Brasil - Rio and heading south

Oi!

And that´s hello in Brasilian Portuguese, not me shouting at you with poor English!
So we´re here in Brasil, the land of Samba, Caiprinhas, beautiful people who dont understand much english (at all) and.....expensive everything!! If there was one thing about coming to Brasil that Nat and i werent prepared for, it was how expenisve this place is and how hard it is to communicate with the locals for day to day things. First example...we arrive at Rio, its boiling, we get in a cab and rather confidently ask the driver, in our well practiced 4 days of Spanish from our time in BA, to take us to our hostel. Not so easy.....even a simple ´Hola´ drew a blank, and a rather confusing response from him which Nat was convinced was French, i was convinced it was just Taxi driver speak for ´hurry the *** up and tell me where you want to go´. Anyway, after shoving the address in front of him, some simple sign language and feeling very small, uneducated and horribly English, we arrived at our hostel in Santa Teresa. Job done. Only when we arrived and started seeing signs in the hostel in another language, not Spanish, did we realise that Brasilians speak Portugese.....Seriously, i have read that bloody Lonely Planet book for the last 3 months, i could even tell you how much a bus is from one side of bloody brasil to the other, how much a steak is and how big it is in Argentina and the ingredients of a Caiprinha, but i forgot to read the bit at the back about which countries speak which language!! Off to a good start.....

But back to Rio.....what a place! Our hostel was on the hilltop community of Santa Teresa, which is now the bohemian quarters of the city that has attracted heaps of European artists who spend their days painting, doing nice community things and learning Portugese (sensible) but previously it was the home to the rich and wealthy of Rio, and you can see it. Amazing old buildings, mansions of all different colours, cobbled streets. It´s actually like you would expect to see in an old town in Spain, very Euorpean looking, but with a real exotic twist. Our hostel room gave us an amazing view of downtown Rio, which i will have pics of soon. We we warned early not to take anything of any value out with us given the notoriety of toursit mugging in Rio, which was hard when you really want to take an SLR camera to snap the amazing city and lots of money to buy food and drinks but we just had to be really careful and basically dress as crap as we could, look as poor and unattractive as we could and have a wad of small notes in our pockets in case we were targeted. Lucikly we were not, but we met quite a few people who were. We spent our first day just walking, and walking and walking, to get our bearings and got an early night ready for our Favela tour the next day.
Now, Nat and I are not ones to ogle at people of disdvantage and when we saw the opportunity to take a tour of a favela we were adament we werent going to do it, no matter how intrigued we were to see what a favela was like. After 5 years of GCSE Geography looking at books of favelas and shanty towns I was super keen to go in and have a nose in one, but it just felt horribly grotesque to walk around like a right w***** with a camera taking snaps of people just getting on with their lives. But after speaking to some nice folk in our hostel who had done it that day and hearing that á contribution of your payment´ goes to funding a nursery for kids in the favela, we convinced ourselves that going on the tour would appease our appetite for intrigue and at least help out some kids...and we are so gald we did it! It was awesome. When the guide told us we would be going into South America´s largest favela (over 300,000 people in size) and we would be going to the top of it on the back of motorbikes and walking back down through it from top to bottom it seemed pretty full on and the next thing you know we were indeed on the back of a motorbike driven by a 15 year old, whizzing up through a favela, going higher and higher. All the time i am thinking ´Nat is going to hate this, she is never going to do any kind of tour again´, but when we got to the top, i am a wobbly mess, preparing myself for a bollocking from Nat for making her do it, but instead i see Nat whizzing up behind me, face beaming, loving the whole thing!! Worse still we were told ´girls can hold onto the driver, boys cant.´ Thanks! You dont know how much i wanted to grab that bloody driver as he was literlaly snaking his way behind buses and other bikes up to the top!!
As we entered the favela we were told by our guide not to take photos until we got through the top part as that is where all the drugs are made and the main dudes dont want any pics taken of them...for obvious reasons. O....K....then! 60% of Brazils cocaine is made in this Favela so you can guess what a big deal it is not to take a nice photo of the smiley looking man running the show in there....
The walk down through was incredible, all the people were super nice and smiley (too much coke perhaps...??!) we bought donuts from the favela bakery (which had a picture of Lenny Kravitz in it doing the same thing!) and visited the cute kids in the nursery where our suppose donation went. Nat and I decided that a favela is actually just like a large council estate in the UK or housing comission in Oz, its just cheaper accomodation for big groups of people...! Alot of the people who live there have jobs in the city of Rio, so its all very normal living, just in incredibly poor conditions. I took a stack of pics which i will put up later.
Unfortunately the sun did not shine as much as we had hoped in Rio, so we never actaully got to lie on Copocabana beach. We werent too fussed though as we´ve lived on a beach for the last 2 years and i think Nat was secretly pleased that i wouldnt be able to pursue my hunt for Giselle a la bikini.....Nat also took advantage of the clouds to do some shopping and she ended up finding her engagement ring in Rio (i knew she wouldnt be able to wait until NYC..) So we spent a good few hours in a posh jewellers, talking to a swanky diamond specialist, and we´re there wearing thongs and shorts with sunnies on our heads...just the clientelle they like to get in i´m sure. Obviously just the sort of thing you do when backapcking too...shop for a diamond ring! But Nat is super happy to get it and its currently being couriered to the UK for us, so we are awaiting the confirmation it has actually arrived with some aprehension!
The rest of the time in Rio we did all the toursity things, all the big sites, took all the standard pics. We had one particularly fun night out in Lapa, which is the samba district of Rio full of Samba clubs and street music. We went with a Belgian guy called Bart who was good fun and managed to scare Nat with his tales of Bolivia, which we still have to come, and an American guy from Texas called John (although i kept calling him Steve for some drunk reason) who appeared to be a bit of a kinky git as the more drunk he got he was telling us how he likes to hire hotel rooms with mirrors on the ceilings.....!! I drank a ridiculous amount of Caiprinhias so my samba was somewhat eratic but i managed to drag Nat up and after her very large vodka (think half pint vodka, half pint diet coke) she was equally as wobbly and i think we were actually more doing a kind of tango/hip hop medley as opposed to a samba. Nobody said anyhting though, they just all kept their distance....The samba club was incredible though, like a big dance hall, not a nightclub. They had a live band and cheap drinks and the locals really made the atmosphere. And my wallet didnt get nicked so i was happy.
Ok, i´m going on now so i´ll wrap up but just before i go...food in Brazil is rubbish!!! After leaivng Argentina and having the best steaks in the world for less than the cost of a big mac, its a real shock coming to Brazil..i tried a traditional bahian dish once and have not ventured back since. Dont get me wrong i am all up for trying the local cuisine everywhere i go, but my plate contained...rice, a fried egg, fried banana, black beans in gravy and this dusty stuff that tasted like talcum powder and looked like saw dust. Not happy, and it cost me about 20 quid!! Even a plate of fries is about 4 pounds. We have spent a months budget in 10 days and we´ve literally been eating the chepaest thing on every menu! Its not like getting a thai green curry in Asia for 50p..i wish...! And a bottle of house red wine is 68 reals, that is 40 AUD and about 18 GBP.....just to give you an idea and to show you i am not being a tight git....

So now we are in a cute colonial town called Paraty. We left Ilha Grande yesterday where we were for a few days and it was absolute paradise, an island just 2 hours south of Rio. Apart from nearly missing the ferry to the island on the way and having to sprint with 20kg on our backs and then jumping about 2 ft onto the boat, it was the best few days we have had yet. Amazing beaches, blistering hot, snorkelling in lagoons, cold (but pricey) beers at night, a room overlooking the bay. I attmepted a surf at a good surf beach on the island but it was too full on and the board i hired might as well been a bloody ironing board it was that clunky. It was great though having a surf in Brazil, a chance to practice my skills honed in Bondi over the last few years! We met some other travelling folk, some Irish (of course) some americans and some french. Weirdly, EVERYONE thinks we are Australian when we first speak to them, one guy told me i had ´the accent bad´but we really really dont, i dont think...?!

Right, i´m off for a 50 quid glass of wine and a fried egg with banana, be in touch soon!
x

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