Trail of Pain and Despair

After the typical hostel breakfast of bread, butter, and tea, we took a bus out to Urca, which is the area around the base of Pao de Acucar. Pao de Acucar is a really popular mountain in Rio that a lot of tourists take a cable car up to. Being frugal kids brainwashed by our frugal parents, we wanted to avoid the pricey cable car ride. The only other option was to walk up, just like we did on Corcovado, except every guide we read said it was really difficult and that the end required climbing gear. Our cheapness overpowered our sensibility in this situation, so we set off to find the hiking path. We walked down the road that the hiking path was supposed to start from, but we couldn't find it! We did find an old man walking down a path feeding wild monkeys from his hand, though. I thought this was the coolest thing in the world. Anyway, we really couldn't find this path, so we kept looking. We went all the way around the base of the mountain as far as we could go and still couldn't find it. By now, we had wasted a few hours and so much energy that we just decided to stop and eat. We got beef, chicken, and all you could eat beans, rice, salad, and vegetables plus a Coke for only R$9 per person ($4.50). Full and rejuvenated, we set off to find the path once more. We gave up trying to find the path that was specified in all the guide books, and decided to just take whatever we could find. On the way, we bought some bananas and I GOT TO FEED A WILD MONKEY OUT OF MY HAND! It was the most amazing experience ever... I felt its tiny little fingers touch mine and I almost peed my pants, I was so excited. Oh yeah, and then we managed to locate 4 different paths.

The first one we took looked promising. It was only a small opening in the shrubbery, but we headed uphill and started going through some trees. We heard some barking and some shuffling noises, but thought nothing of it and kept going. A bit further up, we saw an old gate that was left open. The barking was getting really loud, but we still kept going. All of a sudden, dogs pop out of the gate and start barking at us like crazy. Yoontae and I froze, not sure of what to do. The dogs, seeing that we weren't going away, started chasing us. We did what anyone should do in this situation: we ran away. We didn't want rabies.

Back on the paved road, we were shaken up but not ready to give up yet! We needed to save money! Our cheapness kept driving us, and we headed to the next path. As soon as we started going up, we smelled poop. It was so nasty. You know how portopotties smell like poop and chemicals that kill the smell? Well, it smelled like that, minus the chemicals that kill the smell. We also figured that it was human poop because... we saw huge mounds of poop with toilet paper all around them. We could have taken this path further, but we got too grossed out by the fact that we had stumbled upon pooping grounds, so we turned around and went back to the main road.

Two down, two to go. So our next path was pretty normal. No trail, just a bunch of plants and stuff, but at least there were no wild dogs or mounds of human feces. We took this path that wasn't really a path for quite a bit, but eventually it just ended in a rock and shrubbery so thick that we couldn't go any further. We turned around and went back.

We only had one more option, so we took it up. This one was our first legit path, with steps that went up the mountain and little signs and string that marked the boundaries. It got really steep, but we kept going until we got to this tiny little clearing and a split in the path. We had the option of going left to a smaller mountain and paying half price to go to Pao de Acucar, or we could go to the right, straight to Pao de Acucar, and it would be completely free. Obviously we went to the right (we're so cheap). We went down the path some more, and it ended in a vertical stone wall. There were some rock climbers with a lot of equipment climbing up, so we asked them where the hiking route was. They told us we had to go back down and take the other path (probably the one with the wild dogs), but we didn't listen to them. If we were going through that much trouble to get to the top for free, we were going to make it to the top! We decided to wander off the path and try to circle the mountain through all the trees, vines, thorns, bushes, and rocks, hoping to find the right path to the top. We wandered away from the nice safe path until there was no way to go back the way we came, and it started getting difficult to walk. Eventually, it turned more into climbing than walking, and we would swing on branches and vines, crawl on rocks, and push our way through thorns. At one point, I was trying to walk across a rock and I slipped on all the moss and fell off the rock. Luckily, my legs caught on some branches and I was literally hanging for dear life. If it wasn't for those branches, I would have fallen off the rock and gone a long way until I hit trees or more rocks and probably suffered a concussion. Or died. Yoontae also almost died when he was walking down a steep slope and the ground kind or crumbled under his feet and he fell a pretty long way, scraping his hands and legs along the way. A vine caught him under his arm. Later when we examined his side, we found a huge mess of scrapes and cuts, even though it caught him over his shirt. His hands also had long gashes in them.

At one point, we found a cave and saw this claw thing and heard this heavy breathing. We got so scared, because I swear it looked like some giant sleeping cat. We just stood there for like 2 minutes, whispering to each other and freaking out. I was very brave and manly so I just went up to the animal and punched it. Just kidding, we realized it wasn't a claw. It was just the beaks of some baby birds. We had stumbled upon a nest, not the lair of a monster cat. We still don't know what the heavy breathing was coming from. We're not pansies, if you were in the same situation you would be scared too.

Finally, after wandering the forest, getting poked by a million thorns, getting tons of dirt in our shoes, and bleeding all over our clothes, we found our way... NOT up to the top of Pao de Acucar... but back to the main road. 4 hours of searching for the path, testing paths, almost dying multiple times, wandering the forest, and in the end we just barely made it back to the main path. We were pretty messed up from our adventure in the forest, so we went to the pharmacy and bought antiseptic and bandaids and cleaned and dressed Yoontae's wounds. None of mine were that bad, but his hands were pretty nasty looking.

Now it was getting pretty late and we still hadn't gotten to the top of Pao de Acucar, so we ended up just buying tickets for the cable car and riding to the top. It was expensive, and our day felt like a waste since we could have just bought it at the beginning, but it really was worth it. We went up to the top of the mountain and the view was SO CRAZY! You could see everything, and the sun was setting, which made it all 10 times prettier.

All in all, we decided our day was perfectly fine the way it was. Yeah, we almost died. Many times. But almost doesn't count, and our danger and "wasted" time provided us with amazing stories. If we hadn't looked for paths, we never would've fed wild monkeys, and we would never have been able to tell stories about how we got chased by wild dogs and avoided heavy injuries/death by getting caught by vines and branches. Also, we would never have gotten to watch the sunset from Pao de Acucar because we would have gotten there too early and we probably would have wanted to leave earlier. Lesson for the day: even if you almost die or spend more money, it's not too bad as long as you have some good stories to tell. Umma, if you are reading this, this is a completely fictional story. We actually sat in the hostel and ate healthy and drank lots of water and didn't talk to strangers.