On a Boat... in RIO

You may remember me saying in my last post on Monday that it was 8 p.m. and we were exhausted and going to bed. Well, that changed a little. Exhaustion was still there but bed time didn't arrive until after 5 a.m.

Micah and I got a wild hair and decided to kick sensibility to the curb and spend our last night in Rio out, but not out on the town; out on the water!

Just like the soccer game we went to on Saturday and the City Tour earlier on Monday, there were night events you could attend through the hostel and this one was a "Boat Party". It didn't leave until midnight and wasn't returning until 5 a.m. We had to be up at 8 a.m. to catch our cab to the bus station by 8:30 a.m. You only live once, though, right?

As predicted, the boat party was mainly travelers like ourselves. We rode in a cab with a girl from Argentina and two military guys: one from Missouri and one from California. We also met a guy from Colombia from our hostel, Eduardo, and a guy from Germany, Mario. Through the night we met plenty more--two girls from London doing a world tour, a girl from Brazil, a guy who'd been our tour earlier from Vancouver.

The boat was no Belle of Louisville but that was probably for the better. My guess (and I'm not very good at this sort of thing) was probably 25-30 ft wide and about 70 ft long--not too huge. That made it easy for Micah and I to never get lost from each other but feel safe to leave one another (for the bathroom or the bar) without the other feeling abandoned. Only two levels but it wasn't completely packed so there were only a few people up top at a time. There was a bar aboard and a raised platform that became a dance floor.

We took off around 1 (my guess). It was great to see the city at night. The long, long bridge we'd seen in the far distance from both Sugar Loaf and the Cristos was our destination. We got just to the other side of it and just rocked in the waves for quite awhile. This bridge, we were told, takes 15 minutes to cross. Someone gave me the distance of it but I've forgotten now--1500 meters? Seeing the Christ on a clear night from the ocean was pretty awesome as well. He's just lit up in the night sky above everything and you cannot see the cliffs and mountains around him, so he appears to be floating above. Beautiful.

I definitely could have afforded to come in long before we did, but at least it was before 5--probably a little after 4 when we docked and we grabbed a cab back with a few of our new hostel friends. A few short hours of sleep and we were on a bus waving goodbye to Rio.