Rio De Janeiro

Brazil baby! It is time! We have a couple of weeks left of our trip and I’m pretty sure all three of us were expecting the most out of Rio De Janeiro. World famous for its nightlife, we couldn’t wait to unleash! We thought, as most foreigners (or Gringos) seem to think before being Brazil educated, that Rio was actually the capital of Brazil. A bit of quick history research and you will find that at one stage (1800’s) it actually was the capital, however a place called Brasilia is the capital. For our trip, however, Rio will be our capital..

Double the size of Sydney’s population at around 10 million people, and with the notorious level of drug/gang fuelled violence, we have had a lot of warnings about not getting into the wrong areas at the wrong times, never carry/show your valuables, and doors locked in cars at all times, don’t stop at red lights at night etc, it is impossible to not be a little worried coming into this city, yet still as excited as hell. A couple of days set aside to work out how the Rio works before heading North to Sao Paulo for a week and then back to Rio for Carnivale for the big one.

The first thing you notice when flying is the amount of favelas. They start appearing about half an hour before you land and they literally seem to go on forever. From the air you get a great view on the complexity of the layout and actual construction of the favelas. They are literally built on top of each other, several stories/favelas high. From what we know, favelas are the one place you do not want to go/get lost in.

Then all of a sudden, you get smacked in the face by the mountainous landscape, and I struggle to understand how I didn’t see these earlier... The coast is scattered with very high mountains with small gaps of flat in between, and buildings and houses have been constructed on every single bit of free space. However even from the air you can tell that even with double the size of Sydney, it is about ten times more cramped... Also the wealth gap unfortunately consistent with developing countries is visible from the air, from the multitude of favelas on one side of the mountain, to the huge boats sitting in the harbour..

This is a picture I took from a later trek up Sugarloaf

Due to our successes in Buenos Aires which we put down to us having the comfort of a hotel, we decide to scrap the idea of staying in hostels for the rest of the trip.. And why wouldn’t we, apart from Carnivale time, accommodation is very cheap so it seems to be worth it..As soon as we step out of the airport, the hot weather hits us, and we confirm that we need air conditioning. So we end up picking a place called Copacabana Praia Hotel which seemed the perfect location being right in the middle of the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and a few minutes’ walk to both... In true South American style, we again decided to welcome the new city/country by stealing a few quick hours of shut eye in the air conditioning before hitting the beach in the afternoon and possibly heading out.. Even though it was a Sunday, it was Rio right!

Our first big night out in Rio was on the Monday night, after trawling through our tourist guide, we end up at a district right in the city centre called Lapa, and end up finding a Samba club called Carioca da Gema. And this place was packed! Still a bit hesitant of drawing the camera out I had to borrow this picture from Google Images of the place (obviously a different night than the one we were there).. This is the night I met Sandra, a mature lady of anywhere between 30-45 years old, and when we first saw her she was completely stealing the dance floor with her Samba moves.. a few beers later I find myself getting personal dance lessons from her and a little bit of loving! While George and Matt are off pursuing their own interests with great success! Mmmmm gotta love Rio and I have to say by now our Samba skills, while still shocking, are definitely starting to improve!

The next day we spend the whole day at Ipanema beach, we weren’t too impressed by Copacabana beach to be honest. Similar to beaches in Phuket, they were the famous beaches where you picture pure bliss and clear water, however the water just seemed a bit too dirty.. Now Ipanema beach goes for as long as you can see... We end up walking from one end for over 20 minutes and were still not half way across.. With the temperature picking up we decide to stop walking and go and find an umbrella and spot to chill out for the day. This position just happened to be next to Posto 9 (lifeguard tower 9) which will make sense shortly.

Now from our successes in the women category on the beach at Punta del Este, we were needless to say very excited about the prospect of Brazil beaches.. At first, there weren’t too many options around in the female category, but we were so hot we went for a swim.. After about 6 hours of sunbaking, swimming, beach tennis, frisbee some guys are walking around giving out flyers for things to do that night, which we readily accept! However all of these flyers were for gay events. When we looked up, we then understood why there were no women around- there were men taking photos and hugging each other, uh huh! We somehow found the gay part of the beach... Completely bewildered, we pack up our things and on our way home try to decide how to tell which section of the beach is which. Half way up the sand, George notices soccer flags all down the beach and we realise that each team has their own section of the beach, and before you know it, yep you guessed it, we find a rainbow flag RIGHT in the spot that we decided to pick to spend our day.. haha wow we were laughing all the way home! Later we were to find, that Posto 9 is world famous – we learned the hard way.

Still, it’s impossible to not marvel at the magical sunset that Ipanema beach provides...