Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Monday, April 16, 2007
Hey everyone. Well we´ve done a lot since our last entry, Í´ll try to remember everything. After the Pantanal we spent a few days in a town called Bonito. It was a pretty cool little town and the whole place is set up for snorkeling. They have the best fresh water snorkeling in the world! So we went and what you do is you walk through the forest for about 45 minutes and you get to this river and it is the clearest river I´ve ever seen. And then all you do is float down stream for like 3 hours and you see so many fish. A lot of the time you can just float right through the middle of an entire school, its pretty crazy. Cole, Rahul, Sally and I rented an underwater camera so we have pictures and movies of us snorkleing so you´ll all be able to see the pictures. And the the next day we went to the beach there and it´s the same river just not as many fish. But once again you can walk along this little trail and then they have made a platform that you can jump off and float back down to the beach. It was much easier floating while we were snorkeling because they gave us wetsuits, at the beach you had to actually swim. Then after Bonito we spent 3 nights at Iguassu Falls. And the Falls were unbelievable! The first day we went to the Brazilian side where you just walk along a path and see a whole bunch of smaller waterfalls. From the Brazilian side you really get a sence of how much area the falls cover but you don´t get to get very close to them. There are aslo millions and millions of butterflies there. And Rahul killed one. It was really sad but really funny because he is from India so it´s against his religion to harm anything so he freaked out. Like he won´t even smack a mosquito thats attacking him. It all started when Sally and I were standing in the middle of hundreds of them taking pictures and he was making fun of how lame we were and as a total joke he was like "haha I´m going to kill them!" and he jumped right into the middle of them assuming they would fly away, which most of them did but he landed right on one! And the look on his face was priceless! But he was panicing and touching it trying to see if by some freak chance it would get up and fly away, oh I laughed so hard. Then the next day we went to the Argentinian side of the falls which was sooo much better! Rahul couldn´t come with us though because since we had to cross the border we needed to show our passports and if you´re from India you need a Visa so he couldn´t come which sucked. We lied and told him it wasn´t worth it though. But from the Agentinian side you take a boat trip up the river and they take you along the smaller falls and then they take you under two of them! It was so much fun, you get soaking wet though. But from there you walk along a path and then a little train takes you through the jungle and to another little path. And you walk along a bridge over the river and it stops at the top of the biggest fall which is absolutely incredible! It was so huge I can´t even describe it. And you are right next to it so it seems even bigger. Also that day we went to a dam that borders Paraguay and Brazil, it´s the largest dam in the world. So that was neat too. But after the Falls we flew to Rio and took a bus to Ilha Grande which is a little island off the coast. It was the neatest little town though because all that´s there is a small town right at the port and then they have paths around and over the island and each path takes you to a little white sand beach. The island doesn´t have roads or cars either. And the one day we joined another GAP group which has like 13 people or something and we went on a boat and had a big bbq and went snorkeling and just hung out on a huge boat all day. It was really fun. Learned the difference between waterproof and water resistant sunscreen that day though. And then we took a bus back to Rio and had the best buffet dinner ever. But since none of the people in our group we departing the next day we all went to a soccer game at the Maracana stadium(biggest soccer stadium in the world). And that was probably the biggest highlight of the trip so far! It was so cool. 65,000 crazy Brazilian soccer fans and the place wasn´t even 1/2 full. The home team was Botafogo. They tied. But we´ve never seen a crowd that intense before. I can´t even describe it. And the soccer itself was unbelievable. We had so much fun we got tickets to next Sundays finals, the last game was the semi finals. It is was
Rio de Janeiro state playoffs... kinda like Provincials but bigger. Then afterwards we all went for pizza and said our goodbyes and all went off to our new hostels. So Cole and I are officially on our own... and the only Portugese word I know is thankyou and some Botafogo soccer chants. Oh yah we also went up to see Jesus yesterday. He´s huge. It was insanely busy though because for some reason we decided to go on a Sunday and they have church services up there and everything. But we found out a few weeks ago that its not even the biggest one in the world! There is a Jesus statue in Cochabamba, Bolivia which is 33m high and the one in Rio is only 30m high. So that was a little disapointing because when I was looking at the one in Rio I was thinking "man the one in Cochabamba must be massive". We´re not to sure what we´re going to be doing for the next 2 weeks though. But we´ll keep you all posted. see you guys in a month!
Cole&Amy
