Date Written: Feb. 9, 2002 (5:30 a.m.)
Current Location: Iguazu airport-IGU
Subject: Tony arrives!!! The Wal-Mart and the Mom and Pop cafe

Saturday, Feb. 9, 2002
Well, surprisingly, I was able to get up on time and I have arrived at the airport without any hassles. I think the Taxi over charged me but there's not much I can do about it. It's cool to think that Tony has been traveling for many hours already. Hope he's havin' a blast on the plane.
I didn't ever check my e-mail yesterday so I have a bunch of outstanding questions...the biggest of which is where is Johanna. I wonder if she made it to Rio or if she found a place to stay. I have pretty big doubts about her showing up in Rio, or about me seeing her there. We'll see. I guess I have mixed feelings about the whole thing but I know if she doesn't show up that I will be sad. Another thing I wonder about is if Sammy the tool figured out I gave him the wrong hotel name and tried to e-mail me. I did give him Tony's name and he knows the hotel is in Leblon so maybe he found it on his own. That would suck.
Well, I guess stage I of the trip is over and the second stage is about to begin. Part I has been great and will be tough to beat. I just went back and read all the stuff I have written for the first time. DAMN...I had already forgotten quite a few things. It occurs to me that there are 2 important stories that I still need to write about...the weekend in BA and Penelope Cruz, which really are the same story...(see Feb. 2 journal)
...it's only 10 minutes now until Tony lands so part two of this journey is just about to begin. I'm already a bit annoyed by the # of Americans who were on my last plane. I don't want to get caught up in the touristy thing but that's what Rio is. Hopefully we can keep it real. It is gonna be really tough to make daily entries but I'll do my best. I must say, being back in this airport reminds me of how amazing Brazilian women are. I'm ready to rock baby...Rio, Carnival...HERE I COME!!!

Date Written: Feb. 10, 2002 (11:47 a.m.)
Current Location: Top Service hotel-Rio

Saturday, Feb. 9, 2002 (con't)
Yo yo yo!! Well, here I am in Rio De Janiero baby! It was a good day yesterday. I met up with Tony without any problem and it was cool to see him. We couldn't get cash from the ATM in the Sao Paulo airport which is a problem which STILL has not been solved. After getting the car and everything we were ready to rock. We got turned around a bit trying to get out of Sao Paulo, but we eventually pulled it off. About an hour and a half in, we passed a Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart...right in the middle of Brazil...kind of weird. Well, I needed to buy a needle and thread (which Tony forgot-Dammit!) to fix my STUPID backpack, so we decided to turn around(easier said than done) and go to the Wal-Mart. That was some experience. First of all, you had to go through these gates with a guard box and get this piece of paper with your license plate number on it. Then, on the way out, you had to show that piece of paper to get out. The truth is, I'm still not quite sure what the purpose of that was. I mean, was it so people don't steal cars or what? Were there so many car thefts at this particular Wal-Mart that they had to implement this system? What if you lose that thing? It just didn't seem to be a real security measure. It's like they wanted security of some sort there but didn't really know how to go about it. It was very funny to me.
So then I had to go into this Wal-Mart (while Tony waited in the car that we were afraid would get stolen) with virtually no idea where to find two random-ass items like a needle and thread. Man, I didn't even know the words for either of them in Spanish. Miraculously I found them without too much effort. Then I picked up a couple bottles of whiskey, some water, and a few snacks and I was ready to get back on the road...or so I thought. I got to the checkout counter and saw that most of the lines were pretty short...sweet. What I did not realize was that there check out process in Brazil is not quite as efficient as it is here. I mean, even though there were only 3 people in line in front of me, they each most have had enough groceries for the next several months. I thought maybe there was some kind of bombing threat or something. These people were ready to stock their shelters! Even more crazy was that about every third item seemed to not scan. Now, they had an interesting solution for this. Instead of the traditional, "Produce, we need a price check on line 2," there is a bunch of service clerks there on rollerblades...that's right, rollerblades. It actually isn't a bad idea since it was such a huge store. So there are a bunch of guys at the front of the store whizzing back and forth bagging groceries and zipping off to do price checks. It was actually a little entertaining to watch for the first 10 minutes I stood in line. So anyway, as I said, there were only three people in front of me and I waited in line for FORTY FIVE MINUTES. Good god. No wonder so many cars get stolen from that lot. The people are inside the damn store for 2 days trying to get through the check out line!!!
Oh yeah, I want to point out something that is gonna come up several times over the next several days. This Wal-Mart instance was the first of many "Walkie-Talkie" moments that we had on the trip. See, Tony had thought of bringing his walkie-talkies with him so that we could keep in contact if we got separated for some reason...sort of like a short distance cell phone but since we probably wouldn't be more than a mile or two apart at anytime, that would be cool. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring them, which ended up big mistake for moments like the one we were having. That is, while he was sitting in the car wondering what the hell was taking me so long, it would have been nice to be able to tell him what was going on...hence, it was a walkie-talkie moment. He had been there for an HOUR and we already needed those darn things. Crap.
Damn, sorry about that tangent...that's what I do. So after wasting an hour at the Wal-Mart, we were pretty hungry so we decided to grab some food. We decided to go to this little café that we saw just outside the Wal-Mart and close to the freeway entrance which we had learned is not the easiest thing to get to. At this point, I can say that driving here hasn't seemed to be near as difficult as I had heard. The roads are great and people aren't driving too fast. The only real difficulty seems to be turning around. If you are going one direction on a major road, and you want to go the other way...be prepared for that to take about 15 minutes. Other than that, driving is the same.
So we go into this little café which is closing as we walk in. There was this husband and wife in there that were obviously the owners, cleaning up everything. Somehow they communicated to us that they were closed and had cleaned up most of the food already because the carnival holiday was about to begin. Then we kind of asked what they had left and if they could make us anything. They were so nice. They basically cooked us a little bit of all the stuff they had left. They even stayed open just for us. They were really cool, and we actually "talked" quite a bit, but obviously they spoke no English or Spanish. The mom was so funny when we told her we were going to carnival, she was there telling us just like she was our mom to be careful and watch ourselves. It ended up being a great little meal and it was fun to meet them. We told them we would stop by there next week when we were on our way back to Sao Paulo, which we seriously plan on doing. Finally, we had full bellies and were back on the road.
The rest of the drive to Rio went without incident. It was raining a little bit but the drive was beautiful. We drove right through the mountains. There were a lot of winding mountain roads that were pretty narrow. The signs were a bit hard to follow at times and we did get off track a couple times. Finally we made it to Rio around 7:30. Now the real trick was coming...trying to find the hotel.

AC