Waves lapping at Skyscrapers

"Bullshit!" exclaims my friend Shelley, after I have extolled the virtues of the caipirinha and the lack of hangover that it brings. Although we disagree on this point, we are firmly in cahoots that this cocktail is capable of transporting you from a place of sobriety to a place of sozzled delight in the time it takes to get a Brazilian bikini wax. And believe me - in the spirit of crucial cultural exploration, we have done the necessary research.

Rio de Janeiro was named after a fairly significant mistake was made by its Portuguese discoverers - they thought that the wide bay was actually a river, and so named it "The January River". My first sight of the city was undoubtedly less impressive than theirs, being that I arrived in the pretty grotty rodoviaria and promptly hopped in a cab. Rio is said to be the fourth most dangerous city in the world, and I was none too eager to hang around the dodgy side of town with all of my possessions in tow. Thus I soon found myself struggling up the stairs of the hostel in Botafogo that Amanda and Shelley had found. As soon as I'd dumped my bags and panted "Ola" to the girl at the front desk, a short blond girl barrelled into me and shrieked "Happy Birthday Lizzie!"

We had originally planned to get glammed up to celebrate the anniversary of my birth, but after surveying and sniffing the contents of my backpack it became apparent that a well-worn, dingy shirt would be the only item of clothing not to send skunks running to the hills. After picking up a rather handsome Australian named Daniel on the way, we had dinner at a rather unassuming place with yellow tables. Three years ago when in Central America, I discovered the simple, refined taste of rice and beans for the first time. Unable to entirely replicate the flavour back in the UK, I only managed to get back into my heaven when I found this little place.

However, first we had the most extraordinary time trying to order our meals, which had me making a fool of myself as I wept with laughter. Our waiter would approach, seemingly listen as one of us placed our order, and then walk off halfway through. This was repeated a number of times until we were fairly certain that each of us would receive at least one meal. And then came the moment that we tasted our first genuine Brazilian caipirinhas. After some impressive lip-smacking, we all declared that we were immediate fans. Still, we decided to branch out and Amanda and I ordered a couple of Cuba Libres. These must have been made by a barman hoping to get the gringo girls smashed, because they were definitely deserving of the phrase "Would you like some coke with your alcohol?"

The rest of the night was spent having a great time (Amanda and I, realising our mistake, had gone back to the safety of the caipirinha) chatting into the wee hours. We eventually realised that the staff were giving us evil eyes, waiting for us to leave, so we headed back to the hostel. The next day, to our delight, there was sure enough a lack of hangovers. Brilliant!

After a couple of days, we'd managed to find an affordable place to stay right on Ipanema Beach, so the three of us plus Jake, a friendly American we'd met in the Botofogo hostel, decided to move to somewhere more central. Our new place turned out to have bags of character, namely in the form of Fred, the manager of the hostel who pretended to be its owner. This guy was an aging Brazilian with dreads in his hair who wore tie-dye shirts around the clock and was fairly reliably stoned most of the time. However, he was also a very good businessman - and we quickly learnt to take anything he said with a couple of kilos of salt.

So, some favourite Rio memories:

• My first experience of the beach. At dusk, there was a wonderful breeze that exhilarated me, and as I saw the view for the first time, it was utterly surreal. A gorgeous beach, nestled in between skyscrapers, surrounded by lush greenery and mountians. Bizarre, no? Amanda and I went for a dip - I flashed the world as Amanda tried to retie my bikini top amid crashing waves, and Amanda fell into a hole as we were walking back up to shore, causing me to laugh so hard that I fell in too.
  
• The party with 3,000 people. Shelley, Amanda, Jake and I went with some others with our hostel to this party, at Fred's urging. It turned
  
  Rio
  
  out to be the 'Universal Beer Show' and was filled with Brazilian 15 year olds. Still, Jake had a great time with the free beer, Amanda enjoyed getting sweaty on the dancefloor with the rather dishy Diego who worked at the hostel, and I...well, I held Shelley's hair back whilst she vomited. Still, I had a good time - and it was our first taste of 'funky' music, a Brazilian genre like hip-hop.
  
• Browsing the hippy market. This took place every Sunday in Ipanema, and although it wasn't too hippy, we did have a good time and Shelley, Amanda and I made some key purchases. We also tried our best to consume some Brazilian snacks which looked, felt, and tasted, like snot. Lovely.
  
• That night out. By this point, our Rio group included Eric from Texas, Ty from Utah, Simon from Sweden and Cristen, Anja and Stine from Norway. Eric had an apartment, so for Amanda and Shell's last night we went to his place, armed with three litres of cachaça rum, a few bags of limes and a packet of sugar. Once we'd arrived, we split into 2 teams - one to make caipirinhas, the other to
  
  Jake, Shell, Amanda and I
  
  go in search of food. Needless to say, those of us in the caipirinha team got smashed pretty quickly - most noticeably Ty, who was in Brazil to compete in an Ironman triathlon and thus hadn't drunk for the past two months. He could barely string a sentence together past 8.30pm. The other team came back with pizza, and much fun was had. After a brief domestic between Amanda and Shelley (and having tricked Ty into thinking that a fizzy water and lime was in fact a famous latino cocktail so that he'd sobered up considerably) we caught a couple of cabs to La Casa Rosa, a samba club. We had a great night - in one room there was a fantastic live Samba band which Jake and Simon particularly enjoyed, and in another there was 'funky' playing. It was one of the most fun nights of my life.
  
• Seeing Christ the Redeemer. This was the morning after that night, and whilst Jake, Shell, Amanda and I opted for the sensible taxi option, Ty decided to hike up the mountain. I'm told he arrived about half an hour after us - how depressing! We had a few glorious minutes
  
  Our little section of the dorm
  
  of clear skies, and then the clouds rolled in obscuring our view. Still, it was pretty damn impressive - and I loved the way that the statue could be seen from virtually anywhere in the city.
  
• Getting inspired by Ty. We spent a great day hanging out on the beach (we being the only two who were not sleeping off hangovers) and sipping on sucos(amazing fruit drinks Rio is famous for). Ty is an amazing guy who at 24, does a load of uber-cool charity stuff, often totally on a whim. Like driving down to Mexico one afternoon with a friend to see who they could help, which has now turned into an annual community trip. We also spent time establishing just how underprepared he was for the upcoming triathlon - all of his information pages from Ironman were filled with phrases like "On race day, just remember to stick to your detailed, well-thought out nutrition plan", which was non-existent in Ty's case. After a few days in Rio, Ty headed down to Florianopolis to prepare for the race, and Jake and I agreed to go down to see him.
  
• Having an amazing dinner conversation with Adrian, a
  
  Ty being all fit and healthy and tanned
  
  New Yorker. This was a young guy who had become fairly well known in our 34 person dorm as one with a fondness for public sex, and I'd turned into a bit of an agony aunt for him. He was a lovely guy who had an unfortunate tendency to fall in and out of love pretty regularly. At this time, he was thoroughly confused because he'd fallen for one of the girls in our dorm, who was a Brazilian prostitute. She was equally enamoured with him, it seemed, but it killed him every time she left in the evening to go to work. After a couple of hours of airing the sheets he rejected most of the advice given, but we still had a great chat and it's one I'll remember for a while.
  
• A night out in Lapa. This place is renowned in Rio for being basically one big party in the streets. Sure enough, when we arrived we found the roads were rammed with people, varying from revellers to jewellery sellers to people selling tequila by the shot. After wandering around for a while, the group split up and I went to a salsa club with Emiliano,
  
  Shelley and I
  
  a guy from Ecuador, and two Australians named Dave and Haggis. I hadn't done any salsa since Cambodia, and never with anyone as good as Emiliano - he was fantastic. I had a great night.
  

And now some less pleasant memories of Rio:

• Saying goodbye to Shell and Amanda. We'd become really good friends in the time we'd been travelling together, and I was going to miss them. Still, that being said - I'm seeing them in under a month because they'll be in the UK when I get back home! Can't wait.
  
• The great search for cash. Across a couple of days, I grew ever panicked as I searched for a cash machine that would actually like my card. Finally, as I was about to give up, I fell upon a Citibank whose cash machines spoke in English, in a pleasantly casual way, and gave me as much money as I'd asked for. I nearly kissed it.
  
• Paying 17 riels for my laundry. This place can be seriously expensive if you want to wear clean clothes!
  
• Getting perturbed and amused in equal amounts in an Internet cafe in Botafogo. A Brazilian woman had logged
  
  Amanda being terribly sexy
  
  into Skype, and proceeded to scream, hiss, spit and slam her fist at the computer (and presumably, the person at the other end of the phone line that she wasn't very happy with). I was really quite scared - but still decided to stay sitting next to her when the manager came to ask if I'd like to change terminals.
  
• The prostitution debates. In Rio, prostitution is ever-present, and I'd become involved in more than one discussions as to whether prostitution was ok or not. Roughly speaking, every girl said no, and every guy said yes. Perhaps the two things that frustrated me most greatly was a) being told that my age meant my opinion carried little weight, as I clearly had no "real understanding of the world" and b) being seriously disappointed by Jake, and some others, in my hostel. The night we all went out in Lapa, these guys ended up going to HELP, the most infamous bar in Rio for gringos to pick up prostitutes. To put this in perspective, let me say that the defence of prostition by these guys was that it was just another business, and it provided desperate women with a way
  
  Amanda possibly looking even sexier still
  
  to stay afloat. With this in mind, they went to HELP to see what they could get away with without actually having to pay anything. Which in my mind, translates to blatant exploitation and showing zero respect to these women. The disgusting photos of these British and American guys mauling the girls only confirmed it. I wasn't massively surprised by the other two involved, who I'd always thought were (excuse my French) utter wankers, but Jake really disappointed me. I had a word to him the next day and he conceded that he'd made a mistake, but we still left each other on a low.
  

Having said all that, Jake was actually a really nice guy most of the time, and he's certainly had a pretty interesting life for his 23 years. He's your classic big, foul-mouthed New Yorker, but he's got a real soft spot, and a very cute tattoo of a wise owl on his chest above the word "Hoot" - his nickname for his Mum, as well as how he sees her. Clearly though, her wisdom didn't always brush off on him as these are just some of the errors that befell him:

• Not organising
  
  Jake
  
  a way to access his money before he left home. He currently resides in Rio with dwindling amounts of cash, hoping that his mum will put his cash into a bank account sometime soon.
  
• Going skinny dipping at 5am and getting out only to discover that his clothes had been stolen. So he walked 2 kilometres back to our hostel and couldn't wake the night receptionist. So he climbed, buck naked, over the security fence. Classic!
  
• Having his money stolen whilst out in Lapa by some transvestites. Dave then kindly lent him 20 riels to see him through the night. 5 minutes later, this too was stolen.
  
• Learning through error that if you wish to hit on a Brazilian girl, you have to go through her brother - otherwise she'll think you think she's a prostitute.
  
• Losing his drinks ticket at a bar so he had to cough up 200 riels ($100!) instead. Upon refusal, a few burly security guards and some policemen showed up to get him to change his mind.
  

Having told you all that, my friends and I actually found Rio to be far safer than we had thought before we experienced it ourselves. As long as you're sensible, and use basic common sense, you'll almost certainly be fine. A couple of blogs ago, I firmly placed Buenos Aires at the top of my Favourite-Cities-That-Aren't-London list, and numerous friends told me that it wouldn't last past Rio. Whether it's a good thing or not, they were wrong - as spectacular as Rio is, it doesn't beat the atmosphere of Buenos Aires, and there is a snobbery surrounding the city that I don't quite like. So I didn't mind too much when it was time to leave.

Over the course of my stay in Rio, my itinerary changed quite a bit. I had planned to go to Salvador, Maceio, Recife and Natal, but various things happened to extend my time in Rio, and to change what I wanted to do. After Rio I go to Florianopolis to see Ty (Jake has decided to stay in Rio to wait for a friend), then up to Curitiba to see Fabiano again, and then onto Sao Paulo where I fly to Costa Rica. Lots of exciting stuff left to do! By the way - apologies for the lack of photos. More often than not, it's not a good idea to take your camera out and about in Rio.

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Part of trip: The RTW Gap Year Extravaganza

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