v to the o to the l to the...

Barra da Lagoa --> Sao Paulo --> Floyd, VA

So I passed the travelling rock on. It was given to me by Shannon, May-Li’s friend when she was finishing her Europe trip and it was time for me to pass it on to someone else. Shannon also got it from a traveller. It’s the travelling rock.

I think Arnica ended up with it - besides, Elisa mentioned something about already having a protection necklace. It was getting late, the girls were heading to bed. Time for me to go back home. I had to go to sleep to the noise of a drinking game in high gear.

Tuesday, I got up to see the girls off on their 11am bus. We kicked some more footbag waiting for the bus. One of them was feeling a bit sick. Cold weather in the winter. Ugh. I got their stale rum and coke, a book to put in the hostel exchange, and a bottle of coke to take back to the hostel. They left. I was still drizzly so I found me a nice hammock, listened to some Stella Chiweshe and passed out for 3 hours. I finally got up the initiative to go for a walk, the sun was out. There was a nice beach right behind the hostel and I kept along the coast until the path ceased and I turned my sights on the hill. A bit of hiking up through mud yielded a great view of Barra da Lagoa and how it was sandwiched right between the lake and the ocean, something I would have never guessed from down lower. I stalked a vulture for a little while but then it got cold and I went home to a delicious dinner and some drinking games. Didn’t feel like drinking games, instead I watched TV, and nothing better than The Cable Guy was on so I watched that, yearning for someone to play with :( Ugh, Bedtime. It was a very short feeling day.

Wednesday I ran around and did a lot, relatively speaking. I got up around noon and headed to Lagoa to change some US$ to Reais and look for some hammocks. No hammocks to be found in that town so I walked to check out a beach on the way home. The surfers seemed to be having a good time.

I had to be on the local bus at 19:30 to get to Floripa in time so I kicked it around the hostel for a while, paid for my bed and beers and went to get a last dinner Barra. I got a huuuuge amount of food for 17 Reais. US$6 for salmon, fries, beans, salad, rice, maybe doesn’s sound so impressive, but damn, the quality of everything was really nice.

I piled on the bus with my packs and two $20 hammocks in my yellow-green rice sack and rode to Flori, eventlessly got on the bus to Sao Paulo and slept maybe 3 hours that night.

Sao Paulo is huge. My guide book says 18 million inhabitants. We started getting to big buildings and dense population an hour before the bus pulled into the final terminal, the biggest bus terminal I saw on the trip. I think there might have been more than 100 gates. Unreal. So many logistics, where can I stash my pack, how do I get to the airport, where can I change some more money, confirm my flight… I finally got it all taken care of and cruised the subway to walk around and get myself lost for a while. Kinda downtownish there are lots of pedestrian zones, I got some coffee, went to the bathroom at McDonalds (2nd fast-food bathroom bailout on the trip.) I found a store selling records, 4 for 10 Reais so I stocked up on some carnival music, some American classics that are hard to find in the US, and maybe a random pick or two. I was free to buy some bulky crap as I’d just be able to take it on the plane that night. I finally figured out where I was and worked my way towards Japan-town. The largest Japanese community outside of Japan. I had a great meal for 29 Reais and headed to the internet to email and blog.

I was done walking around. Tired. Running out of steam. I didn’t stay at the internet place too long and headed to the airport way ahead of time. On the subway a wheelchair guy got on. He looked so happy. Go get ‘em attitude. He got off a few stops later and did a wheelie to cross the large gap between the train and the platform. He was awesome. He made me happy. I wanted to get rid of all the logistics of checking in and paying my date-change fee before my lack of sleep caught up with me. By the end of paying the $150 fee I had about $7 and 5 Reais left on me, I bought a can of beer for 3.90R and waited.

The plane was a new Boeing 676-200 with LCD screens in the back of every seat and little controllers that you could pull out of the arm rest. They had crappy video games. You could switch between movies to watch but given a choice made it even more acutely obvious how crappy all the movies were. The controls were horrible, forcing you into 2 handed operation, changing the orientation of the controller all the time, and constantly changing the funcitonality of every button. I got frustrated quickly and wrote it off as 1st generation software. At least it’s a software and not a hardware problem.

Newark layover resulted in a Dunkin Donuts Bagel and a bit of a nap. There were a lot of fat people and women with too much makeup and bleached or straightened hair.

My mom picked me up in Greensboro with some water from home and some local nectarines. We rolled into Floyd and had a lunch at Oddfella’s - the first nice nachos I’ve eaten in a long time.

At home I basically went to see the site wher my mom’s building the new house and hung my hammock by the pond and napped for 3 hours.

When I got up at 8pm it was still light out. I’ve gone from winter to the long days of summer. Of course Michael flew back from Santiago on Solstice making this effect even more extreme.

Posted by volker at July 24, 2004 03:29 PM