Uma Viagem da Rua (Road Trip)

Yesterday I ventured on my first road trip in Brazil.  This was a test trial, if you will, for a much longer trip that I will be taking with three friends in about two weeks.  I had a meeting scheduled in Curitiba, which is about four hours north of Floripa.  I made one absolutely terrible mistake prior to my departure.  On Sunday before the Lakers game, I happened to stumble upon a movie called Turistas, which I had heard was good, and, therefore, I gave it a go.  Little did I know that the movie was about a few Americans getting in a bus crash while in Brazil and subsequently getting drugged and robbed.  I am pretty sure that this was not the kind of preparation I needed for my trip.  This was the equivalent of watching the movie Unfaithful right before getting married.  Worse case scenarios were dominating my thoughts all night, and I hardly slept a wink.  Not to be denied though, I decided that my plans were set and there was no turning back now.  Although Alessandra and I are "taking a break" (it was tough translating that from English to Portuguese!), I had her come along.  It's one thing to have a language barrier when you're trying to order a strawberry smoothie, but it's a whole other thing to have a language barrier when you get a flat tire 50 miles from civilization.  As is typical in Brazil, I was told that the drive would take two hours and I was told that it would take four hours, depending on who I asked.  I played it safe and left early.  My old boss, Jeff, and I used to be amazed that no matter how early or late we left for a meeting, we would always arrive almost exactly on time.  It was really uncanny.  The same was indeed true for this trip.  After arriving in Curitiba in about 3 hours, 15 minutes, it took quite some time to actually find the building (we had to ask four different people) and I arrived at the meeting at exactly noon, which was the scheduled time.  Four hours of travel time and not a minute to spare!  To make a long story short, the meeting went great and we were even given a little tour of Curitaba afterwards.  It's a fairly big city with almost two million inhabitants.  There is not a great deal to the city so I can't say that I was totally enthralled with it.  We ended up staying the night at a hotel because we were so exhausted and didn't want to drive back.  Later in the night, we asked the hotel clerk for a restaurant recommendation, and she spattered off a few options with directions.  Ale and I got in the car and ran into what looked like a great restaurant only a block from the hotel (why the hotel didn't recommend it, I have no idea).  We both agreed that we didn't feel totally safe driving around the city so we dropped the car back off at the hotel and walked to the restaurant.  We had a great meal and went home and slept like babies.  The drive home today was very smooth.  The sun is shining and the waves are good so I'm very happy to be back home.  However, I feel like I popped my cherry on local Brazilian travel, and I'm very much looking forward to the next real test in two weeks!

These pictures aren't super interesting, but I thought I would include a few from the drive to give you a little feel...