No, abrigada

We´re now at the beginning of our last day in Brazil. Having woken up before everyone else, I thought this would be a good time for another update. We´ve met a lot of cool people at our hostel, many of whom have been having traveling the world for months. Our new roommate, a woman from London who´s in her twenties, has been traveling in the US and central America since January. She´s planning to continue traveling in South America, Australia, and Asia until March! Most of the people we´ve met are British, but there have also been other Americans and Canadians.

The clubbing experience we alluded to last time turned out to be a little disappointing. We couldn´t find the first club we looked for, Club 69, so we took a taxi ride to another one we´d heard of called The House. The club was almost empty except for a table of people watching a football game, so we watched the end of the match. After that however, the club never filled up, so we spent most of the night talking amongst ourselves.

We slept a little later the next morning and then walked to Ipanema beach, a block from our hostel. We got plenty of practice with our favorite Portuguese, ´no abrigada´(no thank you, and it is´no abrigado´ if a guy is saying it) because the beach was covered with vendors selling everything from snacks and drinks to bikinis, musical instruments, and hammocks. The beach was covered with young people, and we witnessed several games of soccer and foot volleyball. The water was chilly but not unbearably cold, so we swam in the surprisingly strong waves and walked up and down the beach. Derrick sported a Brazilian style bathing suit that he tried to avoid being photographed in, and Andrea and I felt very covered up compared to the Brazilian women.

We spent the afternoon the the Centro (downtown) area of the city. We were a little nervous when we got there because our taxi driver warned us about pickpockets and camera thieves, but we didn´t have any problems. We ate at Bar Luiz, which has been open for 120 years, and Nick finally found a dark beer to drink. Beer doesn´t seem to be quite as popular or varied here as in the US and most of what we´ve seen is light beer. Walking around, we saw a wide cross section of Brazilian society, from business people in suits to young people taking a dance class in a cultural center to poor people sleeping on the ground. We saw many beautiful older buildings, including the one below:

Back at the hostel, we got suco (juice) at our favorite restaurant, I tried my first street food (called tapoica, kind of like a crepe with bananas and caramel inside), and we decided to give Rio nightlife another try.

Derrick, Andrea and I went with a group from our hostel to a club a few blocks away called Cristal Lounge. The club was playing Brazilian funk, with a dj who one person told us is the Rolling Stones of Brazil (we were skeptical). Andrea and I met several charming Brazilian guys who spoke varying amounts of English, probably since the club cost guys at least US$18 to get in. Some of them were university students, and we also met a group of law students ´studying´ abroad here. Derrick impressed the Brazilians with his dance performance, and we enjoyed the free beer (basically served in Dixie cups). The clubs here have an interesting system- when you go in, they take your name and issue you a card with a number on it that you use to get drinks, and when you leave you pay for everything at once.

Andrea, Nick and I are taking a bus to Curitiba tonight, and Tim and Derrick are going to Saõ Paulo tomorrow, so you can expect separate updates for the next two days until we´re reunited at Foz de Iguazu on the southern border of Brazil. We have a collective competitive streak, so feel free to leave comments telling us whose entries you think are better ;)