Advertisement
Published: November 5th 2010
P1110496
Rio De JaneiroBrazil travel update
From Iguazu Falls we started our Brazilian part of the trip, and after another 18+ hour bus trip, we arrived in Sao Paulo, the capital of Brazil. Here we stayed with Cynthia and her partner Niki, who Patty met while working at PwC a couple of years ago. Having friends in the bigger cities we have visited has been really fortunate, as local knowledge is invaluable in seeing the true highlights of a city, especially in a city like Sao Paulo with over 19 million people! Cynthia and Niki were absolutely lovely, and looked after us while we were there, especially considering they were only a month away from their own wedding which they were busy organizing. Cynthia even got her mum to help out, taking us on personalized city tour with one of her friends! They took us to some fabulous restaurants and I don’t think Chris and I have eaten so well on the entire trip! It didn’t help that almost all the restaurants were all you can eat affairs (known as rodizio); including all you can eat meat (called Churrasqueria), all you can eat breakfast at a wonderful little bakery, and even all you
P1110104
Ilha Grande can eat Japanese! We walked away from so many places stuffed to the brim; not so good with a wedding less than 3 months away and wedding dresses and suits to fit into! We must say that Brazil has had the best meat, and in general food, that we have enjoyed throughout the trip (sorry Argentina, but we haven’t found meat as good as that in Brazil yet!). Chris also discovered the Caipirinha, an alcoholic drink similar to a mojito, traditionally using white rum, sugar and made with only lime (no mint is included). Nowadays you can find various different fruit flavoured Caipirinhas such as strawberry and passionfruit as well as with different types of alcohol, like sake. However, the traditional one became Chris’s drink of choice throughout our time in Brazil!
Outside of gorging ourselves on food, we also visited a few museums, however Sao Paulo hasn’t really set itself up that well for tourists, as pretty much every place we visited had everything in Portuguese. It was funny to see Patty experiencing a bit of the frustration that I have been contending with through the bulk of our trip, not being able to understand much of what
P1100978
Sao Paulo - Cynthia, Niki and us on a bike ride we were reading! Probably the most interesting one we visited was a soccer museum detailing the history of the Brazilian team over the last 60 years or so. They had a 360 degree light and sound display to give you quite a realistic effect of what it was like to be at a full capacity stadium with the crowd roaring after a goal had been scored.
Anecdote: Right behind where Cynthia and Niki lived was an equestrian centre. As Niki’s parents were members there, we went for a visit to check out the members lounge, the facilities and the stables where all the horses were kept. There would have been more than 200 horses in the stables here, with a multitude of stable hands as we were told the stables had to be cleaned and each of the horses exercised for a few hours every day. While we were checking out the stables, we realised some of the owners really loved their horses, with some of the stables set up better than a house with air conditioning / fans, TV, music and hanging toys to keep their pet entertained and in comfort while away from the track!
Our
P1110154
Ilha Grande next stop was a small island off the coast of Brazil, called Ilha Grande, about half way between Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro. Having had some wonderful weather throughout our trip up to this point, it was too good to expect it to last, and at this point the weather turned on us. Although it wasn’t super bad, just lots of cloud cover and spatterings of rain intermittently throughout the day, it did prevent us from really enjoying the beaches. We had been looking forward to this part of the trip, as this was the only warm weather we would experience for the majority of the trip and really wanted to get in a bit of sunbaking and swimming in. Alas, no. Outside of the weather, this island was gorgeous! We stayed at a super cute hostel right on the bay, which had been set up like a ship. We had the captain’s room, on the second floor with a little balcony overlooking the ocean and small town. The hostel also hosted a cool reggae band every second evening, so had a couple of late nights staying up and listening to them (we didn’t have much choice as our
P1110299
Rio De Janeiro - Brazilian dinner and dance show bedroom wasn’t far from the stage!) There are also no cars allowed on the island, apart from a few emergency services vehicles, which was a nice change from the chaotic traffic we experienced in Sao Paulo. There were some great day walks to do around the island and some stunning beaches. We would pack a lunch in the mornings and then head off on hikes to various parts of the island. There was also a museum that detailed the interesting history of the island, which was first used as a haven by pirates, then a quarantine point for immigrating Portuguese to Brazil in the late 1800’s, and then subsequently for most of the 1900’s as a prison for political prisoners and other felons. We also went for a scuba dive while we were here, however the weather was again our downfall, as it was quite cold and during the two dives we did there wasn’t much to see.
Rio De Janeiro, a further 2 hours north of Ilha Grande, was our next stop. Once again we were thwarted by the weather for the 8 days we were here, preventing us from enjoying the best this city had to offer.
P1110475
Rio De Janeiro The two main tourist attractions to visit are the Sugar Loaf and the Christ statue which provide magnificent views over the city and ocean. Each morning we would wake up intending to visit these sites, however, throughout every day of our stay, there was always low level cloud which completely obscured any view, making it a pointless exercise to visit them. The last day we were there, we did make the attempt on visiting the Statue of Christ, as this was the best viewing day we had, however 10 minutes from arriving at the top by monorail, the cloud cover moved in again, and we could hardly even see the top of the Christ when we were directly in front of it, let alone any view of the city!
Rio De Janeiro is quite unique from many of the South American cities we have visited, in that there is a very healthy exercise culture, with many people taking advantage of the beaches and walking / cycling tracks throughout the day. We were staying in a mediocre hostel a couple of streets back from Copacabana beach. Most mornings we were there we would get up and run the length of
P1110481
Rio De Janeiro Copacabana / Ipanema and Leblon beaches (about a 14km round trip). There were always heaps of people out doing the same thing as us, either walking, running or riding, as well as many others playing beach volleyball, foot volleyball or soccer on the permanent courts set up along the beaches. There were also exercise stations every 400m or so where you could do push ups / sit ups / tricep dips and chin ups.
Through Sam, a friend out the Brisbane Outrigger Club, we also made contact with one of the Rio Outrigger Clubs and went down for a Saturday morning paddle. We ended up going for a two hour paddle out into the ocean and around Sugar Loaf which was a definite highlight. A couple of the girls we paddled with then invited us out that night to see a popular Brazilian music (PBM) band play. The band consisted of a couple of vocalists on stage and a conductor with a whistle. Around the stage, almost part of the audience, was about 200 drummers with varying sized drums, that the conductor would control with the use of his whistle. It was an incredible sound to hear the nightclub
P1110492
Rio De Janeiro reverberating with the sound of all these drums in concert, playing the high tempo Brazilian songs! The whole place would shake as the drums were pounded in unison to the high pitched whistle of the conductor controlling them. A true Brazilian experience! One other highlight for Patty on the night was getting taught to samba by one of the paddling girls, and not surprisingly, mastering it in the space of 30 minutes!
We also went to a dinner and stage show one evening to watch some of the typical Brazilian samba dancing and Capoeira performances. It was a spectacular show with scantily clad dancers with boobs and butts bouncing everywhere. There was also a presentation of some of the stunning Carnaval costumes. These were glittering, colourful costumes with huge plumages of peacock feathers sprouting out of them. You would need a whole wardrobe just to store one of these outfits! Towards the end of the night, I was even dragged out of the crowd (along with a number of other audience members) for a bit of a dance with some of the dancers. It was a really fun night and a definite improvement from the Peruvian & Bolivian dancing
P1110510
Rio De Janeiro performances we had seen where we saw the same two dancing steps for the entire show!
Overall, Brazil was a wonderful place to visit, and we definitely want to come back to Rio when there is some better weather. We also only scratched the surface of the country, as there is still a huge amount more to see in the northern parts of the country. Until our next update, stay safe!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 62; dbt: 0.0482s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
