Today has been drama filled. Well I say today, but actually it started last night at 12:01 am when I got an email from airbnb (short stay apartment booking website) asking if I was excited about my upcoming stay in Rio next week. Next week? But Carnival is next month!
Let me start from the beginning. I am shit at booking things, I get dates wrong, times wrong, peoples names wrong etc. So back in August I began researching stay in Rio during Carnival week as it's so expensive, finding the perfect place. Until December 24th, I was confident about everything till I realised I'd researched the stay, but hadn't actually booked it. So Christmas Eve, I was panicking calling up hostels in Rio asking if they had a booking under my name, which of course they didn't.
So Bernie and I decided to splurge on an apartment for 1 week in Copacabana, right by the beach. Everything done, we bought our Carnival Sambadrome tickets, happy that everything was sorted. Booked. Confirmed 100% with many emails.
But of course, I booked it for February instead of March. And I only realised it last night, so all morning was spent contacting the apartment owner, but luckily we cancelled in the nick of time to get 50% of the payment back. The Carnival rate was like 5 times the amount which was wayyy too much. The guy was very efficient and we've already got confirmation that refund process has begun. Anyway, Bernie has now booked us a hostel (one of the extremely few that still had rooms) which was exorbitantly expensive, but we had pretty much no choice left. We haven't even gotten to Brazil and we've already been fleeced!! But I'm still so excited to go to the city of my dreams that I won't let all this spoil the mood.
Whilst I was panicking and making sad faces at Bernie as he was on the phone to the Rio flat owner, one of the German girls staying in the hostel came up to us in a panic - my credit card's missing! So we tried to help calm her down, tell her what to do, where to go to cancel her cards, check the bank etc. She doesn't know if she left it in an ATM or it was pinched.
Just after that bit of drama, a new boy (an Indian!) got to the hostel. He'd met up with our Brit boys previously in La Paz and had an unfortunate incident of being robbed by people dressed up as cops. It's a common story I've heard so we were very prepared for what to do in that situation - they stop cabs and do their act. You must ask them to take you to the police station and then show them what they want. They usually kick you out of the cab at this point knowing they're not going to get anything. But it was sad that he got taken in by them. Anyways, he had no luck in getting anything back as the Bolivian police have a nexus with these thugs.
So anyway, he walks in and then tells us his latest story - last night in a Bolivian town called Santa Cruz, he got robbed at knife point and slashed a little. His wounds don't look bad, but his bloodstained shirt (which we got him to show us) was quite scary. I think he tried to fight them instead of handing everything over. Anyway the poor guy is still in good spirits even though he pretty much has nothing of value left on him. It's scary to hear, but again it's a matter of being smart and not walking on lonely roads in the middle of the night.
So after all this, we were talking about going to bus station to buy bus tickets to Tupiza for tomorrow, when we find out that our Icelander has taken a turn for the worse and a doctor is coming in this afternoon to check on him. So now we're not sure if we're leaving tomorrow, though we've already booked our hostel in Tupiza!
Aaah the life of a traveler, always got something going on and you have to adapt to everything. There's no place like South America!
A rainy day in Sucre
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