Last Stop

I made it back to Lima, Peru where we started this trip. I am staying with my friend Francisco who is from here and goes to UNC. This is the city that I know best in South America and its nice to know my way around and especially nice to stay at someone's house and not have to worry about finding a hostel, etc. I leave late tomorrow night, and I both am sad and relieved to be leaving. I am ready to go home, but I really enjoy being here and have adapted to travelling, so I know that I will miss it. Buenos Aires and Rio were my two favorite cities, ones that I can imagine living in. Its hard to know what I have taken away from this trip. I probably wont realize some of them until later, but for now: it was fun and it was an adventure. I know that I have changed and that I will never forget this summer.

Cidade Maravilhosa

Rio was great. For starters, I didnt get robbed or have any other problems. We stayed in Copacabana four blocks from the beach. We saw the Cristo Redentor statue, one of the new 7 wonders of the world and the Sambadrome where the Carnaval celebration takes place every year. The Copa Libertadores final was in Rio, but we couldnt get tickets because it had been sold out for 2 weeks. The maracana stadium holds almost 100,000 people and it was sold out! We took the metro to the stadium 2 hours before the game started to try to find scalped tickets and just to see what was going on. I have never been in a metro that crowded. I was painfully being smashed into a railing the entire time. Our car was totally full, but at every stop more people tried to cram in. The stadium was crazy. There were 40 or 50 thousand people outside the stadium pregaming, yelling, fighting, and singing. It was like being at the game, but outside, flares, drums, flags, everything. We were in the middle of a huge crowd when we were suddenly shoved backwards by the rows of people in front of us. Eight white men were beating one black man, we dont know why. It was terrible, then in the next 5 minutes we saw two more occurences of the same thing. We made it back to our hostel in one peice and watched the game there, the Rio team lost in penalty kicks. The local mixed drink, the caipirinha, was delicious. Lime juice, sugar, and cachaça, a liquor made from sugar cane made quite a tasty drink sitting on the beach. Chad and I went to a churrascaria where we ate to our stretched out stomachs' content. It was all you can eat meat: delicious steak, pork, and chicken along with a full salad bar. And another food surprise; at first I thought I had just eaten a testicle, but was happy to be informed that it was only a chicken heart. I sadly said goodbye to Chad yesterday afternoon when he went to the airport. Ill be on my own for another 5 days. I watched a game of beach soccer/volleyball. Its volleyball without your hands, looks incredible difficult. Then last night some people from the hostel joined some brazilians and played beach soccer. It was awesome, but I am really sore now. I said goodbye to Rio today and took a bus back to Sao Paulo from where I will fly to Lima, Peru tomorrow.