Parachy

Our bus traveling time is on track for the Guinness Book of Records. From the 7th until the 10th of December (4 days), we travelled 60 hours on buses (a total of 100 hours in the last week).

We left Foz do Iguaçu and caught a bus to Rio that was supposed to last only 22 hours.

We changed buses three times (the first one broke down, and the second had a problem with the gearbox). We lost 5 hours while changing buses in the middle of the night and got stopped a few times by the Brazilian police for check-ups. Put all that together (and add a few unnecessary stops for food), and we suddenly don’t know what happened to Thursday.

At least we know how much you need to tip the police in order to get “goods” transferred from Paraguay—which is handy little information to know in life.

Highlight of the bus ride: Two special force policemen boarded the bus, inspecting our bags in the compartment above the seats in pure silence (you know that feeling where you avoid eye contact with the police and feel guilty even though you’ve done nothing wrong). A guy decided it was the right time to visit the bus toilet. Two guns were drawn faster than you can say, “You can’t stop me; I need to visit the toilet”—which, by the way, is the wrong thing to say, as it will get you out of the bus for a 10-minute full-body search (latex gloves kind of search).

The Brazilian buses were nothing like the luxurious ones in Argentina. There was no food service, the air-con was half-working, and the seats were very uncomfortable.

Comparing Argentine and Brazilian buses is like comparing Pace and Amstrad (a joke for the SKY people).

The weird and twisted thing about all this is that we’re not sick to death of bus trips. We must have passed that point, and now we can’t live without them. But there is one thing I can live without on a bus: the on-board toilets. What’s the point of them?

From my experience (100 hours of experience so far), there are two things you learn about toilets on buses. First, they always stink. Second, you only go there if you’re desperate. And if you’re desperate, there’s a pretty good chance you’re in for a “stinky” one as well. So do the rest of the passengers a favour and save the aromatherapy. Stop the bus and become one with nature. No one will complain. Also, those chemicals in the toilets that smell worse than shit—the only thing they do is travel through the air-con, so when you flush the toilet, it’s as if they do it on purpose to ruin your sense of smell, making you no longer worried about the stinky number 2 that was just delivered.

Anyway, we arrived in Rio at 03:00 and had the option of either waiting until morning to find accommodation or (what else) grabbing another bus to a nearby town we wanted to visit anyway. Since we were already at the bus station, we got a bus to Paraty (or Parati, or as it’s pronounced “Parachy”).

This is a nice little seaside village that offers some very nice day/half-day trips to nearby wonderful beaches and other eco-trips.

That would have been the case if it didn’t rain ALL day (and during the few seconds it stopped raining, the humidity was so high that you got equally wet). But we did manage to get 2 hours of sun, which found us on the beach. We only stayed there for one night since this weather didn’t give us much to do, so we got a bus the next day back to Rio. This time, we had a hostel booked in Copacabana.