I spent 10 days in Rio de Janeiro visiting my bbf Thais. Had a lovely time catching up and seeing how much we've grown in the past few years (her more than i). Didn't get out much the first few days due to rainy weather. Fortunately I got all the tourist stuff out of the way last time I visited. Once the sun came out, I ventured out on my own a few times, since Ty was working and studying. Walked around Santa Teresa one day, taking pictures. Turns out that gets boring real fast.
Then I decided to head over to Ipanema one day. That was certainly an eventful day. I went with the hope that I might meet other travelers since it's a pretty touristy place. But I was fine hanging out alone, too. I sat in the sand, took in the views, people watched, read my book (Gabriela, Cravo e Canela - working on my portugués). Then I decided to lay back For a few minutes. Not to sleep - who sleeps alone on the beach? Well apparently some guy saw me and thought that's exactly what I was doing. I noticed him sitting way too close to me out of the corner of my eye and I thought that was very strange, but I didn't react right away. If that ever happens again, I'm gonna kick them in the head. When he got up just a moment later, my suspicions were confirmed. I jumped up after him, saw that my bag was open, and started to go after the guy. Two beach vendors were passing by so I tried to get them involved, cause a scene, but they were like "so what?" So I shoved past them and kept up the pursuit. Honestly I didn't have much money on me, and the camera was an old, close to broken one, but hey, that's my stuff. I was pissed, mostly because the guy thought of me as just another clueless gringa. Then a strange thing happened. Suddenly the guy took off his clothes and left them bundled up on the shore and got into the water wearing only his speedo. At that point I was confused and began to question whether or not I was even following the right guy. I asked some Argentines who were sitting nearby if they'd seen anything. They hadn't, but they helped me calm down a bit and walked over to check the abandoned pile of clothes with me. By this time the guy I'd been following was long gone. I stopped following him once he left his clothes because I had the feeling that my stuff was there, even though I started to doubt myself. Sho nuff though, we walked over and picked up the clothes and there was my wallet and camera! Woo hoo! The Argentines and I celebrated the recovery of my things with hugs, high fives, and mango. Happy ending, got my things back (scared the guy I think, he didn't expect me to go after him) and made some new friends. The official story, of course, is that I kicked some dude's ass on the beach cause he robbed me...who knows, it coulda happened ;)
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