My brains thinky stuff over the last 22 days.

Coming home from three months overseas has been just as enjoyable as the time spent away. I live in Melbourne, a city that has more to offer than any one person knows. I have lived here for just over a year now, and spent three months of that in South America. So I am coming home to a place where I can still walk along the main streets and feel quite like a tourist. That fact alone has been enough to ease the so called 'post travel depression'. I hear so many people who come home from travel and complain that they want they want to keep travelling (#takemeback). I honestly don't think these people are trying hard enough in their hometowns. There should be enough to keep you occupied in your job or study or hobbies, how do you think your friends feel when all that ever comes out of your mouth is how much you don't want to be here?
Admittedly, since getting home, I have had my rants about Melbourne's prices for beer and general living ($10 for a pint of Boags??), but overall my city and home life could engage me fully for the foreseeable future.
When you get home after being away for a while, especially after being in a culture very different to your own, your friends and family will try to pick out any little thing about you that has changed, and say "you've changed". They don't say it in a bad way like when you got your first girlfriend and your mates said you've changed, its more of an amusement to them that three months away could make you talk differently about the world or wear different clothing (usually tending towards the 'hipster' movement). Personally I'd be disappointed if I, or a friend of mine, came home from being overseas with no new outlooks on life or no new clothes or no anything different.
One inevitable thing that happens while travelling, is planning other travel. It happened to me on multiple occasions, most notably while sitting on one of the eight 15+ hour bus journeys. I have now planned (very loosely) with some mates to be in Spain and Portugal over the mid-year break. Do I have enough money? I don't know. Will I live like a pheasant for three months to make it happen? Probably not because I'm enjoying Melbourne a bit much. Will I keep asking myself questions like this? No, I'll stop now.
Anyway, after my big spiel about being at home fulfilling my need for mental stimuli as much as being away, my quantity of interesting content to put on this page has dramatically decreased. With said decrease, I'm quite sure my number of regular viewers will also decrease. I suppose this page may head in the direction of 'things that Zac's brain thinks' or 'things that give Zac the shits'. Could be interesting... maybe.

Return to Rio: Carnaval Edition

 As I write this, I sit at my new house in Melbourne, fighting mild jet-lag and a not-so-mild desire to crack my first beer in the mancave, but I have to wait.
My last week in South America was the long awaited Rio Carnaval. Amidst all of the hype for Carnaval, I was fast running out of money and more urgently running out of energy. Turns out three months in foreign countries accompanied with three months of substantial beer consumption can take its toll.
The first night we planned to attend a bloco in Ipanema. Since most blocos tend to include tens of thousands of people and drum beats that can be heard from all over town, it was not hard to find. When we got there the atmosphere was electric. Thousands of people meandering along the road doing samba and drinking beer while the band sang (although you couldn't hear them) and the drum beats continued with impeccable timing and rhythm.

Pre-first bloco

This bloke thought it was a good idea to bring the dog

I think we spent the whole night following a giant condom on wheels

A few of our Brazilian friends

The night continued in this fashion until we got to what felt like almost dawn, and we decided to head home, only to find that it was a few minutes passed one in the morning.
Day two coincided with Steph's 22nd birthday, and a certain Taylor Swift song got more plays than it deserved and became our unofficial anthem for the night. After some drinks on the rooftop we all went to join the bloco, only to find that we were too late and all of the blocos had finished for the day. Luckily almost every corner has a few hundred people and a band so the night was not without entertainment. A group of Brazilian girls included us in a circle of such classic dances moves as 'the slut drop' and 'the sprinkler'.

Champagne for Steph's birthday

Tonight's posse

Yeah so... that happened

The third day, Cheryl and I joined a bloco that was expected to have 1.5 million people attend. We stepped off the metro into a sea of costumed bodies. After some time, we had noticed that there was an unusually large amount of women kissing women, and an even more unusually large amount of men kissing men. We asked 'Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France' (a man) and he confirmed our suspicions that it may be a gay bloco. We partied away, all the same.

1.5 million people bloco

Cheryl and 'the Queen of France'

Some of the flock of shuffling bodies

It probably took us longer than it should have to realise it was a gay bloco

El Pres

The official Carnaval had been taking place all week at Rio's Sambadromo. We got hold of tickets for the Monday night event, which is the second last night and holds some of the biggest and best Samba Schools. The spectacle was incredible. The way the whole place was lit up as these enormous floats moved down the street, with thousands of people in amazing costumes samba'ing along. One disappointing part of the night was that it was difficult for one to get oneself a beer, so the guy selling weird tubes of cachaca had to suffice.

A float about the upcoming FIFA World Cup

My favourite float by a long way

Some of the various flavours of cachaca available

Big babies must have been a theme, there was a lot of big babies

Rio Carnaval was not all happy days. The streets were piling up with rubbish after the second or third day and it was starting to give off quite an ungodly smell. It seemed as if the council had decided they should organise the rubbish into neat piles every 50-100 meters down the road, rather than actually removing it. Although I have been advocating the fact that the guide books are horribly wrong about safety in South America and that with general common sense you can remain completely safe, there were noticeably more incidents involving pick-pocketing. I usually countered this by taking nothing more than a small amount of cash anywhere I went.
These are small negatives compared to the experience of Rio de Janeiro during the week of Carnaval. Something that is truly unforgettable.

Selfies 4 Dayz

G'day Bloggers!

Recently I have been viewing South America through a bus window more than ever before. Naturally, as the beer has dried up, so have the stories. San Pedro de Atacama in Chile to Florianopolis in Brazil, is 3,139 kilometres, and about 56 hours on a bus. I accomplished that voyage in about 78 hours. Early on, I decided to document my 'travels' through the magnificent and modest medium, of the Selfy.

Welcome to the Selfy Zone

Three days of buses to come, forgot to bring water...

Old mate was asleep after two minutes, still asleep upon arrival

Bought a Sudoku book, opened it to find this...

My reaction on completion of weird Sudoku 

Another day, another bus

Just saw a goat eating clothing

The sweet sounds from the Hungry Kids of Hungary to pass the time 

Crossing the border in a car, just to change it up a little

Look what I found in Puerto Iguazu

Steph didn't like the Selfy idea, obviously not as entrepreneurial as me 

Hey Zac, we're going for a bus ride, wanna come? ps. Sweet jumper

Ahhhh water! Long 36 hours without it

Almost there, even the selfies aren't keeping up moral now. Awesome jumper though

Made it! Very very worth it. 

 So that's the story of how I cruised my way across the continent, fighting severe boredom and the ever-present danger of Deep Vein Thrombosis. After three days in Florianopolis I (you guessed it!!) boarded a coach bound for Rio to celebrate Carnaval 2014. Here is a sneak peak of what you may find on the streets of Copacobana this week, and also what you may find in my next post. Stay tuned!

One of the more conservative outfits being sported last night