Neil and Adam enjoyed the beach and the waves in Florianopolis.

Journal and photo by Adam Burgess

Today Erica, our friend from Rio whom we met through Rolf, came to visit us down here for the weekend. It’s funny really how we all became acquainted. I guess Rolf, the writer who was with us, has a few published books out there. One of which is “Vagabonding”, a travel guide for the major budget traveler. Well, one of his fans wrote to him when she read in his daily online “blog” (online journal). He talked about going to Brasil for Carnival. She told him to contact her friend out there who lives in Rio. So Rolf dropped an email to Duda. Duda got the email and said to her roommate, “Hey I got this email that says, “Hey I am a friend of one of your friends, and I’m coming out there, would you like to meet me?” Duda was pretty confused and said to her roommate, “Do you want to meet this guy, Rolf, I don’t really know who he is and I think I will go away this weekend?” Erica said. “Ok I will meet with him.”

Rolf shows up to their house and brings a friend with him. They meet the two girls and then leave after a week of Carnival and hanging out with Erica. Soon after this, Rolf gives us her phone number and says, “Hey you can call my friend in Rio; she will show you around”. We call her up and say, “Hi, we are a friend of your friend Rolf” and later meet. She was extremely nice, and over the period of a week she showed us many different parts of the city and various night-spots.

One night we decided to cook dinner for the two girls and their neighbor. Over the table, it was revealed that the girl who originally sent Duda an email was just an American girl that met her once or twice during Carnival the year before. Erica didn’t know her, she didn’t know Rolf, and here we were sitting at their table thinking we were cooking for a friend of Rolf’s. So, although those sitting around the table had no connection with each other, we all spent a perfectly good week together, and Duda and Erica turned out to be very helpful and considerate. We saw a Rio and some of Brazil that other visitors would never see, the streets of the Lata, fountains above the city, and hidden beaches north of the city.

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