Paranoia and road mayhem - Wednesday 18 June

Today I took the metro to Centro to follow a walk from my lonely planet guide. Try following a map that has half the road names missing. Even when I thought I was lost and in dodgy areas it turned out that I was on the right road, I´d just made my own way to their suggested destination. Most of the time I was paranoid and thought I´d be mugged. My camera only came out from hidden angles and in quiet areas. Lots of the time you see either a bit of my top or a lot of land and no sky. Not my best shots. I walked around a big park five times just to find a moment when I felt safe enough to take a picture, I slid down a bit of grass, hid between two trees and looked in another direction to veer any attention away from my hands sneaking out my camera to take a shot of this gorgeous park. Bound to go wrong really. The shot has a lotta pond and not a lotta park. Not that you can tell but there were lots of cats and some other creatures that may be wombles, who knows?

A minute later I walked out of the park and saw a motorbike crash into the front of a policia car that was edging out of a small road. The bike landed and swirled on top of the rider´s leg. It was definitely crushed because he couldn´t move. Lots of people went to help him. My lack in portugese would have caused more problems so I walked off to get lost again.

It´s easy to think any young Brazilian man is going to mug you. Lots of stories float around the hostel of people who have been mugged that have or are staying in the hostel. Last week, one girl who was laying on Copacobana beach was accompanied by an uninvited Brazilian. He sat down next to her, tapped his pocket and said give me everything you´ve got. She asked him why he was robbing her and ended up talking to him for two hours. They went to a supermarket together and she bought him a sandwich, they exchanged numbers and now they are friends. They met up on saturday to spend some time together. I know what you are thinking, that is the sort of thing I would do, but no, it wasn´t me. These sort of stories are rare, normally they are more vicious, quick and always involve knives. You can see why I was a bit paranoid about getting my camera out.

After the excitement of the crash I took a calm stroll into a government building and took a picture of the street from a high up window where noone could get to me from the ground. Then, just incase someone had seen me, I practically ran out of the building and walked to the sea docks. Nice view. I sat down and slipped my camera out from under my top. I´ll look at the result later. There were cool kids swinging two long skipping ropes while two other cool kids jumped in the middle while doing the tango. I risked taking a shot. Phew! All of this worrying is tiring.

Back at the hostel Rafael, our bar man, learned how to play an Alanis Morrisette song on his guitar and I sang with him.