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Published: September 6th 2005
I can´t believe I´m here in the legendary city of Rio De Janeiro staying at the legendary beach of Copacabana. It´s been a pretty cruisy few days here with late nights out on the town and slow wanders around town. Unfortunately the weather has been a little off and so haven´t seen the legendary G-string encased brown bums! I arrived about 2 AM on Sunday morning due to my flights from Lima being delayed. Coming out of the airport saw some serious road blocks with the local police armed with machine guns and were checking cars. It made me concerned whether I really had emptied my bag of Coca leaves but they didn´t search my taxi.
The main two tourist attractions here in Rio are the Christ the Redemer statue and Sugar Loaf peak. You take a cog train to the former and two cable cars to the later. I think the cable cars are the ones used in the James Bond movie with Jaws. The views from each are spectacular and it was nice to sit up at Sugar Loaf and watch the sun set over the city with a Skol (beer) in my hand.
The taxi drivers
are really dodgy here. They tried to tell me that they have a special taxi service from the Christ statue to Sugar Loaf for 50 reals. When I told them they were kidding they suggested 25 reals. When I threatened to get out of the taxi they agreed to the meter which ended up costing 14! No wonder other countries around here don´t use meters at all.
As for the night life I met up with a couple of English chaps whilst up at Sugar Loaf and so went out with them for a couple of nights. Rio isn´t as big a party town as I´d anticipated and I guess it´s not too surprising that on the week nights things are pretty quiet. I should have arranged my travels so I was here over an entire weekend. Nethertheless we still managed to find a pumping pub called Lord Jim on Sunday night that had a live band that played some great music, most of it in English. The barmaids are really friendly and keep the drinks coming (some of them work on commission so it´s not surprising). One barmaid I was chatting to, worked at the pub at night,
studied Microbiology during the day and had an Aussie boyfriend who spent 6 months of the year working in the ski slopes in Austria and the other 6 months travelling around the world! These girls are obviously very understanding! We also met a lovely waste-water engineer who was in a group of locals celebrating a birthday.
Monday night was at an Irish pub and made popular with a quiz night that offered free grog as prizes. We combined with a couple from Argentina and you would think that with the combination of some local South Americans, an Australian Engineer, and English Doctor and an English Microsoft employee, that we´d do all right, but apparently not.
So that´s Rio done and now off to see some more water (Iguassu Falls). There aren´t as many tourists here as I expected. Neither have I experienced the Samba nights but I will try to track some down tonight. Unfortunately I didn´t get a chance to see any of the other coastal towns around here and probably should have scheduled a little over a week here rather than just 4 nights. It´s been raining for most of today so the weather´s not always
perfect. There´s always next time.
Here´s some unusual things I´ve seen in Rio:
- the VW ute, just like a Holden but with a VW sticker on it
- ice cubes in the urinal
- bars that give you a drinks card and then add a tick everytime they get you another one. Great for playing noughts and crosses drinking games. The bouncer doesn´t let you leave without see a receipt.
- 900 ml bottles of Vodka for $1.50. No wonder Michelle liked Brazil!
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Burtyboy
non-member comment
Pretty impressive
Dave, Looks like you are having a good time. Photos of the scenery look fantastic. .... pity we can see the faces of the two local two legged scenery. I just gotta get there one day.!!! Look forward to the next installment. Same old, same old here in Brisvegas and BAL. Tony