Blogs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America - page 212

What we´ve all been waiting for. On friday my host family took me to Rio. We left in the morning around 9 o´clock to make the 5 hour journey from Belo Horizonte. I brought my CD´s along, so we listened to the Barenaked Ladies, Jorane and Leonard Cohen on the way up (they wanted to hear some good Canadian music). Belo is about 1 km above sea level and the car ride was downhill the whole way to Rio. When we were nearly there, the elevation drops dramatically as you drive past what is left of the Atlantic Rain Forest. Silvestre said that less than 5% remains of the forest due to heavy logging by the portuguese when they colonized Brasil. In fact, Brasil gets its name from a tree that used to be common here, ... read more

Buzios is a small town 3 hours east of rio de janeiro. It is a small, posh town with with over 17 beaches. The water is always warm, there is good surf and lots of brazillians go there during their holidays. When I visited, it was quite and not much happening at night or during the day due to the fact that it was the weekday and no one was on holiday. due to the off season, things were half the price. we stayed at this nice posuada, which is like a hotel with breakfast included for 25 reals a night. I travelled with my friend mira, a german girl i met on the bus to rio. she has been volunteering in a favella in the south of brazil for 5 months. on the second day, ... read more

just to let you know we´ve been back and added photos to all the blogs we´ve written so go back and view them!!!! apparently it doesn´t let you know we´ve updated them. anyway so we got to our hotel in rio late in the evening so went to bed. we got up and ordered breakfast, which is delivered to your room (so they dont have to waste space with a dining room). we then headed out into the city with our trusty little maps and a card from the hotel so we could get back. we took a walk round and headed to copacabana beach which is lovely. the main road runs alongside the beach so we saw the bus number we had read in the book to get to the staute of christ so jumped ... read more

Although Alison at STA travel booked our seats so we would be on the best side of the plane to fly into Rio we ended up on the wrong side of the plane! That said, the view into first, Sao Paulo possibly the largest city I think we´ll ever set eyes on then the inland side of Rio was still pretty spectacular. After touching down and getting through the passport stamping we headed for the Bus lane outside the terminal to catch a Real Autobus through the city to Ipanema. Having read the lonely planet about this bus we knew it would cost about $3 USD but when we tried to board the coach the driver asked for 60 Brazilian Real which is about $30!! Shocked at this and realising we now didn´t have enough cash ... read more

After a 12 hour flight from Heathrow sitting next to the smelliest guy on the plane, Gurth and I eventually arrived in Rio heading for the Copacabana Mellow Yellow Hostel where we had planned to meet our friends Matt, Wash and Sam. We arrived about 8:30am and woke up the boys, the confused look on Washy's face said it all. Once the boys were up we headed straight down to the Copacabana beach, 4.5km stretch of sand and sea. It wasn't long before the Popcorn Filled Chimney Sweeps AFC 5-a-side team were in action playing against 4 other lads from our hostel and a brazilian guy who thought he was ronaldinho. After taking the piss a couple of times it was only fair we started putting him in his place and put few reducers on him. ... read more