A story from my pre-FT days...this is my first TR so let me know what you like/dislike!

A couple of years ago in 2012, while I was a poor undergrad (and now am a poor grad student), some of my friends asked if I wanted to go on a trip to Brazil. The initial premise was that one of my friends was going to an academic conference in Sao Paulo and wanted to extend the conference into a vacation. My other friends were able to take 3 weeks off while I only got to partake for about days. Since we were all students or recent graduates, our spending money wasn't too abundant and we tended not to do nice and fancy things

Sidenotes: If you do plan on going to the Amazon, don't forget to get the necessary vaccines and medications. I've never had a vaccine make my arm as sore as the one for yellow fever did. Also, I packed everything into my backpack for light travel and my camera was under everything, so there aren't pictures of everything (and no pictures of my friends for their privacy)

So without further ado:

Day 1: To Brasil!

I kayaked this round-trip and ended up with Delta LAX-ATL-GIG (Rio) (in economy of course). I was actually surprised that the second leg was at most 60% full-it almost felt like a 1-2-1 config on a 767-and I was able to get a second dinner. It's DL's Y food for long-haul, but food's still food.

Day 2: Arrival and Exploring

I landed early in the morning, before 9am. After clearing immigration I took the Ônibus to the Hostel Harmonia in Ipanema (note: just don't take it back to the airport, as there is no guarantee the bus will stop for you...). While waiting for my friends I watched Federer beating Djokovic at Wimbledon ^


Inside the hostel

After my friends arrived we went out for a quick lunch and headed out to Sugarloaf mountain via bus. In Rio you board the bus, buy the ticket from someone sitting next to the door, and pass through a turnstile before finding a seat. Sugarloaf is reachable via two cable cars, the first of which stops at a lower plateau. My friend had the idea that we could walk up to the first plateau and off we went.


A beach at the bottom of the hill


Sugarloaf


The way up

We got up to the first level around dusk, and at that point we decided that we had accomplished enough and that we weren't going to pay for the cable car ride to Sugarloaf (the alternative was rock climbing, which was out of the question), so we stuck around and took some pictures. During that time the sun had set and we couldn't seem to figure out how to buy a ticket to take the cable car back down, so we ended up walking back down without much light (oops). After we made our way back down we took the bus back to Ipanema, ate dinner, and had an early night.


View from the first hill


Christ The Redeemer


The cable car from the first hill to Sugarloaf

Day 3: Tijuca National Park

After a simple breakfast at the hostel we tool a taxi to Tijuca national park, which is west of Ipanema. We weren't too sure where we were going, so we had the taxi drop us off somewhere near an information area where we picked up maps and hopefully not get too lost. Essentially the entire day consisted of wandering around this national park and its hills and not getting too lost.


What most of the place looked like

Eventually we reached a clearing where we could see over the city


Rio!


Christ the Redeermer and radio towers

Eventually we made our way down from the park and hailed a taxi (this was relatively difficult since taxis don't normally go far into the park if at all).


Coatis we ran into on the search for a taxi

We returned to Ipanema in the late afternoon and spent some time at Ipanema beach. That day there was some kind of LGBT gathering and there was a lot of excitement-I'm not exactly sure what is was since my Portuguese was really terrible.


Beach!

After dinner we went to bed early since we had an early flight out of Rio the next morning.

Coming up...the Amazon (I promise!)