We Made It!

I decided to keep a blog, partly for myself to read after my trip is over, and then of course for any of you who care. I am guessing if you are willing to read what I have to say, you do care.

So all of my stress leading up to this day, which actually began yesterday, is slowly fading and I am so excited to be starting this hopefully amazing journey! Here is a little recap of how my day started..yesterday..I still don´t even know what time it is..

Tuesday morning I took a lovely ride on the SB airbus to LAX. I quickly rushed from the bus to the Continental check in avoiding the curb side check for one simple reason, I despise LA, only to find out my ID did not match my flight itinerary. It told me to enter the first three digits of my destination city, so I tried Rio, no. That´s weird, maybe it´s one of my connecting cities. New (Jersey), no. Sao (Paulo), NO! I must have had ´that´ look on my face to draw some attention so a kind man tried to help me, but with the same result. He told me to talk to an agent and pointed in two different directions. I expressed interest in having the agent come talk to ME, that didn´t fly. So I gladly took myself out of the front of the line and waited again for my turn. She said my flight was delayed an hour (NO WAY! does anyone else feel like delayed flights are becoming the norm? Why can´t they just tell me that my 9:00 flight secretly means a 12:30 flight. That´s fine with me, I could use the extra sleep) but, where was I? Ok, delayed an hour but they will instead re-route me to Houston and then I will be on the same flight to Sao Paulo to make my connection to Rio. Great! She tells me boarding starts a 10:45 and the flight leaves at 11:20. A little confused, but also thinking I shouldn´t question her, she looks like she knows what she´s doing. After all, I did have to get in a special line just to talk to her. So, I let her put the tags on my bag but decide to say, wait a minute, it´s 11:15, I will never make that. She looks at me like a crazy person, but immediatley takes a step back to look at the clock. Light bulb! She meant to put me on the 12:20 flight. Ok, phew, now I have an hour to get to my gate.

The first flight went smoothly, I think I might have almost slept a little until the man in front of me started whistling to his music. Pretty entertaining actually. He got a lot of looks from the people to his left and right but kept on whistlin´. If this flight were longer than 3 hours it probably would have gotten old but it was worth the funny looks.

Second flight, a little longer. It was an overnight flight for 10 hours so I´m thinking, no brainer. I´m tired from the build of of the trip, already took a bus ride and another flight. I got on thinking I would read for a bit, take my sleeping pills and pass out. Not the case. I don´t get it! I am really good at sleeping, I had everything in my favor, but alas! noo sleep. I did get really groggy though which was probably fun for my neighbor, a 300 pound portuguese business man. I had such a hard time opening my eyes all the way so a movie and reading was out. I tried so hard to sleep but all I could hear was Snoresville in my ear. In the end, I made it and Lynne waited for me at the airport so we could get a taxi together to out hostel.

As expected, taxi drivers/people off the streets/small children are throwing themselves at you to be the lucky driver. The man we chose had a business card and seemed legit so we started walking with him but when we got on the elevator Lynne gave me the ´I´have to tell you something´ look. She said someone pointed at our soon-to-be cab driver and shook their head, no, not him. Oh geez, so we have to make up an excuse that we are going to stay and go to an internet cafe at the airport to get in touch with our huge boyfriends, or maybe we just said parents. He would not accept this so he took us all the way down to the taxi counter at the airport, which didn´t end up working for him because even they told us not to go with him. I´m sure this guy was fine, it´s just that he is not affiliated with the airport, so they obviously wanted our money too. We talked them down though because the guy was offering us less. So we used the airport service and arrived safely at our hostel.

We checked in for 3 nights and went to drop our bags. It is an 8 bed female dorm, there were flip flops the size of this mouse I´m using, a tiny kitchen with the smallest stove you have ever seen and lockers that make me feel like I´m back in junior high. I haven´t seen all 6 of them yet, but I´m pretty sure they are miniature people. I´m not complaining because as long as I´m not sitting up, I should sleep fine tonight. BUT, I probably just jinxed myself.

Lynne and I went to walk around and get a feel for the area. We made it down to the beach, which reminded me a lot of Nice, France. If you are curious, look up Nice and then Copacabana (where we are). We had lunch, tried some new food, and just walked a lot. Tomorrow we hike to Jesus. Actually it´s called Cristo Redendo? I think that´s right. It has the best views and supposed to be amazing at sunset. We also plan on going to the botanical gardens in the morning. I hope you ejoyed listening to my first day, I´m not much of a writer but maybe after 5 months of practice you will see an improvement.

Until next time :)