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Coming Soon.... and here it is!
The journey to Rio would be our longest yet, 21 hours!! It was also the priceyist trip at a whooping 225 Reals (56 Euro) We set off from Peurto Igauzu and made for border formalities which went smoothly. We were treated to a lunch and very comfortable reclining seats onboard along with the box office smash hits of ´Grilled´ and´One night with the king´. We stopped mid way for lucnh and had to charge the 6 euro to emmas visa card cause we had no braxilian money. The journey was rather pleasent and flew by.
Our first glimpse of the city was a shanty towns, dirty, blisteringly warm and the mandatory seedy as fuck bus station with every mother fucker staring at your pockets! So out of there we got in a taxi, staright to our Hostel, (ACE HOSTEL)Our arrival at the hostel gave us a new lease of life as we were expecting to flake out on arrival. Emma had her usual rant about the hygiene of the room which is becoming quite the tradition!The weather was great so we went off to explore the beaches and see what the fuss
was all about! We took the metro to Ipanema and had a walk on the beach - irish style. We headed back to Ace, cooked some pasta and chatted with one of the many yanks who was resting his head there. so our first day in Rio had been a succes, 5 days to go, hopefully plenty more sunshine buit our friend the rain is expecting to ´drop´ by for a few days!!
we had a very late start the second day, a trend that would continue for the rest of our time in Rio. Becasue it was pissing rain wqe decided to explore the Centro part of Rio which prived to be a shockingly bad decision as it pissed on us for 2 hours and there wasnt much to see/do. Emma decided that Ace was our driest and best option to spend the rest of the afternoon. Back in the hostel we met more Americans, a couple from California. They off course asked the obligatory question, ´is it really backward there´ etc etc. They were very nice all the same. a couple of beers and alot of chit chat later it was time for our first (and last)
big night out on the rio town. We gather a pose of the Caly couple, a seattle gal, 2 turkish guys?! and ourselves. off to LAPA we went, the most happening place in Rio. The clubs are weird cause when you r going in they give you a card with a list of the drinks. instead of paying at the bar the bloke just marks off what youve had and then you pay on the way out. The turks wanted to leave after 3 hours but i wanted to stay. We kinda comprmised and headed back to the hostel for plenty more 1 euro 600ml beers.
Another late start followed our night out. We started our day by running into an old chef from back home. Ronald made us lunch and sent us on our way to the Sugar Loaf mountain which we reached by cable car. we stayed at the top until sunset and returned to Ace after having to haggle a taxi man from 20 reals to 11 cause thats all we had. Our finacial situation was discussed in great detail back on the hostel and we decided that it would be the beach for the rest
of our time in Rio. We had lunch down on Cococapana the next day and sunbathed for asd long as our fair skin would allow. The people walking along the 4.5 km of beach are the crazyiest concentation of God s children ive ever come across. body builders, street vendors, sandcastel builders, dog walkers (one dog had shoes on), religous lunatics and people of all shape and sizes wearing next to nothing.
We headed to christ the redeemor on our last day and seen our first white sock wearing Irish in Rio. The view from the top was great and the little church in JCs feet was kinda surreal as tourist took photo of therir outstrecthed hands mimicking the messiah. emma got some good news from her online banking that evening so we treated iurselves to an all you can eat brszilian buffet which consist of you filling your plate with salad and then waiting visting your table very couple of minutes with differnt kindsa meat on big long skewers. It was a great experience but wasnt like aproper meal, you kinda felt like you had to eat everything that came a long.
so off to caracas tommorrow
to meet will. The trip is looking like it´ll take approx 35 hours. I´ blog it seperatly....
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