A leap into the unknown

by ADAUTO Souza (Brazil)

A leap into the unknown Brazil

A leap into the unknown In September 2019, when I accessed the Couchsurfing website and saw a post in which two friends from São Paulo went backpacking in my city of Curitiba and continued to cut Paraná to Argentina. Immediately, their script pleased us because they were all the places I would like to visit, and in a line that describes one of them on Couchsurfing, and something like how and whoever is traveling in this world of God, excited, I sent a message saying I wanted to travel with them, the date they would spend in Curitiba coincided with the period when they would spend their holidays. Super excited, I sent a message and we agreed to follow the backpack together when they passed through Curitiba, one of them was a little scared and unsure if our personality and goals were aligned to make the trips together. When they arrived in Curitiba, we met, I took my new friends for a walk around the city, we became friends and our adventure began to climb the peak of Paraná, the third highest mountain in southern Brazil, it was an incredible experience along with many other people from other places and even from outside the country, watching the sunset and the sunrise on the top of the mountain, among the clouds, were splendid. From the peak of Paraná, in the next jump, it was Ponta Grossa, in an ecological area called Buraco do Padre, we stayed there in a two days and due to rainy weather we left for Foz do Iguaçu. The next day at breakfast I decided that I would go alone to Argentina, I communicated to my friends and said goodbye to them. I called an uber and took me to the Puerto Iguazú Bus Station. I looked for a hostel there near the bus station, although I didn't intend to be late in the city, my goal was to hitch a ride the next day and get to Rosario. I tried to hitch a ride, but after thirty minutes on the road without passing many trucks, only light vehicles and many tour buses gave up. A taxi driver who passed by me observing that I was a tourist offered a ride, as I had the weight of the backpack on my back and decided to take a taxi that would cost 150 pesos, saying that he asked where I was going and I answered. that for Rosario and then for Buenos Aires, he told me why he doesn't go by plane is the same price he will spend on bus tickets and not to mention that the bus takes many hours, so I said: let's go to the airport then, but the price of the race changed so I accepted 700 people. At the airport, I saw that I was really unable to go by plane because the tickets were expensive and I felt cheated by the taxi driver so I went back to the bus station, and I saw in the window of a company that the ticket cost three thousand pesos, but behind me was a very anxious man. I let him pass in front of me, so I decided to check the ticket price at another company and found out for 2200 pesos I bought it hourly and went to Buenos Aires it was 14 hours of travel. And when I really arrived in Buenos Aires, it was a mixture of fear, joy and concern, what I would do from there would have nowhere to stay, I sat for a few hours on the road thinking about what to do, because of the blessings of God I went accepted by a couchsurfing contact to stay for two days. The next day, I got in touch with a friend of my cousin from São Paulo who lives in Buenos Aires, she invited me for coffee at her house. She was very kind and said that she could stay at her home during my stay in Buenos Aires.