Above, my first photo of South America!
In the end, the whole crossing borders was a piece of cake, really not worthy of all the stress I went through, and all the buying of bus tickets and reserving planes. I was almost about to be like "are you SURE you don't want to see my ticket out of Brazil? Go on, just take a look, it's very pretty!" But they were highly uninterested, and vaguely puzzled about what the hell a 'Cyprus' was, so after figuring out that it is indeed, a real country, they just stamped my passport and let me through.
It was one of the most surreal/exciting moments of my life! I met Maisie in arrivals, who had been waiting for a good number of hours and we set off straight away to get the bus into town. It took about an hour, but we finally got to our friend Will's neighborhood, and after a quick bite to eat and a beer, we were finally in his flat and both of us exhausted and ready to go to sleep!
Today we went for a walk around Copacabana, found a map, bought a sim card, and of course, headed down to the beach! There we found Sesi and we made the mistake of deciding that 11-2 is the best time to get a tan. I ended up with a mild sunstroke, and Maisie has burn patches in various areas of her body.
We then went to a Kabula training, which was really cool, with Bicicleta and Mestre Carlao, and did a small roda at the end.
All in all, a very good first day!
Tomorrow we're probably heading to Salvador, to see the rest of la familia angolera, although we are not looking forward to the 28 hour bus journey! Has to be done though!
