The Road to Nowhere

Thursday 18 Februrary
Rio de Janeiro – Recreio dos Bandeirantes

I made a mistake. I booked a hostel for today so I could spend an extra couple of days in Rio planning my next trip. Which, incidentally, I’ve decided is going to be Ecuador and the Galapagos. It’s cheaper to get there than Bolivia, strangely. So anyway I booked a hostel in what I thought was Rio, near a beach, that had wifi and looked pretty relaxed. It was a kind of surf place, not that I wanted to surf but that would help with it being chilled out.

So I got in the taxi and we set off ... and we went further ... and further ... and further. I don’t know how long it took as I fell asleep, but it must have been easily over an hour. And where did I end up? Well, a little shanty town next to a beach that had big breaking waves. The actual hostel was booked out so they put me in an apartment of my own round the corner, which was nice.

So despite not being in Rio I was in a nice chilled out place where I could relax and sleep off the excesses of carnaval in the privacy of my own apartment. Although the apartment didn’t have wifi so I had to go to the hostel to sort that out. And it was raining, but that wasn’t too much of a problem, I needed to be indoors anyway.

So I booked up a couple of nights back in Rio, flights to Quito and the hostel in Quito, and generally relaxed. Had a nice pizza for dinner, a couple of beers, and then went to bed early, only to be bitten by some really painful mosquitoes – before I put up the net. Luckily the pain only lasted for a short while.