January 23rd - 28th. The first two days were a bit of a challenge. I only met a couple of English speakers in the first 36 hours, and was surprised by how little of what I tried to say in English or broken Spanish was understood by anyone else. I started to wonder if meeting people - at least in Brazil - would be as difficult as I feared, and not as easy as I was told.

After two uneventful nights I changed hostels and was immediately surrounded by like-minded travelers and English speakers. Things started to get much, much easier. The next two days were great. Florent, Vincent, Mitch, Adal and I spent most of 48 hours together - at the beach, in the pool at the hostel, or in the city.