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Rio de Janeiro is awesome! We had such a good time here that we found it hard to leave.... thus 3 days turned into 7 and we had to force ourselves to move on! Because perfect weather, friendly people and amazing food comes at a price!
Lets´s start at the beginning! We nearly missed our flight! yep, we nearly missed out on rio altogether because they had brought our flight forward by nearly two hrs and we didn´t know! So we turned up at the airport thinking we had plenty of time, only to be told that check-in had closed because boarding had started!! Luckily for us, we had a wonderful lady from Lan airlines take pity on us because we had a different time on our ticket and she ended up literally running us through customs, security and the international section of the airport onto our plane!
So we arrived in Rio.... caught the bus from one airport to the other to cut taxi cost.... and on the way we were met with our first sight of the favelas. The section we saw stretched so far that it was heartbreaking.... the living conditions were crowded.... too crowded... and concrete,
bricks and tin covered the landscape. I think the favelas really stand out as they are scattered throughout Rio and look so very different to the rest. It´s very odd seeing such poverty surrounded by mansions in Santa Teresa.
Santa Teresa is where we stayed and it is a suburb on a hill that overlooks the city, filled with mansions of a yesterday era! Alot of them were left to ruin until a lot of artists and bohemians moved into the area and revitalised it..... although there are also some families who have lived here for generations, there are others that moved on to populate other areas, such as the coast, when the favelas started to crowd in. The weekend we were there Santa Teresa had it´s annual double weekend when the artists open their homes and studios to the public for viewing! It´s also a big market atmosphere, with stalls lining the streets and restaurants bustling. Most of the artwork was pretty spectacular and it was really cool seeing it within their working space, or on the walls of the homes!
Santa Teresa is also next to Lapa (which is at the bottom of the hill) which is
a local´s bar scene. Bars spill out onto the streets... in fact because it seems anyone can sell beer, people just seem to create there own drinking spaces on the sidewalk next to makeshift bars (an esky on a trolley with empty cans on top showing you what they sell!). On one such corner Paul and I enjoyed a meal of meat on a stick with salsa (from a guy with a sidewalk bbq) and R$1.50 (about $0.90aus) caipihrinas from a guy and his son running a mobile bar! Lapa is also the site of the Arcos de Lapa and Selaron´s steps. We were lucky and had a chance to meet with Selaron as he was repairing/rejuvinating a section of his masterpiece and he has made a request for tiles that contain kangaroos or koalas! Lapa was also the site of the saturday food market! With an amazing variety of fruit and vegetables! samples of watermelon and mango.... drinks of coconut juice straight out of the coconut!
The place we were staying, which was a section of mansion, was owned by a young guy who seemed to have a staff shortage when we first arrived! So we pretty much had
the place to ourselves..... except for the maid at certain times of the day and a night watchman that just sat and watched tv and andre who arrived at 10am when we were on our way out and wasn´t there when we returned!! We had a balcony that overlooked parts of rio to eat breakfast on.... and in the tree next to the balcony lived monkeys that would visit us in the mornings! the place was fantastic, and the staff (another guy started in the afternoons!)were really cool as well!
On to the beach! We could catch a quick bus to Ipanema..... that´s when I really started to feel that I was on holiday! We hired some reclining beach chairs and laid in the sun! We had a guy that would bring us drinks when we wanted them and people walked up and down the beach trying to sell things. It was lively and entertaining and all were friendly! We could have bbq prawns on a stick, fried cheese (guys carried mobile bbqs), frozen acai drinks with granola on top (and a couple of amazing bodies selling them!), sunglasses, bikinis, sarongs, paintings..... you really didn´t need to leave the beach!
We did walk past copacabana beach a couple of times, but Ipanema was much better! However, on the day of the free concert for live earth, we enjoyed walking through all the stalls, mobile bars, foodstands etc lining copacabana beach,. In fact it was then that Paul bought beer from a nine year old girl!!! And yes..... the live earth concert in Rio was on the edge of Copacobana beach... and it was free! They´re into their old school music over here though, so our headliners (apart from brazilians) were Macy Gray and Lenny Kravitz! The atmosphere was fantastic!
Another aspect of Rio that I loved was their shops selling sucos.... fresh juice! They were so good! The Acai juice was my favourite.... and a large glass only cost about $1.50aus!
The people in Rio were lovely.... always friendly and willing to help! We even came across a supermarket worker singing out loud as he stacked shelves!
Anyway.... so many thoughts are going through my head and it´s been a week since we were there! So I´ve probably missed things out and sounded erratic at times..... but yeah... we had a fantastic week and it was hard leaving the warmth
and beauty of Rio de Janeiro! xo
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Tom Griffith
Hey Nellie
Hey Nellie, great photos and some cool stories...keep up the good work, Tom xxx