Three Weeks In

I took off from Toronto Pearson Airport at 12:45am on August 21st, 2009. I landed at São Paulo Guarulhos International Airport at 11:15am later that same day. I've been on the road for three weeks now -- though 'on the road' is a bit misleading since seventeen of my first twenty-one days was spent rather stationary in Rio de Janeiro.

I'd carved out quite a comfortable, familiar life for myself between my time in Rocinha and Ipanema. There was the two weeks volunteering at the crèche in Rocinha, then five days in Ipanema doing some sightseeing in the morning, afternoons at the beach and spending the nights out.

However, I'm on the move again. In fact, as this is posted, I'll still have three hours left on a twenty-eight hour bus ride to Salvador de Bahia, north along the Brazilian coast.

(No, there's no mobile Internet on buses in Brazil -- I typed this up in the hostel in Ipanema, and just set a delayed publishing time.)

It would have been incredibly easy to just stay in Rio, but I had to get going if I'm going to have any hope of seeing a few cities on my way up to Belém and Manaus, and getting into Argentina by early October.

So it's off to a new city, new surroundings, and having no clue how to get around until I get my bearings in Salvador. By the time I get used to Salvador, it will be time to go on the road again; maybe to Recife, maybe to Fortalezza.

Part of the fun of travel is going to new places, courting the unfamiliar and seeing the, as yet, unseen.

I just need to learn that again, because it only took me three weeks in Rio to forget.