Rio to Go

When we first arrived in Rio, I immediately forgot every bit of Portuguese I had learned and we walked directly up to the line of taxi drivers that were just waiting for spacey-looking-Americans-still-high-on-Ambien-from-the-twelve-hour-flight to perform highway robbery on. I knew better, but I was so tired, and I just didn’t care, so we spent about 60 reals on the ride to our hotel. Whoops.

For travel around Rio we used the subway and bus lines. Rio has a very clean and easy to understand subway system. I felt really safe taking their trains and there was a pink caboose in the back that was supposed to be just for women but I didn’t feel the need to use it. Luckily for us, their signs were in English so we had no trouble navigating the system. That is, until we got above ground. Oh yeah, we’ve got stories. We mostly just took whatever bus appeared to be going somewhere cool and prayed that we would make it there. And we did every time. We once got lost for about two hours and ended up wandering up the hill in a favela, or "shantytown”.

After deciding that I would no longer walk around “the hood” on some old "shook ones" vibe, we hopped on some random van-like bus that took us up through the beautiful mountains with the most astounding views and back down to a little shopping area that was filled with buses to get us back to familiar area. Bus trips are about reals and you don’t even need exact change because there is a person on a little high chair who takes your money and gives you change if needed.