Thursday 10 May 2012

20/04/12 - First Steps In A New Land

An expansive golden web clung to the dark earth below, it´s body warped by the silhouettes of the mountains and the flat, black plane of the Atlantic ocean. This was my first glimpse of Rio de Janeiro as we moved through the night sky, and closest I had ever been to South America; a distance that shortened with an exhilarating speed as we began our descent into Galeão International Airport.

After months of planning, and 32 hours since departing Leeds, this geometric sprawl of light alone reconciled the time spent working three jobs, and vicious curtail of  expenditure of the last eight months. Although beautiful the beginning of our Journey wasn´t without mishap; encouraged by a burgeoning spirit of adventure, an eagerness to save money and our minds clouded by the lethargy of travel we took it upon ourselves to get one of the extremely cheap buses to Ipanema, Zona Sul - the site of our Hostel. Enquiring in shaky Portuguese whether this bus went to Ipanema and receiving the encouraging answer "Ipanema? Si!" we boarded. The driver himself cheated one of use out of our change, something we probably should´ve taken as foreshadowing, after talking to one of the locals it turned out that the bus wasn´t heading to Zona Sul, but destined for Centro. Of course by this point the bus had began to pull out. Que a mad dash and much shouting to quickly escape. Slightly out of pocket and a tiny bit disillusioned we thought it best to get a Taxi. Although getting slightly lost, after much pointing at maps our driver managed to get us to our hostel. Thus ended the first night of our journey....

(Top Travelling Song: All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix - cover of Bob Dylan)
(Book Started: The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov)

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