A couple of years ago, I was in a basketball game, and I was hit in the air. Getting hit caused me to come down awkwardly and pinch a nerve in my back. Anyone who has had this injury knows it is excruciating, debilitating pain. It happened again to me in Rio. The circumstances were hardly anything like being injured in a basketball game, but this time my injury occurred in a beach chair. Yes, you heard this correctly.
Our last day at the beach (Dave and Lot's last day, and which would turn out to be mine) we discovered one of the perks to our expensive hotel was "beach service", which meant nice beach chairs, fluffy towels, and umbrellas for the sun. This was somewhat to our chagrin, we could have been using the beach service all the other days we had been there, but I had only remembered on the last day that it was available (I had stayed in the same hotel a couple years prior). Lot and Dave were none too happy with my revelation, that we had been stealing skimpy towels from the hotel and laying in scorching sand, when we could have been sipping Mai-tais in our beach lounges the whole week. To my defense, the beach service was hidden in the basement floor of the hotel. But yeah, I had been at the hotel before, ok.
Anyway, back to the beach chair incident. I was sunning in my chair and watching the ocean among various other things that happen to be on Ipanema Beach on any given day, and was shifting myself around on my towel. I leaned one particular way as I adjusted my towel behind me, and then it happened. I had the same incredible pain in my lower back, very similar to someone sticking a shank in you (ala "OZ" on HBO). I though in vain that swimming might loosen it up, and limped to the beach to get in the water. Unfortunately, Ipanema Beach has a very rough shore break, so after I got in the water, I realized I might be in a bit of trouble.
As I struggled to swim, the waves pounded me over and over, and each time I was hit by a wave, pain shot through my body. I lay in a supine position and tried to surf out each of the waves and make my way back to shore. I got back to the shore but could literally not stand up. I crawled up on the beach (God, this must have been a sorry sight) and finally got out of the pummeling of the waves.
I got up to shore where Lot and Dave were laying on the beach chairs and I limped up wincing in pain. They looked at me with some skepticism, since I love to bitch, you know, and finally thought it may be serious. They helped me back to the hotel room and I lay on the bed. Fortunately, the pain would subside when I was sitting or laying down for some time, but unfortunately laying down for more than a couple of minutes, then standing up was very painful. The mornings after sleeping for hours were excruciating.
My last few hours with Lot and Dave were spent with us having our last few meals together with them helping me around and looking at me with a mix of pity and amusement. Fortunately, having been through the injury before, I just knew it was a matter of time before my back would mend on it's own. Unfortunately, I did not want to stay in Rio, as I was bored without those guys but had no choice. I spent the last couple of days trying to avoid a girl we met at Ipanema, a girl from Copenhagen who was incredibly annoying and equally dumb. Her annoyingness I'm sure was amplified by my constantly aching back.
She worked in a club in Barcelona, and spent the entire time bitching about how a Brazilian guy she knew from Barcelona came with her to Brazil as a surprise, took her and her friends all around the country, but ripped them off at every stop, taking advantage of their lack of Spanish. She seemed to start every sentence with "This guy was so Goddammed stupid that.." For example, supposedly he would book the hotels, pay for the bill, then split the bill among the girl and her friends without paying his share, thus staying for free. Supposedly he did this and a number of like scams time and time again. Despite this, this girl continued to travel with said "stupid" guy. I heard these mind numbing stories over and over again, until one time I said, "Who is the Goddamed stupid one if this guy did this to you time and time again, and yet you did or said nothing??" This shut her up and also took care of the problem of her wanting to hang out with me anymore.
My back gradually got better after a few days, and I was off on a bus south to a town called Curitiba. Read about it in downtime in Rio and had little idea what to expect. Lonely Planet said something about Curitiba having a "Train to the Clouds", which seemed worth the trip.