The day is slow and the night is wild!

Josh awakes with a hangover and throws up several times before I wake up. I am not sick but rather groggy when I awake. My bed was on the top bunk next to the window over looking the city. The breeze is calming as I sit up in bed. We sit around for several hours while Josh takes hold of his health and his reality. We sit around talking to our fellow travelers a bit, playing backgammon, and there is an acoustic, nylon string guitar that the hostel has for people like me to play at my leisure. I play it lightly while Josh geeks out on the internet, and we play our game. I sing him some songs because he makes me comfortable. As I play a song, Daniel, from Spain comes into the picture and wants to hear more. He made me feel good too. Leftovers from the night before are made: balls of rice in the cavities of avocado halves with shrimp heads and sauce on the side. Yum. Ash comes home, and quickly eats so we can all go out together.

We headed on a bus to the botanical gardens which have been around since 1808 to keep the worldly varieties that Portugal wanted to collect in their new colony. It was very large and very soothing. The paths dissected paths, the plants interrupted the routes from time to time. Specifically, there is a walking tree! I could see where it had walked from one place on the side of the path and into the path. It is made up of many, nearly hundreds, of long shoots that extend down into the ground, sucking up all the nutrients, until the shoots die off and drop down elsewhere. Into the path, for example.

There was a boulevard of tall palm trees that were covered in many colors of lichen. The center had a large fountain. We shot off into another random direction, and walked down a path of think bamboo clusters. Eventually, there was a green house of epiphytes, another for bromiliads, and then a row of vendors selling orchids of all sizes, colors, and prices. I have never been so sexually turned on by flowers before until I was surrounded by all these orchids. We couldn't stay as long as we wanted, because the gardens were closing. We left from the back gates and walked around the surrounding neighborhood streets till we found the large lake in Rio. We walked around part of it till we found a dock and sat there looking at the building lights and car lights reflect on the undulating ripples. It is a favorite past time of mine to watch light reflected on water. We got more fixins for another night of caporinas. We filled up Josh's small, circular day cooler with night drinks. The three of us headed down into Lapa which was by far the craziest street party I have ever seen! It was more colorful and enjoyable than Bourbon Street, Any Day! There were people flowing and drinking and dancing and vending and pissing, which reminds me. I have never seen so many people piss in the streets, nor have I seen so many people piss in the same street at once. Doesn't really allow for the most aromatic setting, but everyone ( more like every man ) gets to fulfill his animal instinct and cover up every one else's scent. Really effective let me tell you.

But that aside, the street party was so much fun with music and dancing pouring out into the massive crowd, which bled out into all the streets around. Ending up back at the place we started, there was a Brazilian percussion ensemble about ready to start performing under the beautiful aqueduct bridge. This was really good timing for us, because we needed to dance to some live music that lives in the streets. Josh was bouncing around pouring the rest of the caporinas into the mouths of strangers! He was sweating like what I imagine Dean Moriarty to have sweat like. It was so real!

We headed back up the hill to our hostel so we could refill. Here we picked up my new friend, David from Germany/Switzerland. I hadn't really talked with him much until now, and I am glad we convinced him to go back out with us. He said he didn't want to go, but Josh told him that all Germans automatically get blow jobs. And so he went with us, though he wanted to go anyways. The girl from Austin also went with us, as it was her last night in South America. She took a cab back when it was her time to, but we stayed out later indeed. It seemed like it might have been difficult to keep five of us together well, but we managed until Jillanye took her cab back home. We walked around and got food along with beers. The people just were not stopping and probably went until the sun came up. I know that they did. Josh, David, and I walked home, leaving Ash to dance and watch the sun come up.