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Published: November 11th 2004
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Rio de JaneiroAnd so, to Brazil.. the fifth biggest country on Earth. Due to the constaints of time, we were only briefly heading across the South East of the country... but it at least gave us a flavour for it..
Our first stop, from Argentina, was the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls. Equally spectacular to the Argy side, but still worth a visit to get a different perspective on this incredible place..
We then had a quick, ie 2 minute detour into Paraguay.. this was because we hadnt stopped to get a Brazilian entry stamp on our way in from Argentina. The Paraguayan border is a real zoo... hoards of people heading in and out with bootlegged booze, cigarettes, and probably a lot of cocaine that has come in from Bolivia.. As we got our stamps for Paraguay then immdediately walked out again back across the 400 meter long suspension bridge back to Brazil, we saw a quick and highly organised robbery on the other side of the road, where a guy was relieved of his money belt by 2 assailants who quickly dissapeared on a motorbike..
not a place to hang around in..
So we then headed up
Iguazu, the Brazilian Sideto the Itaipu dam... being the kind of bloke who likes watching TV documentaries with titles such as ¨Big Stuff¨, or ¨The worlds biggest buildings¨, I was quite excited by this dam. Basically it´s the biggest in the world, and produces more power than any other dam, and that will include this monstorous 3 gorges dam the chinese are building. When you consider it provides 95% of all electicity to Paraguay AND 25% of Brazil´s (7th biggest economy in the world, incidently), it really does become staggering..
It was put up in the 70s and 80s when the easiest way for corrupt politians to fleece money from public funds was to approve a gargantuan engineering project, then have your brothers engineering company win the contract, then over invoice massively.
Anyway, the dam took 20 years to build, cost 25 Billion Dollars, and is full of mind boggling stats, such as the concrete making plant created to er, make the concrete basically churned out enough concrete to build a 20 story building every 40 minutes for 5 years..
Right, enough boring engineering stats.. after this dam, and the falls, we headed on a 26 hour bus journey to Rio
Copa... Copacabana... Her name was Lola.. etc etcde Janiero..
Now there were 2 images of Rio that I had before arriving.. the first was the typical brazilian stereotype.. sun drenched lovelies on Copacabana beach sipping Caipairinas as the local boys demonstrate their footy skills on the sand, the samba beat of carnival, sugar loaf mountain, red hot night life, and tight swimwear everywhere... the second image was due, primarily to that awesomely disturbing, but utterly brilliant film ¨City of God¨, about the crime ridden streets of Rios flavelas (slums).
Well, basically, both these images turned out to be true.. we came across lots of foreigners who had been robbed at knifepoint, and heard the normal horror stories, and viewed the flavelas from afar.. but we got away unscathed.. this was greatly helped by us staying, and spending most of our time in the upmarket area of Ipanema.. yes, as in ¨The Girl from Ipanema¨. This beach, along with neighbouring Copacabana are the main tourist areas, and full of bars and restaurants, and have a real bohemian party buzz to them..
We did explore other areas, though.. the Maracana football stadium.. the vast concrete bowl that once held 180,000 for the 1950 world cup final,
Long and tall, and dark and lovely..
couldnt find a girl from Ipanema who would pose for my photo, so you´ll have to make do with the beach.. only saw 3,800 turn up with us for Fluminese v Athletico Parana. Fluminese, the local mob, managed to lose 2-1 in the last minute in a lower mid table battle.. kind of like Bolton v Southampton, I guess.. The atmosphere was good fun, though, and I was intrigued by the nomenclature of Brazilian players.. historically, they have been great exponents of the exotic single name entity.. Ronaldo, Cefu, Ronaldinho, Zico, Falcao, and of course, some chap called Pele. The Fluminese number 10, however, didnt seem to quite grab the trend.. the home team´s playmaker was called: ¨Alan¨. and he was rubbish.
We also wandered (in daytime, to be safe) around the centre of the city, and the faded grandeur of the colonial capital it once was..
One disadvantage was our lack of Portugese.. having finally started to grasp a bit of Spanish, we really were back to crude sign language when we arrived in Rio.. a bit frustrating, but we got by..
It actually rained solidly for 2 days during our stay, but thankfully, the sun broke thru for our trips up the sugar loaf mountain, and to the famous statue of Christ up on the mountain
Goooooooooool !!!!! The Maracanaoverlooking this amazingly picturesque city..
We ate superb sushi, drank caiparinas, ran along the hot body infested beaches, and generally had a really cool 5 days in Rio.. but time was moving on, and we needed to head south..on another blockbusting 18 hour bus journey, to Florianopolis.
FLorianopolis is the gateway to the Isla de Sainta Catherina.. a 50 kilometre long thin island that lays a couple of miles off the coast, and is a haven for surfers and beach bums, and is a major tourist destination for Brazilians. There are 42 beaches on this island, and it is full of charming little towns, a stunning internal lake, and scores of beach shacks, restaurants, etc.. It would have been a lovely place for 4 or 5 days, but we only had 2, so we crammed in a couple of days at a lazy beachside village, and a load of decent seafood, then headed on our next monster bus journey.. this time to Uruguay..
Overall, Brazil, or at least the small portion we got to see was generally very well developed, excellent infrastructure, and visibly wealthy.. (and very expensive, compared to the rest of south america). There are
View from Sugar Loaf mountain.. on the left, Copacabana Beach, at the top right, the statue of Christobviously huge disparities in society here, and the urban flavelas are incredibly poor, which leads to the major crime problems they have here.. but these are very much localised to the big cities, and in general, we felt very safe, and wish we could stay longer!!
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Gary
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Thanks
Cheers Bud, i liked the stuff about the dam.....very enjoyable.