Rio de Janiero, Brazil

We arrived in Rio de Janiero at 8am after a long overnight flight from Santa Cruz, Bolivia with multiple stops and a layover. While in the air from Santa Cruz, Marcela reminded me that I had a gas tank for my camping stove (fuel under pressure...big no no on planes obviously) in my checked backpack that I had forgotten to remove. When we landed for our layover in São Paulo, we were worried the airline may have noticed, flagged our bag, and held it in Bolivia. Fortunately (?) nobody noticed and we removed the gas after retrieving our bags from the conveyor belt. 

Our layover in São Paulo was from 11pm until 6am, so we prepared by packing our sleeping bags in an easily accessible place in our backpacks. Before finding a place to pass out for a few hours we wanted to grab our sleeping bags and re-check our bags, so we wouldn't need to worry about theft. As we waited in line to re-check our bags, we watched as an angry passenger yelled and waved his arms at airline employees who had apparently not solved any of his problems. Simultaneously, the inexperienced looking girl who was helping the people in front of us in line kept dialing phone numbers without success, texting, and generally chatting with the other similar looking girl employee. The line was moving nowhere. We patiently waited, tired, entertained by the absurd behavior of the angry passenger, and not expecting much. After about 30 minutes the people in front of us were given a bunch of receipts and left. 

To our surprise, the inexperienced girl actually spoke some English, and managed to convey to us that instead of sleeping on the airport floor, the airline would be providing us with a complimentary hotel, taxi both ways, dinner, and breakfast. What a delight! We received our stack of coupons, got in a nice air conditioned cab, and began our trip to the hotel.

We expected to be taken to some lower end hotel near the airport, and as we passed those hotels and merged onto a new freeway, we began wondering where we were going. We ended up in a downtown hotel with a shiney granite lobby in a room that was over $200/night. After staying in a hostel for the past 3 nights for just over $14/night total, this was a welcomed and very unexpected surprise. The shower had great temperature and water pressure. There was a buffet with anything we could want. We slept for a few hours, woke up, and caught the free cab back to the airport. It was a great layover. 

Anyway, we flew the 1 hour to Rio, and arrived on time. We caught a bus from the airport which dropped us off downtown, and walked a few blocks to Lapa where we thought the airbnb apartment was. We realized we didn't actually have the building number, and struggled to communicate our problem to the doormen of potentially correct buildings where we attempted to ask for help. Even dialing the phone number of our host Bruno was complicated, or just different from what we are used to, and wouldn´t go through. Finally a stranger helped us find an Internet cafe, we made contact with Bruno, and settled into the apartment.

Rio is a wonderful place, and we instantly fell in love with it on our first walk around. It has very diverse areas; heavily populated beaches, more deserted beaches, busy city dwellers, forests, and great nightlife. The lush mountains meet the ocean, making great photos easy to take. There are a plethora of buses and a subway, so navigating the 6 million person city is fairly effortless. 

Each day we tried to visit a different area of Rio. The first day, we walked around the downtown area and south to the marina area and Flamengo beach. I bought an umbrella and a beer, and we looked out over the bay as we sipped the cold brew. On our way back we stopped at a little restaurant that had salgados (savory foods), one of which is a delicious spiced meat pie called kibe. Since then I have ordered almost nothing else.

KIBE!!

That night we went out with our awesome host Bruno and his roommate Sylvia to a jazz show. It was an amazing performance by a very talented violinist, his percussionists, guitarist, and a beautiful female lead vocal. Afterward we went back to apartment and jammed out because we were so stoked. Check them out:

http://www.nicolaskrassik.com/videos.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhzEVauGoe <-- it was similar to this but much smaller in scale

The following day we went to Urca area, which we saw from Flamengo beach across the bay. It had a more laid back vibe than downtown, and is located at the foot of the "Sugarloaf", one of the famous steep peaks that you see in all the Hollywood images of Rio. We relaxed in the shade, had melted cheese and ham sandwiches with beer so cold it was slushy, and enjoyed the view looking back at downtown.

The next day we laid low and napped, and in the evening we went to a pre-carnival block party in Santa Teresa. It was our first taste of carnival, and it was insane. We tried to meet up with Bruno and Sylvia but it was too difficult to find them in the crowds and too noisy to hear anything over the phone. So, we danced and drank cold beer until my ear couldn't take it anymore, and then we walked back to Lapa. Marcela was covered in glitter for about 10 days after.

Next, we navigated the subway and visited Copacabana, the botanical gardens, and Ipanema. Of all, Ipanema was the most beautiful, and after swimming and having a beer on the beach, we found ourselved in the middle of another pre-carnival street party where everyone was dressed up in absurd costumes. Many of the extremely buff beach dudes were dressed up like women. Finally, we we ate at the restaurant where Antonio Carlos Jobim (whom the airport in Rio is named after) wrote his song "Girl of Ipanema". We wanted so badly to stay and hear some bossa nova or jazz, but we didn't want to wait around for another 4 hours in Ipanema so we took the train home.

 

 

 

On our last day, we finally managed to wake up and mobilize early enough to go see the famous Jesus the Redeemer statue atop Corcovado. After running all over Rio for the previous 5 days, it was interesting to have a view of everywhere we had been. And boy was it beautiful. 

Fun fact: Jesus was struck by lightning in mid-january 2014, and
parts of the fingers on his right hand were still blown off during our visit!
You can´t really see in this picture though...
We didn´t include the base of the statue because they had scaffolding going up.

View from Corcovado. Ipanema/Lisbon in the background

Later that evening we grabbed a last beer with Bruno, packed, and took a short cab ride to the other airport in Rio which is conveniently located downtown. If we hadn't been tired, we could have walked.

Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia

The bus from Sucre to Santa Cruz de la Sierra is a long over-night shlog - about 15 hours. We pretty much just slept the whole way, as there were no exciting middle-of-the-night events like when we ran off the road half way to Uyuni. 

                           

It was a nice relaxing time in Santa Cruz. We stayed near the main square, in an extremely inexpensive but acceptable hostel, and mostly just walked around and read our books. We stayed two nights. On the second day we decided we would go downtown and see the art and history museums. Normally neither of us have much tolerance for such things, but since these ones were rumored to be free, and we didn't have much planned that day, we decided it couldn't hurt to check them out. 

Sadly, we barely made it through one small exhibit before I realized I had left my raincoat in the cab. I would have been angrier at my myself if I had realized at that point in time that my BOSE in-ear headphones were in the jacket's breast pocket....... to look on the bright side, Brazil is HOT and now I don't have to carry the jacket around...  Anyway that basically ruined my fragile museum tolerance and we ended up getting some fajitas instead, which I had been craving. 

Earlier that morning we went to the bell tower at the Cathedral, and had a good time getting a view of the city and letting the breeze cool us down. We have been hot ever since we decended from the highlands of Bolivia (4000-5000 meters) and into Santa Cruz (something like 600 meters). It's nice to be able to walk up stairs without huffing and puffing again.

Potosi & Sucre, Bolivia

From Uyuni, we caught a 3 hour bus to Potosi, found a market nearby the Potosi bus station to purchase some food and supplies, and quickly caught a local minibus to a hot spring-sourced lake/crater about 15km outside town. After a short hike uphill with our heavy packs we came to the lake and set up our tent right next to the water. There were a few groups with tents set up, and a few more that were swimming. Shortly after we got our camp set up, the afternoon sun transitioned to dark clouds, and eventually a heavy rainstorm. Fortunately, the rain stopped not long after and we were able to make dinner and enjoy a few beers while the sun set.

The next morning we packed up camp, hiked back down to the road, waited until a local minibus with enough room stopped to pick us up, and headed toward Potosi. We had heard of a hostel that was fairly cheap ($6/p), so we went there and booked a room and decided it was time to do laundry. It was a nice old building, and our room opened up onto a pretty covered courtyard. We walked around that afternoon and evening, wrote the blog for Uyuni, and relaxed. After carrying our backpacks up the hill to the lake, and struggling greatly, I finally decided I needed to get rid of some of my stuff. I have been much happier having lost ~5 lbs of clothes and a 300 page spanish textbook... why I thought that was a good idea to bring will always remain a question.

The next morning we woke up late, collected our laundry, looked online for hostels in Sucre, and took the 4 hour bus to Sucre. When we arrived, I was feeling cheap and decided 10 bolivianos was too much for a cab. I thought the hostel was probably just a few blocks away... after walking half way across town we realized I was mistaken, but had already come too far to pay for a cab! We walked a bit further, found a tourist information kiosk, and finished up the last two blocks. 

We enjoyed Sucre far more than Potosi. The whole place was beautiful and clean. The general population we saw on the street was younger and less traditional than most other parts of Bolivia we visited. We celebrated our 4th anniversary by each ordering our own plate of food! Marcela had a Gyro, and I ordered a Philly Cheese steak, which was great. We also enjoyed an episode of "Caso Cerrado", a funny TV show which essentially is a combination of Judge Judy and Jerry Springer. I also found out I was accepted to grad school at UCSB (the only school I applied to) during our night in Sucre, so that was cool.

Wine & chocolate

Uyuni, Bolivia

If you have trouble with the links to the videos, they are all here on my youtube page:

http://www.youtube.com/user/kitkatbandit1?feature=watch

 

Our trip from Oruro to Uyuni involved an overnight bus ride, which turned out to be a little scary but exciting. The first few hours went smoothly (not literally, the road between Oruro and Uyuni is unpaved and quite bumpy), but at about 3am the bus driver must have fallen asleep because the bus ran partly off the side of the road. This resulted in the two right wheels of the bus getting stuck in soft sand/mud, with the bus tilted about 15 degrees. We immediately got off the bus and began standing around in the freezing cold (We were at roughly 4000m elevation so it was pretty cold). After a bit, one guy retrieved a shovel from the storage under the bus and began digging under the rear wheel of the uphill side. Eventually he managed to undermine the wheel, which slightly leveled the bus and made people more comfortable going around to the downhill side to dig. I didn't realize what was going on, and had already grabbed the other shovel out of the bus and dug the two downhill side wheels out a bit. Someone found a big log to jam under the rear wheel of the downhill side of the bus, and the driver was able to drive it back onto the road. In all, this took about an hour. We arrived in Uyuni at 7am tired and freezing, but it was an interesting experience. 

After arriving, we set out in search of a hostel. We needed to shower, set down our heavy backpacks, and escape the cold morning. We went to every hostel we could find, and they all said they were either full or would have availability around 11am. Growing grumpy under the weight of the packs, we decided to get some breakfast and wait for a while. After eating we busted out the guidebook (which we have found very helpful, despite the over-estimation of bus ticket prices -- Footprint guidebooks) and found one we hadn't visited. Marcela went to check the availability and prices, and came back having found a different hostel that was immediately available. We checked in, showered, and I took a long nap. When I woke up, Marcela had already been around town researching Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni) tours and prices. We went and booked the best deal, had dinner, and slept again. 

The next day we set out on our 3 day/2 night tour of the southwestern region of Bolivia. Our first stop was a train graveyard filled with trains abandoned 250 years ago. They once carried silver from the mines in Potosi to Chile, but they began breaking down and eventually were abandoned. We saw one train with a massive blowout in the coal-burning chamber, and assumed that was the final straw for that specific train.

 

 

After the train stop, we proceeded to Salar de Uyuni, which is without a doubt one of the coolest places I have ever been. The salt is about 40cm thick, with a lake below. It felt similar to walking on a frozen lake. 

http://youtu.be/Roo9--ZhNQg

We were very lucky to be grouped up with people who were close to our age, and over the three days we enjoyed getting to know each other.

We took over 350 pictures during our three days, and although there are a lot of pictures here, there are many more amazing ones we just dont have the internet speed to include.

After the Salt Flats, we headed back to Uyuni to exchange our old crappy 4x4 for a slightly newer one. The agency we traveled with doesn't like to use the good cars for the salt flats because the salt is bad for them. We headed south, along the border of Chile, and saw some amazing landscapes and lagunas. There were almost no trees or plants, and many places felt like we could be driving on the moon.

Valley of the Rocks

We saw a double rainbow.
http://youtu.be/UUFVnQY1JOg

During the day at the Salt Flats, I remained covered the whole day and therefore felt justified in not using sunscreen... sadly, the sun reflected off the white salt and burned my face. The following days I covered up entirely in order to prevent further face burning. I had a great sunglasses burn for a few days after. We visited lots of lagunas, saw three species of flamingo, and even went ghost riding.

Stone Tree

http://youtu.be/F2YP5-LnzTU

The final morning we woke up, had a quick breakfast, and were on the road by 5am.  We first visited an area of volcanic activity where bubbling mud pits send columns of steam high into the air. 

http://youtu.be/giSdxhFsC-Q

After half an hour, we continued on to a hot spring next to a lake, and enjoyed an hour soaking and taking in amazing views.  

On the way back to Uyuni, we stopped and had another dance party. This time we selected music exclusively from my "Prom Party 2007" playlist, and had a few beers.

 

 Our lunch spot on the way back gave the Salar de Uyuni a serious run for its money. It was an amazing place to eat, take pictures, and go for a short hike.

http://youtu.be/trvZBLkeOvw

We really enjoyed our guide, Rudy.