Advertisement
Published: March 30th 2008
Edit Blog Post
We stumbled off the bus and got a taxi straight to our hostel in Copacabana. Its a really nice, small and relaxed hostel - especially nice after some of the noisy and crazy ones we stayed in in places like Buenos Aires.
We went straight down to Copacabana beach to see what all the fuss was about and dozed in the sun for a while. At one point I looked up to see some woman picking up Lara's sunglasses as if to nick them so I scared her off (grrrr!) and decided we should stay awake! We later moved onto Ipanema which we actually preferred and sat around until the sun started to go down - at which point we thought a nice cold caipirinha was probably in order.
On the Sunday we booked to go on a favela tour, which we were really against at first, but then found out that the funds actually go towards projects like schools and community centres in the favelas and so aren't just like going round taking pictures of poor people and their living conditions. We got a crazy motorcycle taxi up to the top of the hill and then walked through
the favela meeting some of the community - we met a graffiti artist who sells his paintings to tourists (i was tempted but resisted because I still have 3 months of travelling to go) and saw the schools and community centre (though it was Easter Sunday so we didnt see much!).
After the tour we went to a big football match - a local derby between Fluminense and Vasco da Gama! After the BA game, this was a real match!! We sat with a supporter group who started playing their drums and waving flags 1 hour before the game and were never quiet for 2 hours. If their team missed a goal they just got louder. Anyway I think they appreciated how much we got into it and I even got one of their t-shirts at half time. The atmosphere was amazing and the game finished 2-1 to Fluminense (our adopted team). I even learnt to sing rude songs about the Vascos, but its not the time or the place now to go into that!
Sunday night we made the mistake of paying to go to a "Favela party". Supposedly a 'real Rio experience' where you go to
a bar/club in a favela and you sound all tough for being so local and cool. Great marketing and we fell for it. It turned out to be a meat market playing commercial English language music, full of tourists and, ok it was probably within 5 minutes of a favela. And to top it all off I spent more time than I would liked speaking to a carpenter from the exotic location of....Bournemouth. What a waste of money - we have learnt our lesson!!
Monday we got up early with the hope of seeing Christ the Redeemer. But it was so overcast and poo that we decided instead to go for an all you can eat (noticing any theme throughout this blog?) meat feast. It was amazing and I am so sad not to have photos. It was a huge buffet and then they bring round different cuts of meat to your table until you can't move anymore! Amazing. Plus the waiters seemed to find it hilarious to see how much I could eat and kept calling over more of their buddies to test us out with something else. I have to say the roast beef was too good
to turn down. In the afternoon we went up Sugarloaf and the views were nice despite being a bit cloudy. We are now wondering what to do as our original plan was to go to Ilha Grande for some beachtime and sun but it has started to rain.
Instead we spent Tuesday in Rio. I got up at 8am to do a 2km ocean swim with some guys from the hostel along Ipanema beach. It was fine until near the end when I saw loads of jellyfish, went to head in to the beach and got sucked under by a really strong wave. I was fine, but it took my breath away for a moment as I wasnt expecting it! We spent the rest of the day walking around the copacabana area and, again, eating all you can eat restaurants (this time savoury and sweet pizzas- yum). We also went along to a bar called the "Bip Bip" with a load of old men sat around in a cafe playing samba music and singing. The audience all sat on chairs on the pavement and then we were told only to click our fingers to clap so as not to
disturb the naighbours!
We decided to take a chance and go to Ilha Grande tomorrow, Wednesday, for a few days depending on the weather.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0757s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb