn’t bring enough cash, so I told him I would meet him at the taxi stop. I ran back to the office and grabbed some cash. I headed out again with my anti-pick-pocket backpack. I never realized how difficult it was to walk on the uneven cobblestone streets when I have some extra weight on me. I usually don’t carry anything around with me in Rio, so this heavy backpack made quite a significant difference. So significant that I tripped and fell on my hands twice on my way to Casa Aurea.
- So we headed out to the Rodoviaria Bus Station, which is located right next to my project. The taxi was around R$11 (R$5 less than the taxi back from the same station when I came back with Tony-that taxi driver took a long way for us tourists). We missed the 7PM bus, so we bought tickets for the next one half an hour later. The bus was to Angra Dos Reis for a few hours.
- During the whole ride, the Brazilians in the back seat were very excited about Ilha Grande. They continuously sang throughout the ride. They made up songs about Ilha Grande, sang a bit of samba, more random songs, and finally, Bob Marley songs. I was napping comfortably in the reclined chair when Colm woke us up when the bus had stopped. We weren’t in Angra Dos Reis. We were in the middle of a street with a lot of grass and a couple of people. It was dark. We were in Mangaratiba, which is supposedly nicer than Angra Dos Reis. Colm was speaking Portuguese to the bus driver, and Colm directed us out the bus. We walked out the bus (as I was half awake) and waited by another bus stop. A bus came and the old bus drove off. This bus that came wasn’t the right one. The bus driver told us to walk further down for the next bus stop. The bus we need would stop there apparently. So we walked with our backpacks in the dark night. We waited. We got impatient so we started walking. Then, the bus came so we ran to it. We got in and paid. We were going somewhere closer to Centro.
- We saw a hotel sign during the bus ride and decided to get out to stay there. The bus wouldn’t stop at first, because he wanted to make sure we hit Centro. Luckily, he understood that we wanted to get out for the hotel so he let us out. We walked a little bit to get to the hotel. It was I think R$20 for the night.
- The bunk bed looked strange. It looked like a regular wooden bed on top of another wooden bed. I shook it a bit to make sure it wasn’t what it looked like. Otherwise, I’d break my body if the top bed fell on top of me while I sleep on the bottom bed. Luckily, the two beds were nailed together, so we were safe.
- We headed out for dinner (number two for me). We walked to Centro. We had a MASSIVE seafood dish with rice, fries, fish, and shrimp. It was so massive that the three of us couldn’t even finish it.
- We headed back to the hotel to sleep.