The girl from ipanema.....

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So we headed off for Rio, on a 'speedy connections' from ihla grande that ended up taking 6 hours. This was because the mini bus broke down in the middle of the busiest road into Rio in the middle of the day. On top of this we broke down next to the most polluted river we had ever seen. Oh yeah and the cause of the pollution was to the other side of us- a nice big favella. Ever the anthropologists Laura and I were grateful when we eventually got to the posh area of Rio, Leblon.

As the weather wasn't the greatest when we got there we thought we'd be cultural and take in a museum and look at some of the older parts of the city. For anyone interested the exhibition was of Escher and I thought it was brilliant, Laura was less enthused. We made our way through what was described as 'a special market where if you looked hard enough you could find many a treasure'. Only if you were Del Boy. It was utter tat. Disappointed, we meandered towards Santa Theresa to get an old tram ride up the hill. After getting mugged off by the ticket man we got on the tram. About 10 minutes in we didn't feel that safe and so decided to stay on the tram for the duration of the round trip. We found out a few days later there was more to see.

We waited for a good day to see the 'Pao de Acucer' or Sugar loaf for us mere mortals. As luck would have it the day it was really really nice, we were hungover. We had a few beers at the hostel and went to a bar in leblon and ordered a capirinha each. My mouth dropped at how much booze went into the first one but we enjoyed them and had one more. We got back to the hostel, I passed out on the toilet and woke up to be sick on a poo bin (note: on not in, I must also add that I cleaned up after myself). Baring that in mind sugar loaf was still amazing, the view was brilliant, we saw monkeys and a massive lizard and I managed to keep my acai down.

The beach culture in Rio is incredible and also mind boggling. We spent most of our time on ipanema but copacabana is the same. There are loads of places were you can hire an umbrella or chair and enjoy the sun. If you close your eyes you can hear the sea crashing.... 'cervaja! Agua! Coca cola!' so much stuff gets sold at the beach, there is no silence and it is constant. You get used to it though and we saw loads of locals getting the vendors to stop, show them all their goods and then say 'Nao' severely wasting the sellers time. It looks like a fun game but is not for tourists. When the weekend arrives there is not a spare patch of sand to sit on, it gets hectic and you can barely see the sea! It's great for people watching tho. There is also divisions on the beach, in correspondence with the lifeguard towers. The funniest spot is the gay stretch, everyone is really friendly but their eyes linger a bit too long. The men also tend to stand facing the sun, as there is not enough to sand to lie on and tan, so wherever you look there are men standing in their speedos. Laura said that stretch was her favourite, I think she enjoyed seeing me squirm.

We met a friend of ours, Giorge, who said she and some friends were heading to Lapa for the famous street party. We met at her hostel and had a few drinks, when we got to Lapa we were amazed. Firstly, the tram we got early in the week went over an incredible aquaduct that you completely miss and secondly the amount of people. It was really fun until we headed towards some of the samba clubs and were waylaid by ruffians. It wasn't a nice experience, Giorge had a clutch bag punched out of her hand by a favellan girl. The girl then decided to square up to her as little kids scrabbled for the purse. The kids must have been 8. A group of lads told us we should move on there was trouble on the way. It was quite a scary experience. Laura was annoyed as the kids were not what she expected from favellan thieves as they could afford nice hair clips. We decided they had probably stole those too!

We had so much fun we decided to stay another week....

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