Vacation's all I ever wanted, vacation happy to get away

In light of the ending of the month-long intensive Portuguese class I took in Rio, Sarah, Lauren and I decided to take a little vacation before the actual semester starts. At first we were planning on going to a tropical little island called Ilha Grande, but changed our plans at the last minute to go to Itatiaia National Park... this beautiful place in the western part of the state of Rio de Janeiro. We took 2 buses to get there and 5 hours later we arrived. The first night was hard because we were hiking through the forest at night time looking for a cool pousada (bed and breakfast-type thing) to stay at. We did find one, but it happened to be a little bit outside of our budgets so we kept on looking. Luckily, the women at that pousada pointed us towards a cheaper one a little bit outside the national park.

The next day we woke up early and went exploring through the forest. Itatiaia is known for its beautiful cachoeiras, or waterfalls, so we made it our priority to see them. The nearest cachoeira was about 8 kilometers into the park, and we decided to take the bus-- but that didn't quite work out because we missed the only one. So, we decided the only thing we could do-- walk all the way through the forest on foot. After about an hour we decided that this idea may have been a little ridiculous because we still weren't in the park after all that walking. So we went to Plan B-- hitchhiking up the mountain. Within minutes of devising this fabulous idea a pick-up truck with plenty of room in the back picked us up and drove us up the mountain to the place where the bus would have dropped us off. Pretty lucky, huh?

After that we enjoyed the beautiful flora and fauna of the tropical park and had a pretty amazing day. When Sarah posts pictures I'll put them on here but it was pretty amazing.

After spendig the day in the park we decided to move on to a place that I read about in my guidebook called Maromba. I read that it was a hippie hangout with cheap lodging so I knew this had to be a pretty cool place. The bus ride there was absolutely terrifying because of the fact that we were hugging the sides of mountains for almost two hours on a gigantic bus in the pitch black.

On the bus we met some pretty cool dudes who showed us to a really cheap pousada and chilled with us in Maromba. The day after we arrived we ended doing some more hiking and enjoying being outside in the mountains. Maromba literally ended up being on road with about 30 buildings in the middle of the forest with artists and musicians living there. Really, really cool. At night people took out their instruments and played guitar and stuff... some people had wooden flutes that they were playing.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend that I needed before school starts, errrr.... tomorrow :( .