Road to Carnival

By going to the Boca/River game we successfully traveled 6 hours in the wrong direction for getting to Carnival. We spent 12 hrs in Mar de Plata to see the game and go to the beach. We spent as much time on the bus as we did in getting there. It is as if we were 19 again and had made a beer run from Portland, Oregon to the Canadian border. Upon leaving on the 2 am bus back to BA we decided to go for the luxury seats so that we might be able to sleep a bit better as there would be four days of hard traveling to make it to Carnival on time.

We soon discovered that after a night on ANY bus you reach Vegetative State 2. This state is recognized by a sore back, and restlessness. We had a few hour to kill in BA so we were able to collect our thoughts and prep ourselves for the 20 hr bus to the Brazilian border. We brought the chess set, books, food, Rubik's cube, and a Portuguese study guide, but by the time we got off the bus at the border we had passed into Vegetative State 3.

Vegetative State 3 is indicted by long periods of lost time, zoning out, unresponsiveness to punches in the arm, and emitting a body odor that no cologne can cover up. We were lucky though because we had to cross the border independent of the long bus systems. Even though we had to think and process information in a country that did not speak English or Spanish, by the time we got back onto the long haul bus we were only back to Vegetative State 1 which is the lack of desire to talk because everything you have have to say that is interesting or uninteresting has already been said.

While at the border we did have to opportunity to jump out to see the famous Iguaçu Falls. No one picture can capture the immenseness of the falls. Interspersed through this blog post are a series of pictures that show parts of the falls, but the quantity of water, shape, and grandness of the falls is unmatched. They are probably 60 meters tall, but over a kilometer long. There are national parks on both the Argentine side and the Brazilian side, and both have their perks. In terms of getting to the water and getting wet, the Argentine side is better, but the Brazilian side is more photogenic. It was nice to just stroll around and have a look at something that was not the inside of a bus.

No movies in any of the Brazilian buses was a huge disappointment and a large part of the reason why I forgot where we transferred. It could have been Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, this memory loss along with with the drool covered shirt indicate that I reached Vegetative State 5 on this bus. Vegetative state 5 is recognized by the desire but in ability to sleep or think. One may feel as though the brain has been removed from the body.

We got to the city about midday, and discovered we had to get across town in 15 minutes to make the bus. As that was not going to happen we ended up with the afternoon in what we discovered was Sao Paulo as we came back down the vegetative state chart. We had lunch and watched a movie, and the back to the bus stop were we got back on the bus for our final and longest leg. All night and the next day and night we traveled on the bus. It is unknown what the final vegetative state was because we had obviously blacked out and thus had been above level 6 (if level 10 is brain dead and breathing machine).

In the bus yard in Bahia da Salvador, after all the passengers had gotten off, the maid came on to clean the bus and found us still there. She freaked out, started screaming and babbling in some strange language that I didn't recognize, and beating us over the head with her mop. That brought us back to life enough to grab our bags, tumble off the bus and start to give human form to the blobs that we called our bodies.

"We're soooo there!" Dave exclaimed.

"Hang on," I said, "I need to sit down for a couple of minutes."