Fuck it, with a little knife in my pocket I’m going to Rio by myself. My sense of direction doesn’t always work, maybe because I don’t have a map, so in case I end up in favela I’ll have some protection or I just hand over my backpack.
I got some bus directions from Miry and went to the sin city. In the first bus a very helpful local-men informed me that there is a Scottish guy in the bus and he goes to the Sugar Loaf as well. Sounds cool. I’ve met Kenny and asked if he knows how to get there, he answered “no”. It’s always better not to know together than by myself.
Pao de Azucar is pretty cool, have been sitting over there for quite some time, watching landscape of Rio, Jesus hiding in clouds from time to time and drinking beer. We also went on a little beach located between two hills.
When it started to get dark it was time for us to go back. I thought I knew which bus we should take, but well, I was wrong about it. We started to ask around. Guy from the petrol station clearly wanted to help us but of course we understood none of what he was saying. Then, we stopped a group of young people who – thank God – were speaking perfect english and explained us where to go. So, we went.
It’s already dark, we’re standing on a bus stop waiting for a bus that is not coming when it was supposed to. I start to ask around and can see that Kenny is in a first stage of panic. One guy says that the bus we’re waiting for is quite rare and most probably won’t stop over here. He also suggested we should take a different one and then change. He offers to show us where to do so. I think “great!”, Kenny is in a second stage of panic. We stop under some bridge where it’s quite dark and empty and where we are supposed to leave the bus. It’s not looking like a friendly place, it’s too dark, too empty, too scary… We run and happily we find the right bus.
Conclusions of the day:
– people in Rio are very helpful and kind,
– some of them know decent english ( LP forum says they don’t),
– it’s not necessarily dangerous after dark,
– Rio is cool!
