3-4-20 - Boy Scout Bonanza
/New day and Kyle needs to come up with a plan. Corey approaches him and asks if they can go to a Boy Scout museum that he found online. Upon further investigation, it turns out to be located not far from the Museum of Tomorrow where we were yesterday and which is 35 minute Uber ride away.
Kyle suggests that Corey try to find something else in the area since it is a far drive to go especially since we can’t confirm if the Scout Museum is actually open today. Corey goes off and comes back with the Rio Aquarium. Perfect. Aquariums are always a clan favorite and a big enough attraction to make the trek back across town worth it. Good find Corey.
The Uber drops us off at the address for the Scout museum. It turns out to be more like a room in a community center. There are two volunteers or employees there. One does not speak any English and the other speaks limited Basic English. The boys try to communicate that they are Scouts from the US but the fellow just points us to the room. The man is not a Scout, there are no Scouts in the building and they don’t sell any Scout stuff.
The room is sparse but interesting. It seems that Chile and Brazil have or had a joint Boy Scouts operation as many of the items, which date back to 1911, are from Chilean Scouts. We try to ask the guy about this imbalance but the language barrier proves too much to get a clear answer. Such is the life of a tourist. There is a cool framed poster of the 19th World Jamboree that was held in Chile in 1999.
Corey is asking the guy if there are other troops in the area. The guy ponders for a minute and comes back with a piece of paper. We examine it and low and behold, it is the address for the Boy Scout Headquarters which turns out to be only a 10 minute walk away. Always up for adventure, we head over to check it out.
We arrive and take the elevator up to the 6th floor we find an office down the hall. The boys introduce themselves and the office person is happy to meet them but says everyone in the office are employees and are not actually Scout leaders but points us to the Scout Shop down the hallway where the boys hit the jackpot.
The guy manning the shop speaks English and is super excited by the boys’ story of traveling around the world collecting Scout neckerchiefs and patches. We have to purchase the neckerchiefs but he starts piling free patches on the boys. Then he pulls out his secret stash of patches from under the counter. Then someone from the office down the halls comes in with Special Edition patches as a present to the boys as well. Such a warm act of welcome. And then someone else from the office comes back with a bag of twenty patches for the boys to bring back to the US and distribution to their troop in Hermosa. It was a Boy Scout bonanza!
The boys have now visited, traded, obtained Scouts from Paris, France, Beijing, China, Kuching, Malaysia, Katmandu, Nepal, Delhi, India, Singapore and Bogota, Colombia along with Rio.
After Scouts, we find lunch. We are in Centro (or Downtown Rio) and we’re happy we ended up here. The surroundings remind us of New York City and mid-town Manhattan in particular. Teams of humans bustling down the street lined with modern skyscrapers. We are looking for a quick lunch so we settle for Burger King. Our sit-down lunch on the first day in Rio lasted 2.5 hours, so a little American-style fast food is particularly appealing at this moment in time. While Burger King was faster than 2.5 hours, we still had to wait about an hour for the food to be prepared. It appeared there was one person back there making each individual order and about 30 people waiting in front of us.
We walk to the Rio Aquarium which is a 30 minute walk but a nice one along the waterfront. We pass by a gigantic cruise ship where the crew does not yet realize the impending doom they will face in a mere two weeks when the world as we know it will change dramatically and the cruise industry will implode. (Neither do we realize it at this point either.)
The Rio Aquarium is cool and fun but not quite as expansive as those in Sydney and Tokyo. They have a similar set-up as Sydney with a tunnel running through a ginormous tank the size of half a football field and sharks and rays everywhere. But alas, no scuba diving with the sharks here where our heartbeats reached our tongues. Perhaps we have seen much of what the world has to offer already does come across our mind at times like this. We purchase our last Rio souvenirs in the gift shop and order an Uber back to the apartment.
The Uber Eats is just too much to resist so we are on it again. Justin and Kyle have ordered from Taco Bell and Corey and Ashlynn from Burger King. The Taco Bell shows up in about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Corey and Ashlynn’s Burger King order says it will be there in 15 minutes. Five minutes go by and now it says, 25 minutes to arrive. This goes on for a while with time passing and the arrival time going in the wrong direction.
Finally, after an hour, the food arrives. The excite that the food is finally here evaporates quickly as we realize they didn’t include Ashlynn’s food, only Corey’s. Kyle gets on the app and to see if maybe the guy forgot the food in the car and can come back. After a series of screens in the app, the end result is that they flash a screen with “great news,” we qualify for a credit back of US $5.35 since the food wasn’t delivered.
I tell Ashlynn the “great news” which she not surprisingly does not view as all too great.
“I waited an hour, I’m really hungry, I wanted my food not a credit. How am I going to eat a $5.35 credit for dinner?” shares a sad Ashlynn. Girl’s got a point. We have to divide up the remaining food to share with Ashlynn.
We finish the mini-season of I-Land and prepare for leave South America tomorrow evening after two months of adventure, wildlife galore, heart-pounding excitement, numerous scary moments, amazing food, wonderful warm people, and memories to last a lifetime. South America well exceeded our expectations.
Thank you Brazil. Thank you South America.
