And the adventure continues...

Hi all. For those of you who don't know yet, we're posting to tell you of the latest test to our sanity. Because I will now be starting school in the fall, we needed to move up our date of departure from Brazil drastically. We were originally scheduled to fly home September 27. Now, my school begins August 21, so Sept. is looking a little late. No problem. Our plane tickets (United Airlines bought cheap through the Student Travel Association) were super flexible. Refundable, flexible dates, only a measly $25 dollar fee if you wanted to change the flight dates. So piece of cake, right?

It turns out that our tickets are "student class" which means to exchange them for others, the new tickets also must be "student class." Unfortunately, July and August are prime travel times for students in the U.S. and we were quickly informed that there was not a single ticket available for us for the entire months of July and August. Nothing until mid-September...which pretty much put us right back where we started. We discovered, to our surprise, that "refundable" tickets are only refundable before you begin your trip...once you've traveled on them, they cannot refund the second half of the trip to you. We even tried to go over STA's heads and speak directly with United Airlines. We begged to be allowed to bump our class and pay extra for regular coach seats, but no one would budge. The awful thing was that we knew there were seats available on these flights...we checked. But apparently for "student class" tickets, conditions had to be just right to allow us to change. So in actuality, they would rather send a plane from Rio to the USA with empty seats then put us in them. Not a fun situation to be in.

We were told by both STA and United to start looking for one-way tickets if we had to home that soon. They were only running at about $1400 for this time of year. We both began racking our brains for a solution. We asked about changing departure city from somewhere else in Brazil, and even told them that could then dump us in any major US city if that would help. But, all United flights into and out of the country have to go through São Paulo, and those were precisely the ones with "no room" for us.

Unsure if bank robbery or credit card theft was the better way to go in order to come up with enough money for one-way tickets, we stumbled down to Chalé, our corner bar to formulate a plan. And soon enough, Stefan had one...if we couldn't change our departure city for a new flight out of Brazil, maybe we should try something farther away....like another country. And there you have it...we are going to Argentina.

We called STA right away with our plan, and it turns out there was plenty of room for us on a flight out of Buenos Aires. And the price difference for the ticket switch was only $100, much more my price range than a $1400 one-way. Now there's just the matter of getting to Buenos Aires. It will take us 33 hours by bus. That's right, 33 hours from Rio. But we're actually quite excited about it. We've decided to break the trip up into two smaller chunks. We plan on taking a bus to the Brazilian/Argentine border and stopping for a couple nights at the Foz do Iguaçu, one of the biggest waterfalls in the world, located in a national park. Then off to Buenos Aires, where we will stay four nights to explore the city. It should be interesting switching from Portuguese to Spanish when we get to Argentina...I think my head might explode.

And after this little adventure...home on July 31!

Our new flight information for anyone who's interested:

Sun, Jul 30-Mon Jul 31: United Airlines, UA 0846
From: Buenos Aires (EZE), Argentina
Departs: 9:05 pm Sun, Jul 30

To: Washington Dulles, DC (IAD)
Arrives: 6:42 am Mon, Jul 31

Flight: 10 hours, 37 minutes

Mon, Jul 31: United Airlines, UA 7201
From: Washington Dullus DC (IAD)
Departs: 8:35 am

To: Atlanta, GA (ATL)
Arrives: 10:32 am

Flight: 1 hour and 57 minutes

Last Minute Passeio (Cabo Frio and Búzios)

This weekend was our first actual out of town trip since we arrived in Brazil in March. On Thursday, our friend Cristina called to tell us there was a group of American students in town that were taking a weekend trip and we could tag along if we wanted. They had rented a bus and several rooms in a rental house, and the whole weekend would only cost us R$100 (only 50 bucks) before food. So we figured, why not? We didn't have any plans anyway.

The students are a group from the University of Georgia at Athens (UGA), living here in Niteroí for five weeks. They are taking a Portuguese class at my school and their professor from UGA is also teaching a Brazilian culture class. They all had varying knowledge of Portuguese, from as little as one semester, all the way through the lit classes. They are all doing homestays, and one of the students is living with Cristina, so she came on the trip too.

At first we weren't quite sure what to think, just tagging along on their trip. But it turned out to be a lot of fun. Everyone was very nice, mainly language majors and most of their Portuguese was really good. But the best part...despite the Portuguese studies, we got to speak English almost all weekend!

On to the actual trip:
We traveled to a beach town about three hours away by bus (still in Rio state) called Cabo Frio, which means Cold Cape. They had rented rooms in a huge place (118 beds) for only about 26 or so people. When we arrived, everyone got right down to the thing of utmost importance for a weekend trip...making drinks. They sent people out to buy the essentials: toilet paper, snacks, and mixers. When they returned we had a fridge full to the brim with about six different kinds of beer, an arsenal of cachaça, about 25 limes, and a big bag of sugar. We all got right to work and after a couple hours of caipirinhas, we loaded onto the bus with our to go drinks and headed out for dinner. It felt like Mardi Gras all over again. We ate at a great spot called the Canal, which was just that...a big canal filled with boats, and the dock was lined with restuarants and bars. After much Pizza Portuguesa, we headed back to the hostel to continue the party with some Circle of Death and other lovely games (oh to hang out with Americans ;) )

Saturday we headed to another nearby town called Búzios, which was about an hour away. Unfortunately the weather did not want to cooperate, and it was very cool and cloudy the whole day. Luckily, we didn't get any rain, although it threatened the entire time. In Búzios, we visited two different beaches, Ferradurinha and Geribá. Ferradurinha is a tiny beach surrounded by huge rocks and ENORMOUS waves. Especially with the weather, the waves were pretty rough. It was gorgeous, but the tide was so high there wasn't much dry beach, so we moved on to Geribá. Geribá is a huge beach and it's completely flat, which also ended up sending the water almost all the way up the beach. The waves there were also very big, and the absence of huge rocks meant there were bunches of surfers. Since it was really too cold to swim, we found a little beach bar and ordered lunch and drinks and just lazed around, which was very nice.



Praia de Ferradurinha



Praia de Geribá

After the beach, we headed to the center of Búzios, which was definitely my favorite part of the trip. The center is all cobblestone streets filled with beach shops, bars, and restaurants. We ate dinner in a churrascuria (which blew the UGA students away =) ) and there, Stefan and I tried Grapa for the first time. (I was told by so many people to get Grapa when I went to Europe and never had the chance.) I think that once was probably enough. The stuff is probably the strongest alcohol I've ever drank... in tast and effect. All I can say is WOW. After dinner, we strolled around the streets, trying drinks from this bar or that, and checking out the shops. We finally settled at a jazz bar called the Havana Club...decorated Cuban style. The music was fabulous and we had a blast. One guy with the group, Pablo, is a Brazilian from this area doing his PhD at UGA. His parents met up with us in Búzios and his mom, Maria and I became friends. They hung out with us at the jazz club, and were super fun!



Brazilians like their drinks COLD! The bottle is actually in a block of ice!



Me and Stefan with Maria. Pablo is in the background.



Havana boys!

Sunday we actually went to the beach in Cabo Frio, which is also very pretty. The sand is very white and extremely fine. The beach there is also very flat and the waves are unlike any I've ever seen. They literally come in tiers, the last being the biggest, and they were HUGE! One minute there would be no water at all on the beach, then the next the tiers of waves would come in and the water would be past my waist! Sunday was gorgeous so we actually got to play in the water and I got a nice sunburn.



Praia de Cabo Frio

We had lunch at a beach bar and watched Brazil play New Zealand in a World Cup scrimage game. Then, unfortunately, it was back on the bus...to return to normal life, and my upcoming test on Thursday :( It was a great first trip away and we are planning another in two weeks for another Rio destination, Ilha Grande. Hope you guys enjoyed what I think has been the longest blog yet, and hope you like the pics.

Até Logo!