Rio De Janeiro - The Promised Land

LOCATION: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
DATE: 27/2/5

It was 8 months ago that i booked my flight to Latin America. And every night since then i´ve had the same dream of my arrival in the Promised Land - Rio de Janeiro City.

It starts with the image in black&white, grainy. I´m in the middle of a frenzied favela (slum) party in the hills of Rio - pulsing samba beats, the smell of frying garlic and onions and peppers, and crowds of people dancing in the streets.

The image snaps into color. The camera rises up above the favela and sweeps down the mountainside, over the skyscrapers of Rio central, and hovers above the beach, where hundreds of uniformly large-breasted "rent a hip-hop music video" girls lie, waiting.

As i touch down, they run over and dance around me as though i have lots of money, ..or lots of money. It makes little sense till i realise i´m in the film clip for "Beautiful" with Pharrel Williams - who is busy lip-synching next to me.

***

Unfortunately, due to 2 annoying travel habits, and 1 frustrating fact of life, my arrival was incredibly different.

Annoying Travel Habits
1. To prevent muggings, dress as poor as you possibly can
2. Be Cheap

Annoying Fact of Life
I dont know Pharrell Williams and i wasnt in the film-clip for "Beautiful"

***

It all started when i left Lima, Peru. I could have worn my clean, respectable jeans, trainers and a tee. But no, following rule no.1, i put on the outfit i had worn the day previous while playing "National Geographic Photographer" on a rubbish tip outside Lima. It smelled. Badly.

A flight from Lima to Rio should take about 9 hours. However, in my quest for cheapness, I flew instead 16 hours Lima-Panama-Sao Paulo. I then could have taken a 1hr shuttle flight Sao Paulo-Rio, but the bus was.. shall i say it? "much cheaper". Not the comfortable tourist bus either, but the cheap one. The peoples bus.

So finally, 20hrs after i left Lima, smelling remarkably like someone who had been frolicking in a rubbish tip the entire day, I was met by the director of my volunteer program.

He was not Pharrell Williams. He did not posess incredibly large boobs.

However, i was grateful to be in safe hands, and in a taxi rolling through the vast and dangerous city that is Rio de Janeiro.

I arrived finally at the volunteer house, which i had expected to be a volunteer house. Instead, it was a 5-floor mansion with jacuzzi, sauna, giant TV that had been converted to house the other 16 international volunteers.

That night, in bed and listening to a chorus of belching frogs, i couldnt make up my mind whether to be disappointed by my arrival, or glad just to have made it without being robbed. I questioned my sanity - almost grasping one language to throw myself into learning another.

Eventually, I dropped these thoughts into the "too-hard basket" and went to sleep.