Send us a sign jesus!

We were very green today. We walked a LOT. But before I get to the walking, I will start with our night. I was sleeping wonderfully, that is until 2am when roommate #12 came in, lights on and everything. Lynne poked her head over the top bunk and asked me what time it was. We both felt like maybe it was time to get up, so I turn my phone on..it´s 2am! Ok, back to sleep. Roommate #7 wakes up 2 hours later to shower and pack to leave. Understandable, back to sleep. Roommate #3 wakes up, you guessed it, 2 hours later to talk on the phone. It´s now 6am which is really 2am in the States so, obviously, back to sleep. Lynne and I had a pow-wow and decided that in the next city we are getting a double room.

So, first stop, Jardin Botanico. Translation: Botanical Gardens :) We figured out the bus system, which is just as crazy as driving in a small car. The only thing that makes us feel better is that we are bigger than everyone else. We get dropped off and walk around the outside of the gardens for about half a mile and find a very non-inviting entrace. Well, that´s because it was not an entrance. I read PARA IDENTIFIQUE (or something to that effect) and the security guard did ask me to show him something (I got that from the hand gestures) so I graciously got out my ID to show him (refer back to what I read, makes sense right?) He smiled and said a lot of things I didn´t understand. That´s when a really nice older couple came up to us and in broken english told us we needed a ticket. Ok, where do we get that? The two security guards start pointing in the direction we just came from, but we walked half a mile and didn´t see anything resembling a ticket booth. The couple offered to take us there, we assumed by foot, but they offered to drive us. Lynne and I looked at each other, questionable, made some small talk with these people and decided we liked them. I hesitate while writing this because I´m sure my parents are freaking out, but trust that we are both smart girls. Moving on. The gardens were beautiful. It was nice to get away from the cars and smog and be surrounded by green for acres. I pushed over a tree, because I´m that strong and it took me longer than the ten seconds my camera gives me to do my double-back-spring-twist-flip onto the bench for a picture. We saw HUGE amazon lillies, orchids, many trees from Asia, even a whole Asian themed section. Lynne and I both commented on how strange the Asian infuence is on Rio. Sushi restaurants are everywere. It´s not like Asia is close to Brazil, at all. After walking for two hours we were ready for lunch.

Lunch, seems so simple. We found a place with really cool art, seemed clean, good size menu, just not in english. No big deal, we saw a salad called Graca (we both agreed: Greek Salad, and Falafel with hummus, done. I invite you to take a look at our beautiful meal in the picture attached and tell me what is on top of our Salad. I would love to hear your guesses, and still welcome what you thought, but I have to tell you. Tangerine Sorbet..........!?!? I have no problem with sorbet, I actually would have enjoyed it, AFTER my meal. I am honestly at a loss for words as to why there was sorbet on my salad. Please help me understand. The salad (minus sorbet) and falafel was great, we were now ready to find jesus.

Leaving the restaurant, we had a perfect view of jesus on top of the mountain. If you don´t know what I´m talking about, google it. One of the hostel employees told us that it was about an hour and a half hike. We took a bus to Santa Teresa which is a smaller mountain near jesus. We walked up and up and up and around and up and to the side and backwards. We were not finding jesus or any signs pointing us in the right direction. If only jesus could have sent us a sign, haha. A lot of taxis, buses, and vans were flying by us so we figured we HAD to be going the right way. We sadly gave up after an hour and jumped in a cab. It was probably a 20 minute cab ride up a super steep and winding hill. So glad we didn´t walk! What was that lady at our hostel talking about? The taxi dropped us off and we had to buy a ticket to get on a van that took us to the bottom of the stairs. We climbed over 200 stairs and there he was, with 500+ people. I was baffled by how many people were up there and the lack of public transportation there was to get up there. The view was great as expected and I attached a picture for your enjoyment. We made it back down to the ticket booth hoping we would figure out a way to get back, but I guess the large vans that take people us there are for private tour groups, maybe from hotels or something. So we found a some-what english speaking man to tell us that the only way us regular folk could get up and down the mountain is taking a cab or walk, which is really dangerous and REALLY far. I still don´t get why our hostel didn´t warn us about that. Oh well, we didn´t need a sign, we made it on our own!

There was a street market set up along the beach so we walked through that for a bit, came back to the hostel to shower and get ready for dinner and found a great dinner place called Cafeina with amazing looking desserts and carrots, croutons, and tomatoes on our salad, YES!