Brazil

The first day in Brazil, I got off the ship with my friends Danny, Peyton, and a few others.  We walked around for a bit, took the elevator to upper Salvador, and took in the sights.  Afterwards, I went back to the ship to meet for my class trip.  It was pretty cool to see the favelas, Portuguese for slums.  It was difficult to get a cab to the airport, and it ended up being about $35 but I had a fun time in the cab, jammin’ out with three locals.  I played my CD for them and they played theirs.  I got to the airport, got a beer, and Peyton, Nils, and Martin showed up shortly after.  We got on the plane and ordered free beers.  We took a blue bus to Ipanema, a beach area near Copacabana, upon arriving in Rio de Janeiro.  Eventually we found our friend Shannon’s apartment.  It was on the eighth floor of an apartment building; they rented it for the three nights they were there.  We dropped off our stuff and went to start drinking at a bar called Shennanigan’s.  It was there that we met two beautiful Brazilian girls and their friend.  Turns one of them had a private driver, so he took us around to some of the local clubs.  It was a crazy ride packing us all into that black Chevy Trailblazer. 
     The next morning, I woke up everyone because we had to get the day started.  We had all gone to sleep around 6AM, so it was a bit of a rough morning to say the least.  We had banana-chocolate crepes for breakfast, then caught the subway to Maracana stadium, once known as the largest stadium in the world, holding around 180,000.  After standing in line and figuring out that we couldn’t use our student ID’s to get a discount, we decided to come back later in the night to scalp tickets.  We caught a cab to Parque Nacional de Tijuca.  We got some drinks and I bought a delicious egg-cheese burger, then we headed into the park.  The waterfalls were absolutely gorgeous.  We saw a sign that said Prohibo Banho, which we could only guess meant no swimming.  We ran into two locals dudes in swimsuits who were walking by and told us to come in the water with them.  We were convinced and swam in in a mini whirlpool in a river above the falls.  It was so refreshing.  After talking to them for a while, they told us that night to stop by club 00.  We said we would and left the park.  We found a place to stay for that night, called Stone of a Beach, a cool hostel with a hip vibe.  We dropped off our stuff and headed for the game.  The game, Fluminense vs. Portuguesa, was really cool.  The fans were intense.  Everyone wore Fluminense gear, had flags, and were even lighting off flares in the stands.  One of the players with the last name Fred scored a hat trick.  That night we made it to 00, paid the expensive cover charge, and went in.  We tore up the dance floor.  All the locals were just bobbing back and forth while we were fist pumping and taking up a lot of space. 
     The next day we took a cab up to Christ the Redeemer, a giant art-deco sculpture at Corvocado, a mountain overlooking Rio.  Afterwards, not wanting to pay 10 Reais (Brazilian currency) each for a ride down the mountain, a guy finally told us that if we wanted to walk down, we could follow an abandoned railroad track all the way to the bottom.  We were sold.  It felt like we were in a movie.  Some parts were definitely a bit dangerous, but after about an hour, we made it all the way down.  On our last day in Rio, we checked out a market, got a few things and took the bus to our flight.  We got dinner at the ship and headed to a club called Madres.  After the ticket scalper misled us, we started a party in the street.  Eventually a pick-up truck started playing music and we started a dance party in the street.  I was dancing with some locals, pulling out my lines like, “Voce quer dancar?” which means 'Would you like to dance?' in Portuguese. At one point we were dancing like crazy on the truck bed, bouncing it up and down to the song, “I gotta feeling.”  The next day we went out, had some drinks, and got back on the ship.