Giving Rio a Second Chance

Sitting in the back seat of the police car I looked to my left to see the police man holding, what I can only assume to have been, a machine gun. The American girl from my hostel was sitting on my lap while her friend, another American, sat to my right. The other officer was driving and in the passenger's seat was a random Brazilian boy who had, seemingly out of nowhere, approached us as we left a club and convinced us to hop in a taxi with him to go to a beach party on Ipanema. Not wanting to focus too much attention on the deadly weapon barely grazing my ear, I craned my neck to my right. We were whizzing down the avenue that stretches along Copacabana beach at what appeared to be minutes before dawn. This was the only moment during the whole ordeal that I remembered thinking to myself: as absurd as this is, look at that beautiful view! Our taxi had been stopped by the police and the four of us had been frisked. Although the American girl, whose name I forgot long ago, insisted that it was utterly impossible, the police officers claimed to find a small, shriveled up joint in her bag. And that, we soon found out, was going to cost us, all of us.
Needless to say, our plans for a late-night, early-morning romping beach party on Ipanema were derailed and we piled into the police car and began negotiations. The little money I had on me I had already slipped into the bottom of my shoe. Sockless and sweaty I soon regretted not having just offered it up. At one point we were divided up; the American girl and I headed off with one police officer to take money out of a cash machine, but not before making a stop at our hostel where we had left our debit cards behind. I was sternly warned to make absolutely no fuss and just go in, grab our two cards, and return. Nearly paralyzed with fear, I followed orders, retrieved both of our cards, and hustled back to the car. Luckily, the ATM from which we withdrew money had a limit so our accounts weren't entirely depleted. As we waited for the other American boy, the mysterious Brazilian, and the other officer to meet back up with us, "our" officer offered me a cola. I politely declined, asking instead, in my rudimentary Portuguese where I could go "pee-pee". He pointed to a street corner. Two days later as my plane took off, I looked down upon the marvelous city, damning it for having roughed me up a bit. But cities, like people in my opinion, deserve second chances and I know someday I'll be back to Rio de Janeiro.