Rio Part 1

On the 2nd, ben and i left for rio. 6hrs by bus. My cousin Ricardo is the PR director for the rio orchestra and we're staying in his apartment, which is awesome and in a cool neighborhood.

Today we decided to do some touristy stuff. After walking along Leblon/Ipanema beach for awhile, we wanted to check out Pão de Açuca. As we stood by the road trying to hail a cab, some guy walked up behind me saying "excuse me sir, you've got some shit on your shoes." i look down, and there's this HUGE GLOB of gunk on my shoe. on the top of my shoe. the bottom was totally clean. it looked like someone had dropped it on, or spat a ton of ice cream on. and the shit was...not the consistency of shit. and wouldn't ya know it, this nice fellow just happened to be a shoe shiner! what a fucking con.

what could i do? it was obvious what was going on, but my shoe was filthy, ya know? i let the jerk clean my shoe, and then he charged me R$30!!! i tried to get off paying him 10, but he made a gigantic fuss, and did i mention that he introduced us to his 5 friends from the favela while he was cleaning my shoe? i didn't want any trouble...

so yeah, geting conned my first few hours in rio was not cool. afterwards went to the top of Pão de Açuca, where we took lots of pictures. After hiking down Urca (the lower mountain, which was a beautiful hike that I strongly recommend) we took a cab all the way up corcovado to see the giant jesus, which was really cool. gorgeous drive, worth the extra time. Corcovado has the best views of the city, make sure to check it out with plenty of light.