From now on I will always pay the extra 5 dollars to not sit on the slow bus anywhere! Instead of six hours the bus to PA took 9 hours! With stops every few minutes it was pretty difficult after a while, but I made it to saturday night in Porto Allegre. Well it wasnt quite what I thought it would be. The center is not realy where you want to be on Sat, its full of shady characters and homeless guys, not quite the lively party scene I was expecting. The hotel I stayed at was nice enough, but the guy at the front desk put me next to the elevator; and by next to the elevator I mean my head was about 6 inches from it. Needless to say sleep was controlled by how much people went up and down. Good thing they stopped at around 3 and didnt start until 7, when I promptly woke up. I decided that walking around the town would be fun on a sun morn, maybe a little shopping, sightseeing... well the shady characters were still around and I literally had to run at one point when 4 guys tried to surround me, needless to say I decided to flee while I still had the majority of my posessions. Thinking quickly I read about a little mountain town called Canela, and took the first bus there!
The two towns had about as much in common as New York and Ojai. When I got here I spent the day walking around sipping mate and eating chocolate; (apparently this area absorbed a lot of Italians and Germans) What a great town! I met a couple of nice brothers in the hostel who spoke spanish, one of whom was a midget as well, of course we got along famously! The only problem with this town is the complete and utter absence of any form of heating, be it a fireplace or central heating. The showers also are not heated by water heaters but instead by these little electric things attached to the water flow above your head. They dont work that well. Despite what I thought was adequete planning, I was not prepared for the cold. I dont know why not, maybe my body is used to summer right now and my internal thermostat is turned way down, but Im wearing 6 layers, every long sleeve shirt I own and my jacket at all times and still Im pretty cold! Despite the cold, the people here are warm as can be. I already made a few friends and went to a great open mike night last night. Today I just got back from a long (10K) hike to this waterfall which falls 130 m and has a lot of falcons and other rapiers which live near them! I just had a great lunch of all you can eat Buffet with my friend Vagner, and we made plans to go out tonight to some club in the next town over.
I forgot to mention the all you can eat spots in Brazil, well there are a lot of them! It is pretty amzing, every Churrascuria, or meat grill place is all you can eat, and most cost 5 dollars! There are numerous buffet livres for lunch with some only costing 3.50. Lets just say if I were a certain Andre two chicken I would be in hog heaven!
More later, hopefully tomorrow when I transfer pics onto the site!
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