~BRASIL~
São Paulo was our first destination in Brasil and Nick, Kate, Sean, and I hit the ground running. “The South African dude we met had a bottle of vodka and kept feeding it to us” - Diary entry from day 1. “I woke up on a couch very confused...” First line of my diary on day 2, cheers Dan. Getting invited to random parties at bars we couldn’t pronounce and eating more cheap/mediocre sashimi than we could handle summed up the rest of our stay in this ginormous city.
We united a multi-cultural crew of Kiwis, Poms, Saffas, and Yanks to take on what would be the most action packed 4 days of the trip, Tomorrowland Brasil. More artists and sweaty mammals on the piss in one place than I have seen before. Highlights include our backstage pass thanks to our vodka yielding South African and hour long showers (Highly recommend going for the top package at this event - free showers + breakfast!).
Leaving Tomorrowland with a lack of brain cells and slightly broken souls we made our way to the beautiful coastal town of Florianopolis. This was our first 12+ hour bus ride of our trip but had opted for the nice comfort version, working into it slowly. We spent 4 days attempting to relax and detox from our alcohol fueled bender the week prior. This detox turned into a rum cleanse, and we flushed our body with quality Brasilian grade golden rum (ethanol).
Nick and I had enough of our rum cleanse and decided to head to Rio de Janeiro for our last week in the country. Our Portuguese was still the basics with no sign of improving, so, we checked into a hostel on Copocabana Beach ready to party with some fellow non-speaking gringos. Fortunately our prayers where answered and we met some tourists who shared our enthusiasm for blow-out evenings. 7 days of on and off drinking, body surfing, near drownings, 9 person dorms, stolen money, great yarns, and a entry ticket to the Gold Lounge at Rio International we had well and truly seen Brasil off in Gringo style.
This is only a quick snippet of what happened on our trip and I am finding it hard to refrain myself from writing more. Brasil is a fantastic place and with more time and patience (Portuguese is hard) I would love to return. Thank you for everyone we met on our adventures in this marvelous country