Bjorn's Report

February 14, 2007

In order to prevent me form writing a book about last month.....the greatest month of my life.....I will be splitting this report into two sections, section one being the first have of the trip and section two being the second half. (These two reports will be long)

Section 1, Sao Paulo, SP-Lençois, Bahia

            A Viagem dos Sonhos, the trip of dreams, start bright an early, 8am in São Paulo, well technically it started earlier because I had to catch a bus form Londirna to São Paulo, but I was asleep during that bus ride, so it does not count. To start you off the trip was comprised of two gigantic amazing busses filled with about 75 exchange students from all over the world and about 4,000Km ahead of us. Once I got on the bus it was time to meet all the new exchange students, in which many friendships were made.    We set out from São Paulo and were headed to our first stop, Parity, RJ. Parity is a small little historical city nested in the mountainous coast of Rio de Janeiro state. When we arrived we first headed to the hotel, where we checked in and got settled into our rooms. With my luck I got put into a suit with four other guys, one of which I happened to sit next to me on the plane ride down to Brazil, so it was cool. IN the afternoon we headed out for a city tour. I must say the city was beautiful, but the tour was not so fun. After a long day we were all tired but not ready to go to sleep, most stayed up till the peak of dawn meeting everyone. The second and last day in Parity, we found ourselves taking a boat ride out to a deserted island which had a beautiful beach. With the weather not being so good nobody really stayed on the beach, everyone was just messing around on the boat. By noon we were back in the hotel checking-out and after lunch time we were headed out of Parity.

            The second city was about another 4 hour drive (for the people who think 4 hour bus rides are long you would have died on this trip). The second city was one I am sure everyone around the world knows, RIO DE JANEIRO!! Sleeping most the trip into Rio, I woke up with the surprise of seeing our beautiful hotel right on Copacabana Beach! When we arrived in the hotel we were met by all the exchange students from Florianopolis who were on a four day Rio trip. And the first night we spent meeting even more exchange students. On the morning of the first day in Rio we headed out for a tour of the downtown business district, which was quite interesting. We toured a giant church, went into some fancy stores, and had lunch at a famous bakery/coffee place. After lunch we headed off to the Sugarloaf. After taking two lifts up to the top we finally arrived to see the most beautiful overlook of a city I had ever seen in my life. You could see everything, the Christ, Copacabana, Ipanema, Downtown, the Harbor and much more! When we arrived back in the hotel it was still early in the day, about 4:30. So we decided to go out to the beach and play some soccer. We had the Americas verse Europe and a Japanese guy. Well the game didn’t end in America’s favor you could say. On the Second day we headed up to the Christ in the morning. To get to the Christ you had to take a train up the mountain. During the train ride we traveled through the world’s largest rain forest with in a City and on the way we had a perfect view of Ipanema beach and the famous lagoa lake. Once at the top it was another sensational view of the city, but unlike from the Sugarloaf, here you could see every part of the city. I managed to even sign the guest book. After taking about a million pictures and getting in the way of another million, everyone finally made it back down and then it was time to head of to our next spot in the city, Estádio Maracanã. One of the largest stadiums in the world Maracanã can hold up to 115,000 people at its current capacity. During our tour we went all the way to the top of the stadium, and finished the tour out on the field. By the time the tour ended it was already 2:30 and everyone was starving. So we headed out to a gigantic mall! Picture Sawgrass mills mall but without outlets stores. After about two hours at the mall we headed back to the hotel and got ready for our night out on the town….That night we headed to the Hard Rock Café. It was basically a night club; there was a huge dance floor and a DJ. We spent the whole night dancing and having a good time, finally leaving at 3am. The final day in Rio was beach time. We headed to Ipanema beach at about 10am and stayed there till about 5pm. The day was nothing but fun, we played ultimate Frisbee, did our best to avoid crazy venders,  swam in the ice cold water and got smashed around by giant waves, By the end of the day some were exhausted and others we really red, but the night was just beginning. Before dinner we had a dance class at our hotel. During the class we learned a Brazilian dance called Funk. Basically funk dancing is the dirtiest type of dance in the world. Now after dinner we headed over to another hotel where we met even more exchange students on the same nordeste trip but a different group. At the other hotel we had another in which we just partied all night again. We finally left back for our hotel at 3am and our bus right to the next city was at 6am. So we just stayed up all night and kept on parting back in our hotel. When 6am came around everyone loaded onto the bus and passed out.

            By around 4 or 5 in the after noon I expected to wake up and be in or relatively close to our next city, boy was I wrong. We hit some road trouble; a bridge had collapsed so we had to a take a small 5 hour detour. No problem considering the trip was planed out to be around 20 hours with out the detour. So we finally arrived in Porto Seguro, Bahia at 6am the next day. By this time on the trip I had found my best friends for the trip so all was well. Once we arrived at the hotel most people went to bed and other went swimming in the odd shaped pool that also went indoors. At 11am we headed out to the beach. This beach wasn’t so much fun, the water was nice but on the beach it was nothing but tables and chairs, and a lot of vender trying to sell you the most useless junk on the planet. Basically we didn’t do much that day. On the second day everybody headed out to a beach about an hour out side of the city. Well not everybody, my two roommates and I got left behind because our alarm clocks did not go off. It was fine, we went out to the beach in front of our hotel and walked out to a sand bar about 300 meters of the beach, while walking out there the water never got deeper then out waist. By the end of the night everyone had returned and it was time for another dance class, this time for a similar dance style of funk but more calmed down. The next day we headed out to the next city Itacaré, Bahia.

            The bus ride was about 10 hours. Itacaré was a very small town with no hotel large enough to hold 75 people so we had to split up into 3 different small hotels. Lucky for me I was in the good one. The hotel had a nice pool, sauna, two Jacuzzis, and a ping-pong table. This city was like land of the hippies, the city had one main street which had many nice little stores and small restaurants and coffee shops, and also about 1,000 venders on the street try to sell stuff to you. After a night of wondering up and down the street, we chilled at the hotel. On the first full day we headed out to a deserted beach. There the girls enjoyed the beautiful seinary, nice warm water, the bright sun, and us crazy guys playing American football with a coconut. Every guy walked away with a painful souvenir from that game. By 4pm we were back in our hotel with a few visitors, all the other exchange students from the other hotels, it was something about ours being really nice or something like that. That night was another wonderful night walking down the main street. The second day we were picked up by land rovers and we drove out on a dirt road for an hour. Finally reaching our destination it was then time for some rafting. To me this was one of the best days of the trip. After going through about 4 sets of rapids and some waterfalls we went through a small canyon and came out in a small call area of water. There we were able to jump of an 8 meter jump. After enjoying a couple jumps we headed back out onto the river where we encountered more rapids. At one point my boat got stuck in a rapids and another boat came in and right in front of us it flipped dumping everyone into the rapids. Don’t worry nobody was hurt in the event. At the end of the rafting we were out in the middle of a lake, in which we all took the opportunity to go for a nice swim. By the end of the day we were all quite tired and for the first night on the trip I fell asleep before midnight. The next day was more traveling.

            During our 12 hour bus ride to Lençois, Bahia, a tiny little city out in the middle of know where, I learned that northeastern brazil has now jungle, in fact it’s a gigantic dessert. Will driving to Lençois we had to drive on a dirt road for some way and I felt like I was out in western Texas, there was nothing. And yes, imagine two giant coach busses driving on a dirt road in the middle of no where, that was us. Once in Lençois we checked into the most beautiful hotel of the whole trip. It was a beautiful Italian Tuscany villa taken straight out of Italian, well at least it looked and felt that way to me. After 4 cities of nothing but beautiful beaches most of us became quite lost and confused to what we would be doing here in Lençois. One the first day we headed out on a hike that took us through some of the most amazing desert/forest type geography I have seen in my life. After walking for about an hour and a half we reached our river. To our amazement there was a giant waterslide. At it was all natural. It was about 75 feet tall, and all you had to do was sit down at the top and let the water take you down. Everybody loved it except for one thing, high speeds, rocks that are not that smooth, didn’t add up to well for your butt by the end of your ride down. After riding down the slide one to many times for my butt, I took advantage of a 4 meter jump at the river too, doing a couple back-flips off the jump got me feeling good and I forgot about my painful butt. After hiking back to the city and have lunch, we embarked on another 1 hour long hike. This time though we walked through tight narrow passages of giant boulders and weaving streams. Once at the end we reached a water hole where we went swimming. While swimming we discovered that the mud on the banks of the water hole could be used as paints, so us being kids we covered our selves in mud and drew funny thinks on each other….me being me, I gave myself the superman S. While messing around in the pool we managed to build a complete human tower with three levels of people. After hours of being in the pool we calmed down and played about 20 games of truko, a typical Brazilian card game. On the second day we headed out on the busses split into two different groups. We drove about an hour out of the city and ended up out in a flat desert. After taking a small walk it looked like there was nothing there to see at all until we reached a GIANT hole in the ground, which was actually a giant cavern. Once down at the bottom I finally understood the size of it. The cavern was in the shape of a donut so to say, it made a loop, we exited the same area we entered but we never turned around. The height was around 6-7 stories, it width was about 50 meters, even wider at some parts and it was over 2km long. When furthest away from the entrances out guide turned the lantern of and there we were unable to see our hands in front of use. Quite amazing. Once we returned to the bus we drove another 30 minutes and arrived in a location surrounded by pleatous. We to a 30 minutes climb up one and at the top you had the view of the largest canyon in Brazil. After meeting up with the other bus we drove out to another river for some swimming. Once at the river we walked down stream and ended at a giant 100ft waterfall and a lagoon down at the bottom. After reaching the bottom we enjoyed a nice swim. Once back at the hotel around 6pm it was time for dinner. We went into town and enjoyed a nice traditional dinner and some shopping. Before we knew it we had to return to the hotel and hit the sacks.

            To be continued….

 Salvador-Brasilia is in the process of being written.

Thank you,

 Bjorn Syse