My bus from Sao Paulo to Foz do Iguazu, took 15 hours. It left at around 8 and was due to arrive around 11 the next morning. At about midnight, we stopped to get food etc, and when we reboarded, some of the bus company´s drivers got on, hitching a lift back to the depot. Everyone saw them get on, and all three were wearing the delightful pink shirt-marroon trousers combo of their uniform. One of them, a huge guy with dark hair, decided to sit in the empty seat next to me, of course. About 10 minutes later, the bus driver switched off all the lights, and everyone settled down to sleep. Except fatty, who started making small talk. At first, it was pretty general, very polite. My portuguese sucks and his english was awful, so it was pretty basic. Brazilian men are incredibly flirty and forward anyway, so i wasn´t bothered. However, it pretty soon devolved into a sweaty fat man telling me he loved me and trying to feel me up in the dark. Eventually, i decided screaming bloody murder was the best policy, i woke everyone up and kept screaming until the bastard finally pegged it to the bus driver´s cabin in the dark.
With every bastard though, there are nice people who don´t want to molest you; Liza and Jeff were the couple sitting across from me and were really nice. I know it sounds cheesy, but quite unselfconsciously and honestly, Liza asked if i wanted her to hold my hand. It sounds odd, and i politely declined, but it was touching. There were other murmers of such encouragement and query as to whether i was ok, and i spent most of the rest of the 11 hour journey, staring out of the window. Jeff spoke excellent portuguese and offered to help me complain to the police in the morning. I guess it was pretty dumb of me to wait till morning, but i was just so relieved that he had left me alone, and didn´t know what we could acomplish so late in the middle of some random highway in the south of Brazil. When we arrived at Foz do Iguazu, the slimebag had gone. He had disembarked the bus at some tiny town in the middle of the night and our bus driver (orizimbo) was being incredibly uncooperative. At first he pretended to know nothing of the incident, as though a heifer of a sleezebag hadn´t burst into his cabin at midnight, preceded by angry yelling from me. Then he realised we weren´t giving up, so he gave up the guys first name- enrique...fucking enrique... and then tried to explain it couldn´t have been him, cos he´s an evangelical...WHAT THE HELL! as though that means anything, read a paper sometime orizimbo! Anyhow, we finally got him to drive us to the bus depot, where i filed a complaint wiuth the manager and he told me that enrique´s gonna get his fat ass fired. booyah! And suddenly, miraculously, i felt all better.
After that, i headed back to town with Jeff, and then Liza, Jeff and I all crossed the border of Brazil into Argentina. It´s awesome, there´s a tiny rusty old bus stop with a little sign swinging in the wind, saying ´argentina´. We took a 10 minute bus to argentina man! Love. It.
I had planned to stay on the brazilian side of the border first, but after the bus incident, i just figured enough was enough, and it was time to leave Brazil, the wonderful country full of good food, kind, friendly people and amazing carnavale. Unfortunately, it was also the place where i; had flu throughout carnavale, got sunburnt and covered in tiny little sunblisters, had food poisoning, nearly got in a fight with locals at the sambodromo, fell asleep in a portaloo, got stung by a jellyfish, fell asleep on the metro, not to mention, my hostel was robbed at gunpoint, i was mugged at knifepoint and, of course, my favourite and newest addition to the list, i was molested. Yey.
These were the many things i did not want to tell my mother, but better out than in i say, and she was surprisingly calm. I guess since i am still alive and they all happened in the past, she wasn´t as incensed. Then again, when i get home she might just slap a gps around my ankle and never let me leave the house again...we´ll wait and see shall we?
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p.s. stung by the jellyfish while i was at aimee´s, after the mugging, but before falling asleep in inappropriate places...ahem. We were mugged weeks ago, in one of rio´s nicest areas, ipanema. It´s fancy and therefore before carnavale, is full of rich, clueless gringos, making them/us, perfect targets. I think i´d mentioned how i usually was left alone in rio, blending into the crowd, but on this particular night, i was with zaza and about 10 other big blonde scandanavians... since we were just going round the corner to a local bar, for the first time in the whole time i was in rio, i took a bag out with me. what a numbnuts. As we were walking down the street, ambling really, from across the street, a gang of roughly 10 or 12 boys quickly strode towards us from their hiding place in the shadows of the park, and tried to grab anything they could. They punched and pushed and grabbed, and yet again, i screamed bloody murder, swearing like a troubador and girl-slapping as hard as i could. I´d like to say i threw a few punches, but mostly i just kicked them in the balls and shins. I think if they´d threatened me with their knives (yes boys and girls, they had knives) and asked for my bag, i hope i would have handed it over, but they just tried to take it... i was pissed goddammit and simply wouldn´t let go. At first i just had one on me, but then he called for reinforcements, since i refused to let go. I don´t think they would have used their knives... but who knows...ahem.
Our group had scattered as soon as the grubbers swarmed on us. People at the front and back had run off instinctively, though one danish guy ran back to help mattie who had three boys raping his pockets. I think i must have been grappling for about 3 or 4 minutes, i can´t really be sure, but i had no idea what was going on around me. The oddest thing was, it seemed to be happening really slowly. I wasn´t in a panic, just trying to hold on to my bag. Which, incidentally hardly had anything valuable inside. Go figure. After few minutes, i guess our friends who had run off decided to come back, and that scared off our muggers. I was punched to the floor and ended up with a giant bruise on my ass, yey, but guesswhat mo fos, i still had my bag, ooooh yeeeah. Suck on that muggers! The girls we were with got pretty badly robbed and were sobbing, understandably, but everyone kept looking at me warily, wondering why i too wasn´t doing the crying thing that obviously all girls must do in a crisis. Instead i told them i was quite hungry after the struggle and wanted a burger and some beer please... so that´s what we did.
the scandies and me, post mugging, wey!
And i swear to god, the next morning our hostel actually did get robbed at gunpoint. Zaza and i missed it by about 2 hours. We came down to the reception, to find everyone rewatching the cctv footage of our tiny hostel owner being bashed about and slammed into a wall, as she refused to fork over the cash. That same week, two other hostels in rio were robbed by guys with guns. It was on the news at home i believe, because some english people were killed...zaza and i had been planning to leave that morning anyway, so we promptly checked out, and headed to aimees... (i have to say, at least 30% of people we met had some kind of mugging story to tell. Especially in Lapa. I heard this guy jamie having ´that´conversation with his mum. He had clearly struggled about telling her, but his girlfriend had persuaded him he had to...
¨no mum, there wasn´t anything i could do about it... yes, they took everything i have...i´m fiiine, honestly... i need some money...can you call the insurance company for me...no, i don´t want to come home, thanks...yes, i´m perfectly safe...no you don´t need to fly over here with dad...¨
All too familiar...
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