So long Buenos Aires. Next stop, Rio de Janeiro!

Day 1- Our flight to Rio de Janeiro wasn't the prettiest but it was the cheapest. We had two layovers, one in Montevideo, Uruguay and another in Porte Alegre, Brazil. It wasn't super terrible but it wasn't the greatest either. We arrived in Rio around 8:00 pm (20:00 for non-Americans). Luckily for us, the airport was only a 15 minute drive away from our first hostel, Books. We checked into Books, got settled in, then decided to grab some cheap, quick food before starting our first night in Rio. The first thing we had to try was the Brazilian caipirinhas. I'm not even sure exactly what is in it but they are lethal. The term I would use to describe them would be "jet fuel". My California people know what I'm talking about. We walked around to a few different places and just took the scenery in. The vibe in Rio is different than in any other city. The people are happy, cheerful, and just want to have a good time. They also speak very fast and I have no idea what they are saying. The only word I know in Portuguese is "obrigado", which means, thank you. We called it a night around 2:30 am after picking up a late night meal from one of the street food vendors. The food was amazing and we didn't get sick, so I'll call that a win any day of the week.

Day 2- We woke up at about 9 am, had ourselves a little breakfast downstairs in our hostel before jetting off to Pedra da Gávea. We got picked up by our main man, Marcelo, who would be taking us to meet the boss man, Konrad. If you haven't seen my snapchats or Instagram then you probably have no idea where we are going. Well, today we will be hang gliding! Aaron and I have never been hang gliding before in our lives, but what better city to experience our first time hang gliding than Rio de Janeiro. It was amazing! I would highly recommend hang gliding in Rio if you get the chance. It was an incredible experience and Konrad is the man, really cool guy. He was nice enough to drop us off at this buffet that he recommended to us and it was amazing. It was called Zona Zen and you pay based on how much your plate weighs. It was a different experience for us because we have never done that before but, it was so good and worth every penny. Afterwards, Konrad told his driver, Marcelo, to pick us up from the restaurant. Marcelo was nice enough to take us to Escadaria Selaron (aka the Spanish steps) before taking us home. We took some cool pictures before heading back to our hostel to nap. When we woke up it was about 7:00 pm or so, perfect time to start getting ready for the long night ahead. We ended up making our way to Rio Scenarium, which was a type of bar/club type of place. It was a very elegant three story bar with a live Brazilian band on the first floor. We had so much fun and had ourselves a great time.

Day 3- Today we wanted to sight see. However, the weather was not cooperating with us and many locals told us that seeing the Christ redeemer or going up to sugar loaf mountain was a bad idea. So we decided to hike Morro dois Irmãos, aka two brothers mountain. It was a very steep climb and it seemed like a never ending mountain. Every time we thought we were at the top, it just kept on going and going. It didn't help that there was no grip for our feet, so that made the climb even harder. We were told to take a motor bike to the top of the mountain. What we didn't know was that the motor bike, aka motorcycle on wheels, dropped us off at the wrong spot. So Aaron and I decided to walk up as far as we could go. What we didn't realize was that we were walking through the very parts that they told us not to walk through. We were literally walking through the slums of Rio. We were a little worried after a while when things didn't add up and we got further and further into the ghetto favelas. Luckily, some Brazilian man came out of his little shack and told us that we were headed in the wrong direction. Which saved our butts, because we probably would've gotten robbed or shot if we kept heading where we were going. Yet again, we found ourselves doing things people told us not to do. We finally found the path to the hike and it took us almost an hour and when we got to the top, we expected to see the most beautiful view of Rio de Janeiro. But what we got was a cloudy mess. It looked as if we were heading into the heavens. We were high up in the clouds and couldn't see anything but white sky. So unfortunately, we were not going to get that epic arial shot of Rio, at least not today. Afterwards, we took another motor bike down through the favelas until we reached the bottom. We decided to walk from the Vidigal favelas all the way until we hit Copacabana beach. It was a long walk but we got to check out Ipenema and Copacabana beach. After walking for a while we decided to try our luck and eat some street food. We first got ourselves fresh coconut juice straight from the coconut. I saw a sweet corn vendor and thought, I need to get one of those. So I got myself some corn, with butter and mayonnaise. A couple minutes later, Aaron decided to grab himself a tapioca sandwich, which was different but still tasty. Then once we got to Copacabana beach we had to get ourselves some churros. I got one that was filled with chocolate and Aaron got his churro filled with dulce leche. All this hiking, walking, and eating got us hungry so we decided to head back to the hostel to do our favorite activity, nap!

Throughout the day, Aaron had been talking to a Brazilian girl (Laryssa) that we had met in Argentina and she gave us a bunch of activities and fun night life ideas to do while we are in Brazil. Luckily for us, she was free Saturday night and we asked her to come out with us and show us a good time in Rio. So she met up with us at our hostel and then we headed out to district of Lapa. Lapa is a very hip and happening district and this is where the people of Rio go to have a great time. We walked around a bit and then decided to grab some caipirinhas from the street vendors for dirt cheap. We had some time to kill because Laryssa had a friend that wanted to meet up with us but she was in a "shitty" bar (Laryssa's words) and she didn't want to go. So we posted up outside at this corner restaurant while we waited for her friend. In Brazil, it is very common for people to come up to you and try sell you things while you are eating or drinking. One guy came up and dropped off a sample of peanuts at our table, we asked Laryssa if we could eat them and she said yes. So Aaron and I ate the entire sample. A few minutes later the guy comes back and asked us if we wanted to buy an entire bag of peanuts. Good thing for us, Laryssa speaks Portuguese so she easily told the man no and that was that. 5 minutes later the same thing happens but with a different guy, Laryssa tells the man no and that was it. Then, about 10 minutes after that a female seller comes to our table and does the same thing. She drops the sample peanuts off, makes her rounds, then comes back to our table to see if we wanted to buy a bag. Because we ate the entire sample, they think that we "liked it" and that we obviously want to buy an entire bag. That was false, we are just poor Americans taking advantage of the free food. She saw that we had two other empty colored wrappers on our table from her co-workers so she knew that we had been eating the peanuts. Laryssa told her no and that we were not interested. However, this lady was not taking no for an answer. Now, I don't speak Portuguese but I can kind of tell where this conversation was going and this lady kept going on and on about how we ate the peanuts so we needed to buy a bag. She wouldn't take no for an answer, so I went ahead and grabbed the empty wrappers (because she kept pointing to them) and threw them on the ground as to say, "look lady, we don't care to buy the peanuts". That made her pissed so she looked at me, reached down, grabbed my full cup of beer and dumped it out on the streets. She slammed the cup down on the table and walked away. My face looked like this emoji 😳, then it turned to this emoji 😡. Never have I ever wanted to hit a woman so bad but this chick I wanted to give her a Mike Tyson uppercut. I was so mad and Laryssa was even more pissed because that's never happened to her before and she lives here in Rio. After that debacle, I tried to forget that happened and tried to stay positive and happy because I didn't want that crazy lady to ruin my night. We finally met up with Laryssa's friend (I wish I remembered her name, but I don't) who speaks zero English. If you've ever tried having a conversation with someone who understands no English and you don't understand their language, it makes for a pretty difficult and awkward conversation. So we went out to this club called Teatro Odisséia where we danced until the early morning.

Day 4- Today is the day that we are finally going to see yet another wonder of the world! The Christ the Redeemer was the first order of business on our list of things to do today. So we took an Uber and headed to Corcovada mountain. When we got to the top, it was crowded with people. So many tourists trying to get the perfect picture of Christ the Redeemer. We however, were not leaving until we got the perfect shot. After a few hours atop Christ the Redeemer, we decided to catch the sunset at sugarloaf mountain. We had heard that the view is incredible and that going at sunset is the best time to go. We ubered on over and when we got there we were told that we could hike up the first mountain and then take the cable car to the next mountain. After a quick debate, we decided that we were done hiking on this trip and decided to just pay for a round trip ticket on the cable car, very good decision on our part. It was a very cool experience and the view going up the mountain was incredible. The Rio sunset was probably the best sunset that I have ever seen before. The way the city lit up and just the way the city is constructed, made for a really awesome view. We didn't really eat much all day today except for a late breakfast/early lunch. It was about 7:00 pm and we were both pretty starving. We snagged a piece of pizza from a small restaurant atop sugarloaf to hold us over until dinner. When we got back to the hostel, we showered up and asked the hostel staff where we should go eat tonight. They recommended for us to go to this place called Churrascaria Palace. It was a buffet style restaurant that was very elegant and very, very expensive. It was different because the workers come up to you and each one of them is holding a different type of meat and they ask you if you want some and they slice it right in front of you and place it on your plate. I figured out how the process works because you can tell they have a rotation that they go through and you always start out with the cheap meats before the expensive and good meats, like the filet mignon, come to your table. I couldn't tell you how many or how much meat we ate but we stuffed our faces until we got sick. I've never eaten so much meat in my life. We literally ate an entire baby calf and we definitely got our money's worth. It was so, so good. We decided to walk back to the hostel to work off some of the food that we just demolished. Tonight was a relaxing night for us because we heard nothing really goes on in Copacabana on a Sunday and they were right, it was a ghost town tonight.

Day 5- After a much needed day of sleep, we found ourselves waking up around 10:30 am. After 21 days of us just non-stop going, going, going, we decided today was a day that we were going to do absolutely nothing. By nothing, I mean go to the beach and relax. It was a nice sunny day but of course we had to have some stubborn clouds in the sky. We first went and got lunch at Big Polis Sucos before making our way to Copacabana and Ipanema beach. We got ourselves some cool little Brazilian towels, got some freshly squeezed pineapple-lime juice, found ourselves a nice spot on the beach, and just laid down as we listened to the waves crash onto the sandy beach. We took this time to reflect on an epic, wild, crazy, adventurous, once-in-a-lifetime trip that started in Colombia 22 days ago.

After a few hours at the beach, we came back to the hostel to shower and to pack all of our things so that we were all ready for our flight the next day. We couldn't just end our trip in Rio with a quiet night in, no no no. We wanted to go out with a bang! We heard everyone in our hostel, and even our new Brazilian friend Laryssa, talk about this massive block party called, Pedra do Sal, and it happens every Monday night in Rio. So we thought, let's go have one last crazy Brazilian experience. Laryssa, Aaron, David (our hostel mate from London), and myself all hopped in an Uber and made our way up north to the Centro district. When we pulled up, it didn't look like much but when we walked around the corner, there were just loads of people, food and drink vendors, and of course live Brazilian music. It seemed as if all of Rio was at this block party. It was so cool, everyone was having a good time, and it was an amazing last night in Rio de Janeiro. This is the end of Aaron's South American Traventure, I however, am heading off to São Paulo for 5 days to meet up with an old foreign exchange student that I became friends with back in high school. I will have one more blog about my time in São Paulo and that'll wrap up this Traventure for me. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed reading about our epic trip and stay tuned for the video from our entire trip!

To Aaron,

Thanks for joining me on this trip and also helping me communicate with the locals. Made everything so much easier. It was a blast man. I hope I opened your eyes to a new perspective on life, traveling, and this amazing but small world we live in. See you back in California. Till our next Traventure....

River Plate game in Buenos Aires

#beachlife #travel #Riodejaneiro #Brazil #EscadariaSelaron