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Published: March 20th 2009
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So we are in a taxi on the way to get our Brazil entry stamps and the taxi driver went down a street, slammed on his breaks, hurriedly reversed and went down a different street. He goes police and flashbacks of Peru came back to me and I thought not again, but we got there without further problems. The immigration guy went to stamp on my observations page and I said, kinda loudly cos it panicked me, NO and he looked at me and I said not that page. So he flipped though my passport looking for a blank page and said jokinly you're passport is too full! Such a proud moment.
We had met up with a brother and sister on the train who were also going to Rio and when we went to buy our tickets to Rio there were only 5 seats left, so was good the aussies didn't have to go via Rio! The bus cos R$242 which was way expensive but prices get put up before carnival. Had a wash in the bathroom and got some breakfast before what was meant to be a 28 hour journey. There were no movies shown and the kids
Brazil border patrol logo
I liked how the eagle had handcuffs for feet behind me kept kicking my seat and pulling my hair as they climbed on the seat, until I slapped back and hit one of their arms. Got stopped twice for police / customs checks and they must have found something they didn't like cos 6 bags were take off and a lady had to go into the office for ages. On one of the check the police dude was really cool and asked if I spoke Portuguese. I said (in portuguese) only thank you and kiss my butt which he found funny. He asked where I was from and I said NZ and he goes ohhh rugby and made a drop kick motion. The bus trip was lonnnnnnng! We were near the toilet and it got a bit smelly Got to see an awesome sunset and had a good pastry in bus station for dinner and yoghurt drink. Stopped at a pay by the kilo place the next day and ate like kings, compared to the previous meal and got bits of roast pork with crackling, I miss the street food from Central America. Is an expensive way to eat if you want lots of food but was good. Arrived
into Rio about 9pm on Wednesday night, after leaving Santa Cruz at 4:30pm on Monday afternoon so was straight to bed and man it was hoooooooooot!
On Thurs 19th had a lazy start and walked for a long loop round "town" and I got a tub of Neapolitan ice cream down at the dock for lunch. Then went to the SAARA market to look for cheap Havaianas jandals, but didn't find any I liked. This is the place to go if you need anything.
On Friday we went to see the The Convent Stairway in Santa Teresa round the corner from our hostel. We ended up coming from the top so walked down it and then got the view back up. It is made up of thousands of tiles that one guy has put together. After that we had to go out to Copacabana beach to pick up our Sambadrome tickets. So popped to the beach for about 20mins to have a look and there were some awesome sand sculptures there. The beach was really nice, had showers you could wash in after having a swim in the not so nice looking water. All shapes and sizes and
colours of people here - some good, some not so good. Then went to met up with Stuart and Louise at their hotel, but only Stu was there so we got the bus out to Urca to get the cable car up the Pao de Açucar (Sugar Loaf) mountain (we sang the James Bond theme on the way up). Had ourselves a caipirinha (which is sugar cane rum mixed with fresh lime, sugar and crushed ice) while enjoying the amazing views over Rio, we wanted to stay to watch the sun set but was a wee way off and had already been up there a few hours so went back to Stu's hotel and had another drink while waiting for Louise to come back. We all went out to a restaurant for dinner and got some more caipirinha's and some food. Louise's drink came filled with about 20 ants in it! Mine had about 2, but we just picked them out. Ordered Papas Portuguesa (portuguese potatoes) which were pretty much chips/crisps that were fried, so didn't each many of them. Got a chorizo off a sword which was good.
Got a taxi about 1:30am from their hotel in Flamengo
back to our hostel in Santa Teresa and because of the big street party every night in Lapa he couldn't drive us all the way. So we walked through the masses of people still partying hard, holding tightly to our bags! Just after we got in the other 2 in our room got back, in the same state as us. The guy was on a top bunk and we all went to sleep and I woke up, whatever time later to the light being switched on and saw the aussie guy was lying on the floor. Turns out he had somehow fallen out of his bed, but not woken himself or us up cos we were so asleep, and was making moaning noises cos his head hurt, and had woken up the wife of the hostel owner who stayed along the corridor! I got up and tried to wake him up which didn't work so well. His girlfriend opened her eyes and I said her boyfriend had fallen off and she went straight back to sleep, so put him on the spare mattress so he didn't have to get back on the bunk. In the morning he said he had
a really sore butt, tho his head was ok. Was so funny.
Saturday 21st we had arranged to meet up with Stu and Louise at a Bloco (street party) near us. We didn't realise that several hundred thousand people actually went to this, so we had no chance of finding them! So we went back to the market area cos I was really needing new jandals, having super glued my ones many many times. In the afternoon I went to a soccer game with a group from the hostel between Flamengo, who were the favourites, and Resende. There were 3 red cards, 2 to Flamengo and 1 to Resende, a disallowed goal to Flamengo and the injury cart was out like 4 times for Resende. The referee had his own bodyguards, but when he disallowed the goal to Flamengo and then red carded the player the whole team surrounded him and his body guards didn't even come on the field! The crowd was more interesting than the game, which Resende ended up winning 3-1. There were massive flags they would wave around, drums all around the crowd, kids of about 3 in the red and black stripes of Flamengo
and one supporter who had a mini Jesus Christ statue with a Flamengo ribbon around it, that he would pray to and hold up in the air. We were sitting right in their section and it was good fun. The Flamengo fans were pretty shocked by the loss so were a lot more subdued when they left.
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Wilma
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Mesmerizing
Hello. I moved to Rio de Janeiro from Calgary, Canada in November 2010. I was here on Sunday, April 10th. This stairway is so fantastic, left me speechless. Very unique. One day, I will go back and up the stairway and take my own pictures of each and every section. Thanks for sharing.