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Published: February 4th 2008
Another 24 hour bus ride under our belt, we arrived in Rio excited at the prospect of a few nights sleeping in normal temperatures and giving our Pantanal mosquito bites time to heal in some sunshine and salt water on Ipanema Beach.
We arrived at our hostel (the Wave Hostel) after paying an exorbitant taxi fare from the bus station and dumped our bags in our dorm room. We immediately noticed there were two small fans in the room, and no airconditioning, which did not bode well for our dream of a good night´s sleep. However after checking out the other dorm rooms in the hostel we counted ourselves lucky that we at least had a window.
We had high expectations of Rio: everyone has seen the amazing photos of the Cristo Redentor statute and city views from the top of Corcovado and Sugarloaf. We were not disappointed. We did the standard half day tour which took us to the top of Corcovado to admire the Christ statue and the views of Rio from the top. The statute is enormous and one of the most beautiful statues we have seen. The experience was shared with thousands of other tourists
who were all doing the same thing as us: standing with their arms out in immitation of the statue whilst their chosen photographer laid on the ground to get the shot with the statue in the background. We managed to get a few photos without too many fellow tourists in the background, but it was tricky!
After leaving Corcovado we drove through Santa Teresa which was an affluent neighbourhood with beautiful old houses in the Portugese style, however is not as wealthy as it once was and many of the buildings stand in ruin. Our tour took us to the famous Selaron Stair which was featured in the film clip to Snoop Dogg and Pharel Williams song "Beautiful". The beautiful coloured tiles and mosaics on the Selaron Stair is the work of Chilean artist Selaron. The artist asks travellers to send him tiles from all around the world and then uses them in his work. We managed to find quite a few from Australia! We had a quick snack of Salgados and Açai juice (made from the fruit of the Açai Palm, native to tropical Central and South America - delicioso) and moved on to a quick cruise through
the downtown area.
On the Sunday we decided to take in a Football (Soccer for us Aussies) match at the famous Maracana stadium. The match was between Rio´s Flamenco team and Boa Vista in the country´s north. It was the first Flamenco game for the season and we expected a great crowd in the stadium which seats around 100,000. Unforunately, the stands were just over half full but regardless the atmosphere was still great. Poor Boa Vista had a grand total of 10 supporters there so for our own safety we definitely sided with the majority - go Flamenco!
Julien then took in a tour of a local Favela (slum town) with the company "Be a Local". The tour was really interesting and gave us a brief snap shot of life in Rio´s largest 'slum'. Whilst conditions were clearly terrible for many people, it was certainly surprising to see many TV´s and computers in some of the tiny houses.
One of our favourite activities in Rio was the people watching along Ipanema Beach. We went for walks along the boardwalk, joining thousands of locals who were jogging or rollerblading or biking along. We were amazed at the
I´m the King of the World
Jesus doing his Leonardo Dicaprio impersonationnumber of people who clearly had done a bench-press or two in their times - seriously enormous guys. Most afternoons at the end of our walk we would pull up at one of the kiosks beside the sand and sip a couple of drinks watching people play volleyball and an amazing variation of volleyball where the participants do not use their hands - very impressive.
After a great few days in one of the coolest cities we have visited, we decided to have some more camping time and booked a ticket to Ilha Grande, about two hours south of Rio.
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