Rio De Janeiro and carnaval - first encounter with South America

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6/2-13: after a flight on around 30 hours with a very sick and sleepy Helena as my travel buddy and a stop on 9 hours just to wait for a 1 hour flight in Sao Paolo, we finally arrived in Rio around 18:15. We got our backpakcs and avoided the taxi jokers outside the airport and got a public taxi right away. A bit expensive but a long drive with a lot of traffick jams so it was okay.
We had booked the hostel online and chosen the cheapest one, although it had some bad reviews, but everything was quite expensive during carnaval. Our expectacions were really low, but when we arrived they gave ud a small carnaval gift and there were no one else living in our dorm yet which looked quite new - everything was clean, so far I would recommend it to anyone.. We went to a local supermarket and bought some fruit and yougurt for dinner.. After we had eaten we went for a shower and then to bed, Helena slept right away while I read a little in my book..
Later one of the staff came in to turn on the air-con but after a while it started dripping from it so I had to get up to tell them. We decided to stay in the room and just turn off the air-con even though he offered us another room.. We woke up a couple of times because they decided to start fixing it and then to come check a couple of times if it was okay..7/2-2013: Woke up around 8 and had some breakfast - but since it was not ready we started with buying locks for our lockers at the hostel in a shop nearby. We had a good breakfast at the hostel and then we went to an atm to get some money so we could go on a city tour, a bit expensive but a good way to see many things at once, and we only have three full days in the city so we had to make the best of it. We went on the trip with our guide Gustaf aka the brazillian version of the Ben Stiller.. First we saw Christo Rendedor which is the jesus statue that blesses anyone entering the city - it was quite cloudy though which reaulted in two things, 1: our view of the city was gone but 2: the statue looked very cool and mysterious between the clouds.. A beautiful place and must-see when in Rio! Next stop we went to a lower view point were we could overlook the city and it was really stunning - you could see the beaches, mountains, skyscrapers and favelas - its crazy how big this city is - 7 million people live here + tourists!Then we went to the Santa Teresa neighbourhood for a small walk, charming neighbourhood with a sad story of their local trem wagons being banned beacause of a big accident and the locals feel like the neighbourhood lost it's soul with the loss of the trems. After this we went to the Lapa stairs or Escadaria Selaron, done by Chilean artist Jorge Selarón - made all by himself in only 10 years. Quite impressive for their size and the amount of tiles. There were a lot of mozaic tiles and we found some small ones that were Danish, Bob marley and many other things from all over the world.. Our guide told us the artist was murdered in a brutal way - but we could not really figure out if he was joking or not - since then I have read that he was found dead on the stairs with burn marks all over so they might be some truth to it.After that next stop was the newest and biggest cathedral in the city but we didn't find it that beautiful, only impressing because of its size. The last stop was supposed to be The Sugarloaf mountain but it was all covered in clouds so we chose not to do that and get some of the money back instead, since we wouldn't be able to see anything at all. When we came back to the hostel we booked a favela tour for the next day and then one of the staff said we could come with him when he finished work to a party, so we decided a nap was a good idea if we were gonna go out.When we woke up he told us plans had changed and they had moved their boat party to that night so we could join for 60 riyel which included free bar for an hour so we decided to go now that we had already planned on going out.. One of the staff members had slept in our room also and when we woke up we talked to her for a long time, turned out she had lived in a favela all her life so it was interesting to hear her stories - she grew up having to jump over dead bodies going to school. Shortly after four more people moved into our room, but they were only there for five minutes because they had to meet up with someone.After this we took a shower and then we had some dinner next door where they had really cheap and good tapas. While we ate it rained but it stopped again after a short while to our luck. Then we went back to the hostel and talked to some of the others who where also going on the boat tour, we got off a little late and it did not include free bar in the end - but beers was cheap so we managed 😉 It was really cool overlooking Rio from seaside at night and partying - we were home around 4:30 and passed out in bed.8/2-2013: We got up at 9 and had some breakfast before the favela tour - we were quite tired with only three hours of sleep. It took a long time to pick up people around town, but it was fine for us, gave us a chance to wake up fully. We were dropped off in the Rocinha favela which is the biggest in Rio and from there we walked to the bottom which turned out to be very far. The first impression was quite good, small streets which were looking almost nice. We made our first stop on a roof top from where we could see all of the favela. Afterwards we visited an art gallery where the local children were painting their things to sell in order to make money instead of going into a criminal lifestyle. We each bought a painting and met some of the children who were very cute. After that some of the children made a samba dance for us, and we saw some women who made jewellery out of old metal. We also saw a daycare center and it was all part of projects the tour guides had started to help out the community. We saw another view point and could see that we had walked quite far already. The longer down we came the more slippery and dirty the streets became. We saw a building with holes in it from gunfights between the mafia, drugdealers and police. All in all a positive insight because we could see progress and new hope for the people in the favelas - it might have had a lot to do with our timing as well - the police was 'cleaning up' the favelas before the upcoming olympics. When we got home we took a quick nap - then a shower and then we went to a street party with a small parade with some of the people from the hostel - the carnaval is not just the big parade you see on TV - it is small parades all over the city. It was fun to see all the people in the costumes but we were really tired so we went home again around 8 and had some dinner. Then we talked to the people at the hostel about getting tickets for the big carneval parade for the day after since it was our last day, but they were sold out and they told us we could go now instead. So even though we wanted to sleep we decided to go and it was really amazing! The parade was so beautiful and the locals went crazy - the pictures can't really give the same feeling as being there but it can give an impression. One of the best parts for us was when one of the cleaners walking after the big wagon started dancing samba Michael Jackson style - the crowd went crazy. We went to bed very tired that night.9/2-2013: Ee woke up a couple uf times because of some drunk tourists who had to go on the city tour early but couldn't figure out how to turn off their alarm - hoste life. We fell asleep again and slept until 12:30 which was not exactly our plan. Then we got dressed and went to Ipanema beach, apparantlty with the rest of Rio. We had mexican food for breakfast/lunch. Then we went to the beach and it was really nice weather and the water was nice and warm but many big waves. One thing to do in Ipanema is to watch the insanely beautiful people there. There was a street parade/party right next to the beach so we concluded that relaxation is simply impossible during carnaval and joined the crowds. We decided to take a taxi home since the metro was impossible to get to. Then we had a shower and walked around to find dinner but apparantly there had also been a street party in our neighbourhood so most of the reasturants were full. We went to a pizza place where we met two of the Australians from our hostel. After they left some Brazilian guys came and sat at our table and we started talking with them and laughed a lot so we didn't really feel like leaving - but we went back and packed up and got a taxi for the airport. Bye bye Rio - love you and will be back at some point!

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