Start of a new adventure in South America

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(by Kerry)

preliminary note: for some reason there is loads to write about Brazil. Hope it´s not too draining to read but I´m not so good at editing stuff down!

Woohoo! Whilst we had a great time in Asia, we were looking forward to the excitement of something new. So coming over to South America on 18th Jan was mega exciting for us.

We had a 2 day stop over in Buenos Aires on the way to Sao Paulo (in Brazil) which was just long enough to get over the jet lag: The Sydney to Buenos Aires flight was 12 hours leaving at 11am and it was 11am when we landed in BA, so jet lag was the worst, in fact a total head fuck!

Needless to say.. we spent most of the first day sleeping (wrong I know but we did) and so didn´t have much time left for sight seeing: less than 2 days!

However, we did go for a walk around town and got to see the big city centre cemetery, La Recoleta, where Eva Peron, among others, if buried. It´s really cool, only rich people can afford to "go" there (at the end, like) and it´s a massive status symbol for those that do so all the sites are huge tombs in varying states of repair. It´s more like wandering round a neighbourhood, albeit of very small apartments, than a cemetery. See photos.

And of course no trip to Argentina would be complete without a steak dinner polished off with a few glasses of Argentinian wine. We were fortunate to be invited to join a small group of diners from our hostel, one of which was a long term resident of BA, so we got to a really good & fairly inexpensive steak house (there is a proper name for such esablishments but in 2 days I didn´t memorise it). On advice we got the best cut of meat and shared a steak - portions are astronomical! We were nicely stuffed, believe me!

We also saw a big steel flower that opens & closes its petals through the day/night like a real one. Very cool.

Not much else to except that we did leave with a very good impression of Argentina and plan to holiday there at some point to have more steak and see a bit more of it!


So... next we flew up to Brazil, first stop Sao Paulo...

Sao Paulo

Well, we weren´t sure what to expect of Sao Paulo as our Lonely Planet painted it as a large ulgy city with culture & nightlife without making it sound very appealing. We haven´t seen a lot of nightlife in our travels and one of the positive things that the LP did say about SP was that it had nightlife that stands up to London & New York (our 2 fave cities) so we booked into a hostel that was just off one of the main "in" streets, Ave. Paulister, & that advertised a nightly free Caipirinha ( the cocktail of Brazil for those unfamilair with them) followed by a trip to a club. They do this 7 days a week and we were not disappointed. In fact we loved LimeTime! Big up to Alberto, the owner, who was great, as were all the staff there.

So.. because of the great nightlife we ended up spending 5 nights in SP despite only planning to stay for 2-3. We stupidly didn´t make it out until our 3rd night there which was a Friday. It probably helped us greatly that the Friday club that week was Indie night at DJ Club which is scarily similar to The Garage in Holloway (music & grottyness mostly).

The next night we went to an Electro night at Gloria and despite Kerry opting not to drink (we decided to go out at the last minute as were planning to leave the next day) stayed out till well past 4am. Very funny moment in the quite gay (but straight friendly) club was that while we were enthusuastically dancing in a group to a particularly banging tune word went round our group that the lyrics were something very like "Dick-dick-dick, arse-arse-arse". You could literally see the news travel round as it hit each of the men in the group. They were all nice boys though so after an initial halt & puzzled expression the dancing commenced with no less vigour than when their jaw hit the floor.

Something that we found very peculiar about SP nightlife: all the bars are cash free! They all work more or less the same system of issuing a card to everyone on entry which drinks & entrance fees are totted up on. This makes getting served a bit quicker but means that you have to queue at the cash desk to pay on the way out which is a slight bummer if you leave at/near the end. One place even had a pre pay system so you had to queue to top up as well as redeem unused credit at the end.

When we weren´t out dancing we did get out into the city to visit a series of modern art exhibits in a very cool theatre building, go to the top of a scy scraper to catch some city views in panorama and also down to the modern art museum which is set in a huge park so that day included a nice walk as well as the art.

It´s worth noting that when we´ve spoken to other travellers who visited Sao Paulo we´ve found that they missed the night life completely so we´d highly recommend staying in LimeTime as they really make a great effort to get people out & make sure you have a good time. They also get everyone on the guestlist thus saving time and (sometimes) money on the night out.

Paraty (pronounced Paratchy)

& Trindade (pronounced Trindaj-eh)

After leaving Sao Paulo we had about 2 weeks to kill before flying from Rio to Salvador for carnival. Originally we´d planned to travel down to Iguazu Falls and then up to Rio but we decided to head up the coast instead. It would have been a (n expensive) 16hr bus ride down to Iguazu and then even longer up to Rio with not a lot of time left for stop overs.

So.. we did some reasearch and decided to go to Paraty, then found a cool looking hostel in nearby Trindade & decided to go there. But then we met someone who´d just been to both & raved about how much better Paraty was so.. because you have to go to Paraty to catch the (local) bus to Trindade anyway we decided to give Paraty a try first so booked into the hostel that the nice Manc lad had recommended for 2 nights.

What a load of shit! The town itself was very nice, picturesque colonial buildings, sleepy atmosphere steeped with tourism - lots of souvinir shops & restaurants. Our hostel was on the beach and in theory was not bad, clean enough, right on the beach. However, we´d been led to expect something special which, I´m sorry, but it just wasnt. A small annoyance was that the dorm rooms were larger than they advertise online: 6 bed dorms with 8 beds, 9 bed dorm with 12 beds & they were a bit stinky. However our main issue with the place was that the staff acted more like travellers than paid employees and so were not very efficient. This on it´s own wouldn´t be too bad but on one of the nights they´d arranged a bring your own bbq with specials on beer but didn´t have enough coal (and it was raining so no one wanted to go buy some from the shop in town) so the bbq wasn´t properly hot. Then to add insult they had bought a huge pile of food for themselves which they put on the one vaguely hot part so us paying guests had to wait until they´d cooked their food to put ours on. The result: a very long wait for food that wouldn´t cook & had to be either thrown away or cooked in the kitchen.

On the up side the staff were quite friendly, just a bit ignorant of the difference between working & playing.

So.. we caught a bus down to the even sleepier little village of Trindade and stayed in a hostel where things were a lot nicer for the guests. Subsequently we ended up staying there a few more days than we´d planned. I think we´d planned on 2 nights but stayed 4.

The hostel we stayed in was in the woods just behind town & one of the most relaxing places we´ve stayed. The other backpackers were a really nice bunch so many a beer was had of an evening after a chilled day.

Trindade was very pretty & had an array of beaches from which to pick & choose, all pristine fine sand. The main beach was in a small-ish bay with some restaurants & bars clustered at one end which was where the nightlife was centred. Then the next beach along had just one cafe and was a long stretch of sand with the most fun waves we´ve had the pleasure to frolic in. We found the water here to be perfect (not too salty, Aussie water can sting the eyes a bit) & so much fun. Then after a walk along a very well maintained (but subtly so) footpath over the headland you got to an area where some huge rocks a little out to sea enclosed a nice swimming hole area. It was really busy with holidaying Brazilians so a little better for people watching than a tranquil swim but defo worth the walk & nice to see.

Another thing we did was to go on a short walk inland up to some waterfalls, one of which had a "rock that swallows"! This was a rock with a gap that litteraly sucks people in and under before "spitting them out" the other side. We didn´t do it because I´d (Kerry) fallen over the day before & had a nasty grazed knee & foot which would have been a bit sore if knocked and Graham just didn´t like the look of it. We did see some people do it though and it didn´t seem anywhere near as violent, dangerous or scary as it sounds but we still did have to wonder WHO ON EARTH found it?? Strange world!

Teresopolis & Nova Friburgo

So, we were feeling in need of a change of scene after our few days by the beach and still had time to kill before carnival so we headed up to these quaint little mountain towns just a couple of hours outside of Rio.

Teresopolis is reknowned for being the home of the training ground of the Brazil national football team. We were there just at the end of the Brazilian seaon so the squad were not around. We stayed in a hostel up a very steep hill where we made up exactly 50%!o(MISSING)f all the guests. The other 2 were a lovely couple of Irish boys whom we spent most of our time with. We went hiking with them one day in a nearby national park that offered views of the city as well as a fabulous view of God´s finger (a big finger like rock that serves as the town symbol), see photo. We also had a couple of great home cooked meals in the hostels with Damo & Eugene including an outstanding bangers & mash which Euge & Graham cooked up. Yum! South American sausages are SO good, and cheap too!

So after a couple of days in Teresopolis we took a local bus to the nearby Nova Friburga where we stayed in a hostel up a really long steep hill. So long that we had to take a bus. It was a lovely hostel though - with a swimming pool, and had good views of the countryside. They also served up a delicious dinner that we wish we´d had both nights as it turned out to be cheaper than cooking for ourselves, which we did hiddeously on the second night. Unfortunately we´d not asked the price of the meal the 1st night so thought we´d be saving money. The meal was horrid because the boiled ham that we´d bought was about 80% salt & we didn´t realise until AFTER we´d finished cooking & had made the pasta sauce with the water. Result: a plate of salt. Technically food but you could only taste salt. That´s the last time I cook without tasting it! Can´t think why I didn´t taste it....

So, being another mountain town there was another big rock that served as the town symbol, this time bearing a canny likeness to a sitting dog. Of course we travelled out to see it. It was about 45 mins bus ride out of town and then a pleasent hour´s walk up through a paved & staircased park on a hill type thing. See photos when we get a chance to load them from Graham´s camera!

Rio de Janeiro

Oh dear, we were a bit slack while in Rio. As it was our last stop before heading to Salvador for carnival we thought we had better take it easy for a few days, early nights etc. We did manage to get up to see the big Jesus (Cristo Redentor) that overlooks the city which was a pleasent day out. We had glimpsed him on the bus on the way into town and first impressions were.. Kerry: Oh, was expecting him to be bigger, bit disappointing. Still pretty cool though. Graham: wow, very impressive (& could see no reason why it should be bigger). We could also see him from our hostel window which was very cool, especially at night when he was illuminated.

We were in Rio for 3 nights in total and stayed in Botafoga. As well as taking the tram up to the Jesus one day we also made a quick visit to the famous Ipanema & Copacobana beaches although we just walked along the shore for a bit then took the bus back as we were all beached out after Australia & Trindade.

Still to come on Brazil, in the next couple of blog entries:

• Carnaval in Salvador: 2 weeks in a partying city
  
• Post Carnaval Brazil: Back to Sao Paulo & out to the Bolivian border
  

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Photos

AKA
result of having my passport changed but ticket still under Arrowsmith. I was assured that they could change my booking but it appears not!

clubbing in SP
check the tv in the background

Trindade beach
the water here was the BEST.

Gods Finger
..and mine

crowds
there are 3 different people posing as Christ here. Idiots

banana pizza
finally, at an all you can eat buffet I have a go at banana pizza. Banana, syrup & cheese. Verdict: not bad, but not good either.