Day Four - Daily Blog

It started south of the equator slightly past seven in the morning. As a gentle hazy light peeked through the curtains the air filled with a sound, every bit as soothing as the fingernails on the blackboard. It would stop – a moment would pass and it would start again.

I was disoriented and confused. The bed was too small and I didn’t understand that noise.

Suddenly it changed to a softer buzz, more like a child’s toy. As my mind cleared, I looked toward the sound and saw Loretta, softly snoring as a small trickle of drool lightly moistened her pillow. She snorted like an old Brahma bull warning a trespasser to stay out of his field and repositioned her face so to take advantage of the moisturizing characteristics of the newly wetted pillow.

I repositioned my pillows and moved my head part of the way up the wall so my feet were only a meter or so past the end of the tiny bed. More comfortable now, I began to contemplate the great disturbance in the force that I could sense.

Sure enough, there was rustling beside me and the Velcro sound of Loretta un-sticking her face from the pillow as she rolled onto her back and began another “fingernails on the blackboard” iteration.

I lazily reached over, snagged the latest Presidential Agent Novel written by WEB Griffin and plugged back into the story as I waited the buzz saw in the other bed to come back to life.

An hour later fresh and clean from our morning showers we arrived in the executive lounge to grab a bite to eat. The kids arrived around 10:30 and after half an hour or so of Internet interactions in the executive lounge, we were off on another adventure.

First there were the car negotiations. My initial plan was to take a taxi to the train station, jump the train to Corcovado (thus maximizing our opportunity to see monkeys), spend some time up there, take the train back down, snag a new cab to Sugarloaf, do our thing there and then catch a cab back to the hotel.

I figured we would spend a little over 120 Reai on taxis plus what it cost to visit the two land marks. This seemed a more reasonable approach because a “tour” (tour being you and 17 of your closest strangers mashed into a 12 passenger van) to Corcovado was $175 Reai per person. Sugarloaf was more like $150 each. The combined tour (where you got waffle imprints on your butt from sitting on the little fellow from Paraguay for so long) were around $250 Reai so if we could beat $1000 we should be in good shape.

Before reaching the cab I learned it was going to set us back $45 Reai each to ride the train to Corcovado. I already figured a cab fare to be around $35 each way so I negotiated $200 Reai (about $27.50 USD per person) for him to take all of us to the top, wait for us while we played then to Sugarloaf, wait for us again, and then back to the hotel.

As it worked out the cabbie knew maybe 7 words in English, had a pretty good working knowledge of Spanish, and could talk really fast in Portuguese. He played tour guide and pointed out land marks like the Palace where the royals lived when Rio was the capital of Portugal (now the governor lives there). We in turn informed him that seeing monkeys was very important to us, Shane had two dogs, and then we accidentally said the magic words.

Making small talk in broken Spanish we brought up the subject of Futball (Soccer) and suddenly the guy turned into Mark Carey (and like Mark – he became a family friend). He was a single guy and his life consisted of three (count them three) things. Playing Futball, driving the cab, and watching Futball.

Shane explained that he worked for a professional sports team and the cabbie quickly moved up the “I have affection for your scale” from Mark Carey to John Cavanaugh. Now the guy was family. He found our monkey (and Loretta butchered an opportunity for a once in a life time picture), took us all the places we agreed upon (as well as a few others that were not negotiated) and performed off the books freebies like stopping at "Lizardville" where we snagged some pictures that I'm sure Mandy will adore.

We saw the Christ the Redeemer statue, we attempted to traumatize Cassandra with the cable car up sugar loaf mountain (failed misurably on that one - turns out that she's fearless, even around things that scare her) and made it back to the hotel in time for happy hour and snacks.

The day couldn't decide if it was clear or cloudy which turned out to be quite a nice experience. Not only did it save us $600 Reai on helecopter rides, but it gave some unique looks at the different mountains around Rio. Somtimes it was clear, then an entire mountain range would disappear.

We were on top of Sugarloaf mountain at a little cafe. Shane and Cassandra were drinking a coke while Loretta and I were eating ice-cream...and it happened.

Was it the presence of the holy spirit? Was it a miracle? Perhaps we will never know but the giant white cloud that was blocking the statue moved to the left, a little breeze came up and I snapped the picture. At the time I though I was just wasting bits on a picture that wouldn't matter but upon closer review I think I might have captured something devine as I saw a sigh that suggested the man on the right had Jesus in his heart (or at least on the top of his head).

It was, as they say, a good day…but it wasn’t over.

The cabbie dropped us off at the hotel. We said our teary good-byes, took some pictures of him for the family album, then ran inside to clean up. We put on our boogie shoes and headed down town to do the night club district.\

Our goal was three-fold. First, I wanted to introduct my kids and sister to Sylvia, an old friend from Rio. Second, Loretta wanted to try the cachaca, and finally - we needed to teach Loretta to do the Samba.

We accomplished all three things. Had a nice dinner. Did the "young and chick" scene in Rio and still made it to bed by 1 a.m.

It was a good day in South America for all of us.