Peru Wiatr and his family went to a few weeks before heading to Rio. They stayed in a smallhostel in Cuzco, chewed coca leaves, and drank coca tea. However, the mild effects of the plant couldn’t shield them from the weather.
Curitiba Waitr and his family met up with other Riobound church groups in Curitiba, a city of 1.7 million in southeastern Brazil. Most of the groups were people of Polish descent, like Wiatr’s family. They stayed with different host families for a few days.
“It was crazy because like during the day it was like 90 degrees and at night it was cold as shit,” Wiatr says. “... it was freezing. Absolutely freezing.”
“So we’d wake up at like 6 in the morning, our family would cook us hella good breakfast—they were super nice,” Wiatr says. “And then we would meet up with the rest of our group and pretty much like the church there was doing everything for us.”
Soon, they visited Machu Picchu, the Incan ruins high in the Andes Mountains. They left Cuzco early in the morning, drove to the mountains, and then hiked for a few hours to reach it. He says pictures don’t do it justice. “That was probably the best part of the trip,” he says. “We were eating lunch and ... you sit overlooking just miles of mountains, green mountains ... It was awesome.”
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Only one member of Wiatr’s host family spoke English. That turned out to be just enough to fuel hours of conversation. Well. that and drinking what he calls the Brazilian version of Rainier. “We pretty much drank for like two hours and talked about soccer and the world cup and the Olympics that are going to be