The long version volume 1: Rio De Janeiro

On December 20, 2005 I went to Brazil with my friend Brooke and flew to New York to meet her the day before. The next morning when we left it was twenty degrees and thousands of transit workers were striking for luxuries like health care and job security. It was the first day of the transit strike and millions of people were trying to make it to work on time. We were trying to make it to paradise.

Now I am all in favor of workers’ rights and the environment and all that business, but not when it affects my ability to buy whatever the hell I like for the lowest possible cost and do whatever I want with the least possible hassle. On Tuesday morning these crazy strikers were severely affecting my ability to get to the airport. The car service we booked flaked on us and Brooke had to call one of her friends to take us for fifty bucks. What if we never got to Brazil and just froze our asses off in Brooklyn all winter? No one would ever see our matching wax jobs.

The car service finally showed up half an hour late and as we pulled into our terminal at JFK I once again affirmed my support of the workers and their right to strike..

I am in solidarity with you brothers and sisters!! And Fuck you Bloomberg you fascist twat!!

We finally got into Rio 14 hours later where we would be staying with Brooke’s ex-boyfriend Dave, who had been working in Rio for the last year as a freelance journalist. I slept on the most uncomfortable bed you could imagine, which felt like a few chairs pushed together. Some of the other trip participants, however, were lucky enough to share a comfy bed with our host.

The next morning we woke up late and spent the day sightseeing. First it was Sugarloaf Mountain for spectacular views of the city and then later on we wandered around downtown before ending up in an area called Lapa to hear some samba music. Now I have been a fan of Brazilian music for a while, but hearing it live is something else. It gets in your joints like some kind of musical arthritis. As I was listening to the music, two questions crossed my mind: how did these people invent such great music and secondly why can everyone in this place from teenagers to senior citizens dance so much better than me.

Is it genetics that makes the Brazilians who they are or are they just products of a vibrant culture? Quite an interesting question don’t you think? We will be exploring some of the biological aspects of this nature vs. nurture debate later on in the blog, but watching the crowd was certainly as enjoyable as the music.

The next day we took a bus about half an hour away from Rio to a nearby national park, Tijuca. We were only a few miles from a city of almost ten million and yet we were in the middle of the jungle. All the jungly bits you could ever want were there; bird noises, vines, waterfalls, and dense greenery everywhere. In fact, after we climbed to the peak of one of the mountains we came across the jungliest bit of all.

Brooke, who was walking in front of me, all of a sudden jumped back and shouted, “snake!” And there it was coiled in the middle of the path, partly camouflaged underneath leaves and twigs. As later internet research taught us, it was a pit viper. It’s not the most poisonous snake, but it causes more fatalities than any other in South America. We had to bushwhack to go round it, but it really scared me how close we came to stepping on what we also learned has a ‘highly irritable disposition’. When I look back at the bravery and cool demeanor I showed throughout the whole incident I can only think about how lucky Brooke was to have such a calm and collected travel partner.

After the jungle adventure and the muscle sores I acquired on the trek, there was no more fitting activity than to partake in a little beach action the following day. We were staying in Ipanema and the beach was just a block away. I’m not such a beach person, but this was a treat. Ipanema is a serious hive of activity. Just look at this picture, for example.

Even if you are only a fraction as pervy as me, you could easily spend all day gaping at the wondrous sights on the beach. It seems that the dental floss bikini is in fashion this year again in Brazil, for something like the 40^th year in a row.

After looking around for a while I remarked to my friends that I had never seen so many guy friendly bodies. You know, really skinny, beautifully tanned, a well pronounced bottom and perfectly spherical 36DDs engaged in a continual fight with their surrounding fabric.

Do you get the picture? I was too shy to take one myself.

I was shocked to discover later on that a lot of these boobs are fake, but unless there is some new ass enhancement surgery I don’t know about, the bums are all real and right there in 3-D for your viewing pleasure.

Later on in the trip a couple of Norwegian friends and I made up a game called true or false. It’s really easy to play. You just lie on the beach tanning and sipping fresh coconut milk, and when a girl walks by you look at her boobies and shout out TRUE or FALSE. It’s great because even if they happen to speak English they have no idea what you are talking about.

I promise there will be no more crude sexist observations about ladies’ bodies in this blog, but some people have been asking me about this.

A few years ago the New York Times published an article about increasing rates of obesity in Brazil accompanied by a less than flattering photo of some beachgoers. The article caused uproar in a country which takes extreme pride in baring their beautiful bodies and even more so when it was discovered that the fatty bum bums in the picture were all from Europe. One woman from Czechoslovakia was planning on suing the New York Times when she got back from her sun soaked adventure in Brazil.