Driving in Rio de Janeiro to Petrópolis

Driving in Rio de Janeiro to Petrópolis.
March 6.

We rented a car today in Rio de Janeiro.  The idea of driving in Rio, seemed terrifying, but also an adventure…

It turns out that one person in your group needs all of, a) passport, b) licence, c) credit card.  There were four of us, together and two of us had forgotten our passports and the other two had forgotten their licences.  We could not mix and match, so we had to get in a cab and run around the city to pick up our required needs.  Then back to the Hertz where we rented a car for $295 Brazilian Reals, which gave us two drivers, non-deductible insurance, and a compact car.  I was the driving in Rio man behind the wheel.

That was an experience driving in Rio and getting out of Rio de Janeiro.  Your nerves are pushed immediately when you have not really driven much in 8 years and suddenly you have to learn how to drive through 6.3 million people in three lanes of highway with four or five lanes of cars.  That is a test…

We got ourselves from driving in Rio de Janeiro to Petrópolis, a cobblestone city about two hours from Rio.  I broke a lot of traffic rules and I made one way streets work backwards for me when I needed them and no one was coming.  Suspecting other cars were honking their horns at me to heed their warnings.  I knew what I was navigating myself through.

Dinner was at a Bohemia brewery in Petrópolis where ate a huge meal, and met a security guard who had muscles so big in his arms that they looked like balloon implants.  They were ‘Popeye’s’ as big my head.  After dinner we drove around the town and found a lousy rock bar called ‘Kneipp,’ and drank tequila and a lot of beer.  A crazy man with blue hair who would not leave us alone.  I never end up liking people who come on too strong immediately.  It always turns out the same way and they never end up shutting up and they are always interrupting and then you can never get rid of them.

Scottie made good friends with a couple of drunk locals and he drank a lot of tequila with them.  They teased him about his lumberjack beard and called him a sissy for being so badass.  He got really smashed with them.  They were all in really bad shape.  The one guy, Peter, could not even talk at the end of the night.  We had a lock-in inside the bar.

When everyone, bartenders included, wanted to go home, we had to find a place to stay, and we had to save Scottie from drinking more tequila with locals.  Then two 19 year old boys started following us around because they wanted to drink more with Scottie an I was afraid that we were going to have to fight to get rid of them.  Finally, Shanna and Scottie got a hotel room for too much money and Irmante and I went to sleep in the car on the street.  We just folded down the back seat, torsos in the trunks, heads on the folded down seats, and passed out like champs…

My little cute Canadian has stopped making-out with me.  Prudence prevails…