Rio

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Arrived in Rio on Wed 20th Feb all excited to begin our trip, thankfully we weren´t suffering too badly from jetlag so since it was 30 deg out we decided to hit Rio´s famous beaches. Ipanema beach was the closest, its less famous than Copacanana but the locals informed us this is their fav beach. and having read about
Firstly there was Ipanema Beach. The beach stretches for over a kilometer and has a beautiful backdrop of mountains and looking out on the horizon you see numerous little islands. The beach is divided into sections so the hostel staff explained these to us and we settled on posto 9 where all the "body beautifuls" hang out, figuring we´d fit right in! Immediately it was evident that "body beautiful" was a title well deserved by most at posto 9, think speedos were made for Brazilian men! There are many exercise bars along the beach to help these people to stay in shape. The most annoying thing about the beach is the determination of the men selling things up and down the beach. They walk along in the baking heat all day selling drinks, cheese on sticks (no i´m not joking its melted cheese on sticks and no i didnt try it!), biscuits, jewellery, clothes. They can be so persistant at times, one guy even kicked sand on us when we were sunbathing.....needless to say we didnt purchase anything from him!! Thursday was another gorgeous day so hit the beach again....still pale as ever though 😞

The next day we decided to get the sight seeing underway.....all seven of us headed off on a tour organised by the lighthouse hostel, first stop was pedro bonita, the journey there was my first experience of a vehicle beeping to let other vehicles know its coming round a bend, this was all working grand until some idiot in a car decided to try and pass down by our bus as we are ascending a mountain, of course the bus konked and i began to rethink our decision to sit in the back seat when we are looking down a pretty steep mountain. The driver started the bus and we rolled back so without testing his skills further we abandoned the bus and set out on the 30 min trek to the top of pedra bonita (beautiful rock), this proved fairly though in the heat but we made it 😊 The view looking out on parque national tijuca and down on Rio was spectacular, the hike was well worth it. After this we got back on the bus and thankfully had a trouble free journey down the mountain! Next stop was Christ the Redeemer statue, the most symbolic icon in Brazil, the country with the largest population of Roman Catholics in the world. We were slightly awe-struck by the sheer size of the statue, standing 130 feet tall and weighing 700 tons, even the height at which it is built is incredible, and the base of the statute provides some more stunning views of the city. where we took in the views of Copacabana beach and some of Rios seven favelas.

On our way back to the city we passed through Santa Tereza seeing such sights as Ronnie Biggs house, great train robber in 1963. For me the highlight of our trip was yet to come, the Selaron steps in Lapa. These steps have been made famous by music videos such as Snoop Dogs ´Beautiful´video. We learned that the eccentric artist Selaron has been working on the steps for over 14 years and there are tiles from over 109 countries on the steps, we came across some from ireland including the irish greeting "may the road rise to meet you...."



That night we headed out to Lapa with a local girl Caroline and a gang of gringos from the hostel. We started the night drinking under the aquaduct where a band was playing and Siobhan was given a samba lesson! Then wandered the streets which were packed with people. Headed to a club that was like a sauna, no aer con but the windows were open, danced the night away.....the dj even played some music for the gringos!

We did a favela tour on Sat of the Rochina favela. This favela houses 300,000 people and is growing at a rapid rate. The favelas have a very bad reputation so we really didnt know what to expect going into one. The conditions are the first thing to affect me, people literally live on toip of each other, seeing as there is no more ground available for the favela to expand people are selling their roofs to other people so they can build a house, a roof costs on average 2000 Reals which is about 560Euro. In this favela a drug gang called A.D.A. (friends of friends) ruled so everyone living in the favela obeys their rules and they control who enters the favelas. The favela itself is pretty self sufficient with shops schools etc. The people we met were lovely and it was a good experience to go there and see for yourself its not as bad as people make out.




We stayed an extra day for the final of the Guanabara Trophy tournament. The Maracana
stadium is huge, currently holding 95,000 spectators, but managing to fit in 199,500 paying spectators for the 1950 World Cup Final. On the day the police presence was also big, hard to get used to them all being armed! The match was Flamengo v Botafogo, we were suppòrting the Mengos, the crowd were very friendly and chanted their songs right the way through the game. The Mengos went one down in the first half and what was most surprising even though the supporters were disappointed they immediately got back behind their team singing louder than ever. The game finished 2-1 to the Mengos so everyone in our section was delighted, then it was time to get back on our gringo bus and back to the hostel! Next entry will be Iguazu falls.....

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