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Published: January 9th 2011
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Botanical Gardens
Me, Bruce, Claire, Gareth I got no sleep on that bus trip - 6 hours later we arrived at our hostel: Alpha House and instead of going to sleep we set off to find banks and then to find food. We decided on a picnic in the Botanical Gardens to celebrate Bruce's birthday. The gardens were beautiful. It was like being in a forest, there was a little waterfall and streams, a lake and specialized greenhouses all over the place. When we got back to the hostel we were told that most of the visitors were going to Lapa (street filled with clubs) - we said we were in but just wanted to have a quick nap.
The next thing I know its 9am and every single one of us had slept through the night. I got up and had my first (of many) cold South American showers. Then we headed off to Corcovado to see the Christ the Redeemer statue. One of the first and most noticeable things about being in a different country, is while you feel out of place, you look it to. There was no hiding we were tourists. While that makes you an easy target for people trying to
Corcavado - Christ the Redeemer
Me, Gareth, Kate, Bruce, Claire sell you things, it also means well meaning locals also help you out a lot - so far people have been very friendly. Especially if you find an English speaking local - they love chatting to you and offering advice.
Next we hit the beaches - we walked along all three: Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana - the white sandy beaches you see in all the pictures. The water was a mix of Cape Town and Durban, in other words a bit on the cold side. All along the beach there are people making sand sculptures - with the most incredible detail. The one guy make a sand version of all the popular Rio places and even attached a little cable car between the Sugar Loaf Mountains. That night we thought we would try Lapa on our own to try find a Samba club. It was good fun - we tried the local beer: "Skol" which tasted the same as every other beer I've tried - gross. The biggest difference between clubbing here and clubbing at home - in South Africa we usually dance in groups all facing each other - here they all dance facing the huge TV playing
MTV - almost forming rows. We caught a taxi with a speedy (scary) driver at 3am - apparently at that time of night robots and stop streets have a different meaning.
Sunday, Gareth and I set off to find an English speaking church but ended up walking around a cemetery. The descriptions, the statues and the grave stones were incredible - so detailed, old and unusual. We met an old man there who took us to his favourite grave - its a statue of a man we the biggest and naughtiest grin on his face - classic. I can see why he likes it, it just makes you want to smile. I can only imagine what the man who it belongs to was like. We spent the rest of the day walking around the local suburbs, doing the unconventional tourist things. That evening we went to go watch a local soccer game with 51 000 other people. Although we didn't care who won, you can't ignore the atmosphere - so we just cheered whenever anyone scored or saved or made a good tackle - seemed fair.
Our hostel was so close to Botafogoa Bay, we spent hours walking,
Ipanema
Rio Beach talking and reading there. Our staple diet for lunch became Salgadas. I really wanted to find the Black market flee-market but after hours of searching and a limiting language barrier it didn't seem likely. Just as we had given up and were heading back Bruce found someone who directed us to it. Man I love shopping sometimes. In the evening we headed to the lake with a big singing, lit up Christmas Tree right in the middle. For dinner (dessert) we had these tubes of deep-fried dough with caramel treat in the middle called Churros.
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