Rio

On the 2nd, ben dand i left for rio. bus ride was pretty but long, no big deal. My cousin Ricardo is the PR director for the rio orchestra and we're staying in his apartment, which is awesome and in a cool neighborhood.

the day after we got in, we decided to do some touristy stuff. After walking along the beach for awhile, we wanted to get a cab from Ipanema (the beach we were at). as we stood by the road trying to hail a cab, some guy walked up behind me saying "excuse me sir, you've got some shit on your shoes." i like down, and there's this HUGE GLOB of gunk on my shoe. on the top of my shoe. the bottom was totally clean. it looked like someone had dropepd it on, or spat a ton of ice cream on. and the shit was...not the consistency of shit. and wouldn't ya know it, this nice fellow jsut happened to be a shoe shiner! what a fucking con. what could i do? it was obvious what was going on, but my shoe was filthy, ya know? i let the jerk clean my shoe, and then he charged me $15!!! i tried to get off paying him 10, but he made a gigantic fuss, and did i mention that he introduced us to a small group of his friends while he was cleaning my shoe? i didn't want any trouble...

so yeah, geting conned my first few hours in rio was not cool. afterwards went to the top of Pão de Açuca, then took a cab all the way up corcovado to see the giant jesus, which was really cool. great views of the city, i'll put up pictures as soon as i can.

the nightlife in rio is insane. we went to this area called Lapa one night, met some very cool people....the whole area was a giant club. there was music in the streets, vendors selling beers and food. youd dindt' need to go inside to meet people or dance. we did anyway, and well....sat night was alot of fun. i'm running out of time at the terminal here so i'm moving on. sat night was a story in itself!

so yeah, now we are in Buzios. it's this peninsula near rio, with a ton of beaches. real ritzy area, so we1re not sure if weere gonna stay...fuck, gotta go.