BRAZIL: convenience store by day, dance bar by night!

Arrial dájuda was a hoppin´place after Morro, in a different way. It had that real South American town feel to it, and less of a little beach town. Still very pretty, but a little more remnicent of what I saw in Peru, because that is my only reference to South American towns. Kathy and I pretty much spent our time either at the waterpark or walking up and down the one nice little street with lots of little live music bars.

Arrial is also known for being a famous hippie hang-out, which we did not fully discover until the second night. It was a very segregated place. You either hung out on the nice swanky street, with dark, candle-lit bars tended by attractive bartenders playing live Brazilian sing-along hits or deep house. OR you hung out near the main square, with the local food stands, the grocery stores, and where the rastas and hippies and more "keepin it real" locals hung out. The main square had constant loud music playing from everywhere. We wandered through a little art fair that could have been the Ann Arbor art fair - basically, lots of hippie crap and handicrafts, stuff from the Amazon (supposedly) and homeade hemp jewelry.

After doing our nightly rounds on the nice street, we always peeked over into the more ghetto main square to see what was going on. This is a small town, basically an 800 meter walk from one side to another. On the second (and last night) in Arrial, we noticed once again that the convenience store had turned into an impromptu dance bar. People were drinking and dancing wildly right in front of the counter. Now picture in Chicago, going to the White Hen or 7-11 (witho no real walls because everything is open) at midnight, and dancing there after buying some beer. To some LOUD music. Fun, isn´t it! I also noticed that the Supermercado played dance music as well.

Yesterday, Kathy and I checked out of arrial and boarded another loooong bus. This one was 15 hours long. That´s longer than flying from Chicago to Tokyo. But actually, this longer bus ride seemed shorter than the 8.5 hour one because it had reclining seats, a box of snacks and TVs. Very nice! Every two hours or so it would pull into an enourmous rest area/restaurant along with several other busses from the same company. At 4:20AM we made one of our stops and discovered that the bus was no longer there after we went to the bathroom. I had a hissy fit, of course, and Kathy made me calm down. After we saw that everyone else on our bus had been left too, I felt better! After 2 hours at this random rest area place in the middle of nowhere, they got us another bus. After the 15 hour bus, we boarded a 3 hour bus, then a one hour city bus and now we are in Buzios with Kate!

Buzios is Fan-cy. I get the feeling this is going to be a E! Wild on New Year´s. I could just see Tara Ried stumbling around here. There are expensive shops, lots of pretty colorful boats in the harbor and apparently there are like 6 nice beaches around here. We are still exploring the town and catching up.

Hope everyone has a nice new years! I´ll write tomorrow. Now comment! We want comments from home!