Another Travel Blog

After departing from Rio, the bus passed Sao Paulo and a couple of other cities. A 25 hrs journey.. Quite exhausting. Sao Paulo is one of the world’s largest cities (5th) having about 20 million habitants. The sad part of the journey happened just as we departed from the bus terminal in Sao Paulo and headed towards the highway. Suddenly, I heard two gunshots, first not realising that there were gunshots. I had a look to my left and outside of the bus, about 30 meters away, on the highway, someone was killing someone else with a gun. I witnessed two more gunshots and saw the man laying on the side of the highway. I couldn’t believe what I saw and the whole bus supposedly felt the same. As we were just heading towards the highway, the bus slowed down initially, but after a half a minute, the scene was gone. As crime is a serious issue in Sao Paulo, such situations are going most likely to happen daily, we were just unlucky to witness it.

The rest of the long journey is not worth to mention, but I was happy to get out of the bus after 25 hours and headed straight to the Argentina side (a small town with about 24 000 habitants, Porto Iguacu) Admittedly, I started to feel quite unsafe in Brazil, even if I was a couple of hundreds kilometers away from Sao Paulo, but the insecure feeling obviously won’t pass that fast. The hostel I was staying in was great, including a swimmingpool and 5 bungalows. As a cold wave has started to pass the night before over whole South America, it was freezing cold in the bus and so was the evening, the swimmingpool was not much of use. I went to the town with two girls (a danish girl and an israeli girl) from the hostel and enjoyed a nice (and huge) $5 black pepper steak for dinner.

This felt already quite like real Argentina! I wished I had brought more warm clothes with me though. For the next day, I had planned the waterfalls and also to get my Brazil exit stamp as I did not get one on the way into Argentina.

After my arrival in Rio, I enjoyed a couple of beers instead of having a rest from my 24 hrs trip. It wasn’t reason enough to go to bed! The rest of the days in Rio were no different from the first, as the city is known for it’s wild parties and nice beaches.

During the flight, i decided to stay in Ipanema, which is supposed to be richer and a safer area than Copacabana. I wasn’t disappointed and my fellow traveller (a woman from Rio who was visiting Spain) obviously gave me good advice. The beaches are not any different and Ipanema is very close to Copacabana, but Ipanema has a surfer’s scene as there are great waves to surf on.

However, I decided to have my long planned and awaited surf course not in Rio. Shopping is even better, as Ipanema hosts most of the known designer clothing shops, but I did not feel that I would need anything apart from the brazilian flipflops (everyone seems to wear them and they are called Havaianas) and a skirt. The next evening, we went into an Irish pub and drank until 4am. The hangover wasn’t as bad as I exptected and I got up pretty early to explore Rio’s centre and get to the bus station to buy tickets to the Iguaçu falls (they are located in the border to Paraguay and Argentina) The further up north in Rio you go, the poorer gets the neighbourhood and the favelas start (which is not safe to go in as a tourist anyway) The bus station was located slightly upwards from the centre, in a dodgy area. The city busses are extremely easy to use, but not really safe either. At least I didn’t get robbed, but I tried to be overcautious. The third evening was the worst of all as we went into a club in Leblon, ‘House’ was it called and where we got free caipirinhas until 12pm. I could stand at the bar for not more than 3 seconds and get another strong caipirinha. The fourth day included another hangover (worse than the one before) and the trip to Iguaçu. 3 days wouldn’t be enough to see Rio, but I know I am heading back the latest I will depart from South America, and there are a lot more countries and places to see!