The big apple and beyond

Well, we're finally on the road. After hurriedly packing up all our stuff, we left Toronto on Wednesday, November 30th. We decided to head to New York first, where one can procure a Brazilian Visa in 24 hours. However, by the time we got out of Toronto it was far too late to make it to New York so we decided to stop in Ithica, where my friend Liz and her husband Devon live. We crossed the US border at Niagara Falls. The guard at the border didn't seem to like the looks of us (I think he didn't like the looks of Bryan's planting shovel in the trunk) and stopped us for a search. After waiting for about a half hour, two different guards arrived to search our vehicle. After one look at us they laughed and said 'who made these folks pull over?'. They went out to our car, glanced in the window, said 'there ain't no drugs in here' and sent us on our way. I was quite relieved as I've been pulled over for hours crossing the US border, and was once even accused of being a car thief. It must have been my reassuring female presence that made them let us go.

We made it to Ithica, after getting turned around a few times. But we weren't there long as we had to leave at 6am in order to make it to New York City by noon, when the Brazilian Consulate closes. We made it to Manhattan well before noon but by the time we found a place to park and found the consulate, we were a few minutes too late - the New York traffic was daunting at first, but we quickly caught on to how things work...really everyone just goes where they want to, and you gotta hope you don't get hit in the process! We came back the next day and submitted all our paperwork only to find out that, since we are entering Brazil by land from Venezuela, we need to apply for our visa in Venezuela! It would have been nice to know before hand but the consulate never answers its phones and the website didn't mention it. So we rushed ourselves to New York for no reason at all!

But we enjoyed New York anyways; we spent two days and one night (in a seedy hotel in Queens where the pictures were cemented to the walls and the television had the name of the hotel branded on the side twenty-three times - to prevent sale after theft?), and got a chance to walk in Times Square at night (very overwhelmingly bright), stroll through Central Park and Grand Central Station, and spend a few hours in the NY Museum of Natural History exploring everything from the secrets of the cosmos to the wildlife of the african savannah.

From there we drove to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and stayed with my friend Linda for a night. In the morning, she read our fortunes and sent us on our way to Ann Arbour, where we stayed with my friend Rob and his wife Erica. So far we've driven about 2000km -- only 48 000 left to go!