Night bus to Rio

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Brazil is  the fifth-largest country in the world - and to really feel its size, we decided to travel by bus  from Itacaré to our next destination, Rio de Janeiro.

It looked like just a small, local route, when you saw it on a Brazilian map - but Brazil IS a vast country and driving the distance would actually take us almost 27 hours.

The first few hours, we regretted the decision of going by bus. The guy behind the wheel seemed to be a driver from hell. We were thrown from side to side, while the speeding bus skirted along winding roads. Eventually, though, we, the driver and the bus seemed to get accustomed to each other.

The driver might still be going far too fast on the narrow, bumpy roads, but we had buckled our seat belts, and we now found time to look out the window.


We spent hours watching endless stretches of Atlantic rain forest, of vast grass plains scattered with flocks of grazing cattle and of small hamlets with multitudes of tiny shacks.  

Some times the landscape was covered by an opaque mist, which made it look like it was almost  taken out of a fairy tale.

Eventually the evening sat in. It was impossible to see the passing landscapes in the dark, and, though we'd never before tried to go by overnight coach, we eventually devised some half lying, fetal positions, which fitted into the seats and made it possible to have at least some kind of intermittent sleep.
 

A few times during the night we held into a gas station or a motor cafe, where the busload of drowsy, almost zombie like passengers stalked about, searching for food shelves or bathrooms.

A fresh  driver settled in behind the steering wheel - and the bus sped out into the night.

When we finally woke and were wide awake, it was dawn. The bus was driving on an almost endless bridge across the vast Guanabara bay towards Rio. Far out across the bay, almost disappearing in the morning mist, you could see the Sugarloaf Mountain - and further to the right, behind Rio, the Mount Corcovado, where the colossal statue of Christ the Redeemer greeted us by spreading out its arms.

This is going to be our town for the next two months.

 It seems like a perfect place to be.
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