Dan Swanton’s Blog

I learned that rice and beans can taste like dessert.

7:00pm (Chicago) - I stare at the O’Hare flight display in disbelief. 7:00am. 7:00am!? My 10:00pm flight to Sao Paulo is leaving at 7:00am? What about our connecting bus to Rio? What about our reserved hostel in Rio tomorrow night? Ughh. I talk to someone at the United counter about this, but it turns out they don’t care.

5:30am (Chicago) - Back at the airport. I guess I was the last person to arrive, because the gate is jam packed. I buy five Auntie Annie Pretzels and prepare to board.

11:00am (Plane) - Four hours into the flight, the loud speakers ask twice in Portuguese and twice in English if there is a doctor on board. What? The lady in the seat next to me points out that our trajectory has veered off course towards a Caribbean Island. Are we emergency landing? For the next half-hour, everything happens in Portuguese… and it turns out the crisis was averted by the presence of a Brazilian doctor on board.  Phew.

6:00pm (Sao Paulo) - I meet Di at the airport, and she explains that we just need to take a bus to the subway and transfer two times, then we’ll be at the bus station for Rio. Okay.

7:00pm (Sao Paulo Bus Terminal) - The next bus to Rio leaves at 11pm and arrives at 5am. Umm, okay.

1:00am (Bus) - The bus is not comfortable for sleeping. I am awake.

5:00am (Rio Bus Terminal) - It is dark out. We are off the bus. Di asks me if I want to pay $9 for a 30 minute taxi ride to our hostel, or $3 for public transit involving three transfer and probably two hours. I pause longer than necessary. The decision is obvious. Has she gone mad? I’m too tired to figure that one out right now. We take a taxi. The taxi driver tries to put our backpacks in the trunk, but I keep my shoulder bag, since it has my passport and entrance visa and cash and laptop and ipod and camera and I really, really don’t want to lose it.

5:30am (Rio) - We are in a favela aka ’shanty town’ aka ghetto. Di has booked our hostel here. But the taxi cannot find the hostel itself. #35 doesn’t exist. He drives up and down the street twice, counting for us. He says “dezoito (18), vinte (20), trinta (30)” and then he waves his hand, pointing out that the hostel doesn’t seem to exist. We noticed. But still, he wants us out of the taxi. It’s dawn, and we’re in a favela, and the hostel isn’t here, and he wants us to get out.

5:35am (Rio) - We get out of the taxi, and try to communicate to him how fucked we are. He doesn’t seem to care. He wants his money, and he wants to leave, and he hands us our backpacks. We are on our own. We wander up and down the street.

5:45am (Rio) - We still haven’t found the hostel — but then I realize. “Di, where’s my shoulder bag. WHERE’S MY SHOULDER BAG!?!? IT’S IN THE TAXI!!” Oh. my. god.

6:00am (Rio) - We are in another taxi, headed back to the bus terminal. Please, please, please let the other taxi driver have gone straight back. Please, please, please let him still have the bag….

6:15am (Rio) - It is tense in the taxi. This is all my fault. I am useless when exhausted. I am slowly starting to come to terms with losing a couple of thousand dollars worth of stuff. The laptop belongs to work, which actually makes this worse, not better. Still, I am coming to grips with it. But I can’t handle the fact that without my passport or any of my cash or any of my credit or debit cards or any of my other forms of identification… the whole trip will be ruined. A week together in Brazil is about to become a week long quest for a passport against bureaucracy and government forms and all without money in a language I do not speak. Christ.

In past travels, I have thought a lot about the idea that problems can be turned into adventures. I have learned to take things like hour bus delays in the freezing cold completely in stride. In fact, I’ve learned to turn a situation like that to my advantage: commiserating with other sufferers can be great fun. I am not taking this one in stride though. Not at all. I am terrified. And furious. And exhausted.

6:30am (Rio Bus Terminal) - At the bus terminal, we head straight for the taxi line. Someone notices us, and starts walking us back somewhere! Please let this mean they have my bag. Please, please, please… and they DO! The whole thing! The cash and the passport and the laptop and the ipod and the camera. I cannot believe they have the whole thing!

The average Brazilian taxi driver makes 12000 Reais a year, or $7000 USD a year. The contents of that bag were worth between $1500 USD and $3000 USD. And it’s ALL THERE. Wow. I must be shaking because they keeping asking me in Portuguese me to calm down.

I still can’t believe it though. What luck!

… phew …

7:30am (Rio) - We are in another taxi, and back at the favela. This time we find the hostel. #35 was apparently spay painted on the wall. Silly us. Apparently the hostel gave our room away though, because we didn’t check-in soon enough. This, however, can be taken in stride.

In the common room there are shot glasses and open wine bottles and scantily dressed women and couches. The partiers — who were apparently still going strong at 7:30am — move out to a different part of the hostel… and Di and I pass out on the couches. Our Brazilian adventure has begun.

I learned never to yell at my girlfriend again (she deserved it though, trust me…)

I learned that there are places in the States where the closest gas station is more than 40 miles away.

I learned that huHot mongolian grill is the second best chain restaurant in the country.

I learned that you can relocate someone else’s car for free with autodriveaway

I learned that you can make a portable stove out of two used beer cans.

I learned that Boulder, Colorado would be a great place to raise a family.

I learned that it’s possible to live cheaper than I do, way cheaper.

I learned a new standard for simultaneously 1) having your own life together and 2) being incredibly generous with everyone you meet.

In a part of Lima with no tourists, there is a street.  At night, on first impression, it is a scary street.  The sidewalk looks like it has been bombed.  There is graffiti on the walls of the houses.  The houses are small and short and jammed right up next to each other.  There are abandoned, broken-down tires strewn carelessly about.  There is broken glass on the ground.

But during the day, things look different.  The street comes alive!  It is bustling with people and taxis and activity.  In particular, there is a group of young boys in the street with a soccer ball.  They pass the ball back and forth and talk to each other and laugh.

The boys are approached by a young woman who looks to them like she must be from a movie.  She is tall, she has blonde hair, and she can barely speak a word of Spanish.  She knows the right words to say, but she pronounces them as if they were English words. “Quiero jugar futbol”. “I want to play soccer”.  ”Quiero jugar futbol”.

The boys do not respond.  Do they not understand?  Do they not want to play?  Do they want her to leave?  They speak to each other in rapid-fire Spanish that the woman cannot possibly understand.  She tries, again and again.  ”Quiero jugar futbol”. “Quiero jugar”.  ”I want to play.”

Eventually, the boys start speaking slowly to her.  They ask her some basic questions, and she answers.  They laugh and laugh, but it’s not clear why.  One boy asks her to say: “Peru”, and she does, and they find it hysterical.  But just like that, she is accepted.  Teams are made, and two rocks are placed in the street, one on each end.  It’s not clear how this is going to work.  Are the rocks the goals?  How can a goal be made with only one rock?  But there is no way to ask questions like this.  The game begins.

People are watching.  A mother stands in the doorway to her house, following the game, expressionless.  A group of boys too young to play sits together on the side of the street and talks.  There are also a few older men and a teenager, off in the periphery.  Are they always there?  Or are they drawn by the Americans making fools of themselves?

Every minute or so, a taxi drives down the street, straight through the game.  Sometimes the game stops to let the taxi through, and other times the game continues with the taxi as an obstacle.  It seems to depend solely on which boy has the ball.  Occasionally, the ball careens off the side of a taxi, and one time the ball is even run over and spun up into the air.  Astonishingly, the taxi drivers don’t seem to mind.  The game continues.  Like the taxis, the broken glass and destroyed sidewalk and abandoned tires are part of the field.

The game goes on and on, for well over an hour.  When boys get tired they sit on the sidewalk near their goal, springing up to be the goalie when the other team gets close.  Eventually, it starts to grow darker.  Names are exchanged in broken, slow Spanish.  ”Dia” the boys called the blonde woman.  It’s not exactly right, but it’s close enough.

Finally, covered in dirt and drenched in sweat, the blonde woman and her boyfriend head into a house and go up to their room.  From their room, they hear shouts from the street below: “Dia!  Dia!”  

She goes to the window — but all they wanted was to see her again.  She waves to them, and they wave back.  And they look at each other and they laugh and they smile.

I learned that people living on $10 USD/day are no more or less happy than the average American spending $65 USD/day.

I learned how to survive in a place where I could barely communicate with most people.

I learned a little Spanish, maybe 200 words.

I learned that there are sicknesses bad enough that my body cannot fight them and medicine actually *is* necessary.

I learned about altitude sickness, too.

I learned that all hostels should have huge fireplaces instead of flat screen TVs.

I learned about life in the Peace Corps.

I learned that traveling Mormons are taken in without question by the other Mormons in every town they pass through.

I learned that I can go for a surprisingly long time without talking to anyone.

I learned that I would be fine in pretty much any travel situation — at least the ones that aren’t life-threatening.

I learned that I’m good at managing my time only when I have deadlines enforced by someone other than myself.

I leaned how to have a blast at weddings by letting go a little bit and asking strangers to dance.

I learned more about meeting people in coffee shops and other situations.

I learned to carry around personal business cards with just my name, email, and phone number.

I learned how to make hummus from scratch!

I learned how to make iPhone applications.

I learned more about the importance of balancing work-life and socializing.

I learned how difficult it is to start your own company, and how much of the work involved is frustrating, boring, mundane, etc. — not at all like I’d hoped!

I learned how to scuba dive at the Great Barrier Reef!

I learned through a terrible, cramped, bed-bugged experience in the Whitsundays that there are almost no consequences for a tourism company that mistreats its customers — they just get a new batch the next day!

I learned a new mantra: “If something scares you, do it!”

I learned the incredible high the results from confronting your biggest fears.

I learned how much fun it can be to pick up hitchhikers