Blogs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America - page 222

by tim After six and a half weeks we finally arrived in Rio. Nine Dragoman/Encounter trucks carrying 120 people had descended from all over South America on the Hotel Paysandu. Our first night there was the Red and Black ball. This we had been pre-warned was an event which saw several thousand people dressed in Red and Black converge on a nightclub called the Scala club. The point of it was fairly obscure apart from the fact that the woman generally got mauled by the local bloke's. I was'nt really looking forward to it but it was just one of those things we felt we had to do. The first few hours were as expected, my worst nightmare. The place was packed with blokes just out for a cheap thrill. Caroline and Precious, dressed in minimilistic ... read more

Hola (Still the same in portugese) From that you can gather that i made it to Rio. It only took 25 hours on a bus that must have been suspected for havin dodgy people with dodgy substances due to the amount of police stops and bag checks on the way to Rio. No surprise to me due to the look of some of the local passengers. But that doesn’t do them justice, true they where a strange bunch due to watching the weirdest dvds so far on the bus a mix of strange concerts/club nights and kids films. But in broken Spanish they were telling me they were looking forward to the Rolling Stones. Got to rio and decided to pick the most disorganised hostel i could find, fortunately located in Copacabana, so it was really ... read more

Like the title says...words cannot possibly describe what Rio is like during Carnaval. At first, I didn´t think much of Rio...just as another city with a beach. The city is overwhelming with its contrasts and the people. The first thing that I did was meet up with Hassan at his place. Next day we got our keys and the whole gang met up. Oggie, John and Hassan are the partners in crime here. The next day we went to the travel agency to get ripped off like every freaking GRINGO should. When I talked to the locals, i found out that we paid at least double for the Carnaval tickets along with a bunch of other things. But how fun is that if you don´t get raped with the prices? So the first thing we did ... read more

Aaaahhhh.......... dunno whether we´re getting paranoid or wat? But we met with a little incident again today. We were walking along the familiar way to the subway station when a shabby looking black woman suddenly pounce onto OSM, trying to beg for money we guess. But in tt split second and us being very sensitive oredi, she hit her hand that was holding on to a bottle of vodka and the vodka was splashed all over her. Not knowing what to do, we screamed and ran, our faces turned white and limbs turned jelly. In fact, now that we think back, hmmm... dunno who scared who? Maybe all she wanted was only to beg... but too bad, she met with these paranoid asians who not only didn´t give her any money, but in turn broke her ... read more

Well tigers, its been tooo long since we last spoke, which means a lot has happened, so we have much to talk about, so lets get down to bizness. Flew out from BA to rio via santiago, and there was a teary goodbye at the airport especially brucie who couldnt keep the tears back.... i havent seen a grown man cry since last year at camp when we went on a day off and KFC was out of chicken and Dom D'souza the big man let it all out... Dom you sweet kid, they were good times.....Anyway back to the topic...... Landed in Rio to meet 3 lovely ladies at the airport who were ready to hit the town and couldnt understand why we didnt want to take our luggage clubbing with us... So after ... read more