R is for Rio, S is for Salvador, T´s a drink with jam and bread

---

So having admired Igazu from the Brazilian side, we boarded a bus for Rio, a mere 24 hours north. Pretty much as soon as we set foot in Brazil, things began to change. It was like someone had turned up the colour and volume, heightening our senses. Was it the music? Was it the people? Well yes to both. But the thing that took us most by surprise was the food. Brazil´s famous for its beaches, its samba, its football, its bikinis....but no one had told us about the food! In Argentina we had become accustomed to a diet of high quality steak, wine and empanadas (all very pleasing, but lacking variety somewhat), but here in Brazil there is the biggest, brightest, most colourful and sumptuous collection of just about everything you could possibly want. And not only that, but there are restaurants where you pile it on your plate and pay by the kilo or where you pay 1 set price and stuff yourself with all you can eat. Within an hour of arriving we knew that our 2 week stay would easily become more. Of course, there soon followed the inevitable balls up in a restaurant. These have by now become so common place that actually ordering and eating the same thing has become a novelty in itself. In this particular restaurant, the system was simple...but not for us two intrepid travellers, it seems. Basically you help yourself to a buffet, then you have a little wheel which indicates whether you want the waiter to continue to ply you with meat from the carvery. Red means ´no thank you´ and green means ´give me some of that tasty meat, big boy´. On seeing green an army of waiters despatch themselves armed with giant skewers of flesh ranging from tenderloin steak to chicken hearts. Each waiter takes great pride in his swordsmanship as he flashes razor sharp blades through the meat, presenting you with a slither of meat which his eyes tell you, he would consider fit for royalty. And weren´t we lucky, as waiter after waiter brought their offerings to our table, returning once, then again and again. As our stomachs groaned ´we´re fit to bursting´, the waiter seemed to be eyeing us with increasing admiration at our ability to keep going. Finally the penny dropped, and with her last dregs of energy, Jenny lifted a fat finger to the wheel and rolled it on to red. ´No more please, no more´.

That meal, about 4 hours into our journey to Rio, pretty much saw us through to our destination. Soon the landscape changed and suddenly we spied a familiar site.....a hill with a giant Jesus on it. Yes, we´d arrived! What a treat Rio is - there aren´t many places that live up to the hype, but Rio certainly does. And, we were lucky to have a friend in town, Bruno, who had lived in the shed at the bottom of our garden in Sydney. We´d arranged to rent a studio for a week in Copacabana, which was about 10 sq ft, two blocks from the beach and about half a mile above the pavement, such is the density of housing in Copacabana. Once we´d dumped our bags, we tracked down Bruno to get a locals eye view of the town, which was a massive bonus, especially as Bruno is utterly charming and a total gent. He took us partying in Lapa, where the doorman are helpful, drinkers are well behaved, lady boys mix with non lady boys (or Ronaldo) and where the streets have the air of Notting Hill Carnival all year round. Some things don´t change though and we managed to misjudge our capacity for Caiprinhas. An easy mistake to make, which had us thinking we could samba like the locals in the evening, but gave us a hangover uglier than a Sunday in Grimsby the following day. Being the soldiers that we are though, we fought our organs and won...allowing us to have another great day, checking out the markets, touring the Maracana, visiting the out of town beaches, gorging at another fine ´all you can eat´, rounding up with a bit of go-karting. Over the following days we also checked out the main attractions, and so with Ant´s eyes firmly shut, we took the cable car up Sugarloaf Mountain and hopped on a train that took us up to the hem of Christ the Redeemer´s large concrete skirt, from where we looked up and uttered ´Oh Lord, you are so big!´

Rio´s a funny old town. Unlike most places, the rich people live in high rises at the bottom of the hills and the poor people live on the sides of the hills with the best views. The hills dominate Rio and apart from the one where Jesus stands, and the big pointy one called Sugarloaf, there´s another one from which people regularly take a running jump. Fortunately, most of them are attached to a hang glider when they jump, and so cue yet another round of foolish toying with our fear of heights. We´re all used to this by now, so there´s no need to go through the whole thing in too much detail. We did it, we loved it and we survived. But worryingly, Jenny´s now starting to talk about conquering her fear of heights, while Ant is still a shaking, blubbering ball of nervous energy at the end of these exploits. It would be lovely to say that there will be fewer of these little tests to come, but with Bolivia (railway of death, road of death), Peru (canyon twice the height of the Grand Canyon) and Quito (wobbly planks through the roofs of churches), there is still a long way to go. Fortunately, in Rio, there are countless other ways of enjoying yourself that don´t require rapid ascents and even more rapid descents.

Living in Copacabana was a bit of a guilty pleasure, as there really is no greater joy than waking up every morning with Barry Manilow in your head - we´re talking about his voice of course, not actually him. We´d strut along the street singing ´Down at the Copa - Copacabana...an aaahahh´, shuffling our feet and pointing our fingers at the final ´aaah´. Then we´d turn a corner into Ipanema and begin whistling a different tune...´Dum dum duuum, dum dum duuum...dark and young and tanned and lovely...´as we strolled whimsically along the pavements. Naturally Jenny quickly grew tired of this, while Ant´s enthusiasm for singing never abated, particularly since nearly every girl in Brazil was indeed dark, tanned and lovely - even the ones that weren´t so young. Fortunately for Jen, the boys are equally as delightful and their swimwear is nearly as tiny as well. How the boys and girls of Rio keep themselves covered and comfy is a testament to the powers of spandex and waxing. A bikini in Rio is barely visible beyond 10 ft, and close up looks like a combination of bottom floss and nipple tassels. Meanwhile the boys are happy to walk along busy streets, blocks away from the beach, dressed in nothing more than electric blue budgie smugglers. It´s not uncommon to see a group of men, standing in a circle discussing day to day stuff, dressed in no more than a cubic inch of spandex between them. Their smuggled budgies doing the pointing and gesticulating, leaving their hands free to be firmly placed on their hips. Even as a boy you can´t help looking to see whether they all meet in the middle, as if some unseen willy magnet has drawn them all together.

It wasn´t all gorping at Brazilian flesh though, and we did manage to focus our attention on other things, namely a well deserved holiday....WHAT?! A holiday? We hear you scream in unison! Well, yes. There´s not much point wasting ours and your time trying to justify this particular interlude. Suffice to say we felt that with a big slog through the middle of south America just around the corner, a week of R&R on a beach was in order, so we got a cheapy flight up to Salvador with our sights set on the island of Boipiba. Now, the thing about Salvador is it´s a bit dodgy. Lovely, but dodgy. Of course, Rio´s famous for being dodgy too, but Salvador´s more concentrated...and full of crack heads. So what we needed to do was keep our heads down, and quietly get to where we needed to get to without drawing attention to ourselves. What we didn´t need to do was pick up anyone who was a bit lively. Mr B, to keep a long story short, joined us at the airport and since we were fellow English speakers, decided to join us. Fair enough. However, after about 5 minutes in which we learned of Mr B´s talents, we suspected our quiet retreat might be sprinkled with a little, shall we say...colour. Within an hour of arriving in town Mr B had become a victim of a petty theft; within 5 hours he had become the victim of a less petty theft. Details will be spared but let´s just say that ´befriending’ locals and then leaving your valuables with them isn´t an advisable course of action. By this time we had retired to bed, only to be awoken at 6am with a banging on our bedroom door. We were then delighted to listen, blurry eyed, about how Mr B´s phone had been stolen and he had no idea what time it was...hence the early wake up call. Of course Mr B was going to ´kill him´ if he ever set sight on the bloke again. We´ll save all the details for a long evening at the pub when we get home, but after losing some time to helping Mr B sort stuff out, we finally got out of town and left him to fend for himself. The last we heard, Mr B had indeed caught up with the thief, who tried to sell his phone back to him, to which Mr B responded by duly bottled him. Probably a bit of a turnaround for the said thief who is no doubt well versed in getting one over on tourists.....but thankfully, we were long gone.

Our new stop was the lovely island of Itapirica (home of a club Med!), then onto Boipiba - a quiet, peaceful paradise island that´s clinging onto its charm...far away from the nutters of Salvador. Being low season, we made up about 30% of the tourists there. We plodded along the beach until we found a little place which we had to ourselves. There was nothing to do but eat, sleep and sunbathe, so that´s what we did. Rose, the cook must have been pleased to see us...and either thought we were her long lost children or just needed fattening up as she laid on breakfasts that would keep us going until sunset at 5pm. And with bugger all else to do we were asleep by 8pm. Plodding along empty white beaches, playing with the ever friendly mongrels and digesting Rose´s breakfasts, we managed to recharge and rejuvenate sufficiently to prepare for phase 2 of operation South America.

Our next phase is the biggy. Up and across, from southern Brasil to Ecuador, through Bolivia and Peru. We needed some heat and good eating before all that and were very glad to get it. It was with heavy hearts and heavier bellies that we left Boipiba, not looking forward to another night in Salvador, but looking forward to one more night in Rio with Bruno. It was back in Salvador that we heard that Mr B´s reputation had well and truly become folklore, but we were relieved to find that he wasn´t still around. And then back in Rio we renewed our faith in humanity with a brilliant trip back to the Maracana (worlds biggest football stadium) to watch Bruno´s team Flamengo, beat International 2-1. Now, there´s not many fans who match the blue army of Carlisle United for vociferous support and hardcore fanaticism, but Flamengo are up there. I´m sure they learnt a thing or two from Brunton Park, and we enjoyed an evening of standing on seats, clapping and shouting words we didn´t understand, but which everyone else seemed to be shouting. And funnily enough, their main song was along to the tune of ´I love you baby´...now was that Mr Manilow again?

---

Photos

Jen and Jesus
Taxiiii

Jen´s new man
It´s hard to compete with the model looks of Ronaldhino

Ant on the top of Sugarloaf
Shitting it.

Top Guns
Ant and Bruno prepare to do battle. It was Ant´s maiden voyage in a go kart, which is probably why Bruno let him win.

Monkeys
Ant meets like minded playmates

Beach in Boipiba
We spent 3 days lying next to that log.

Bruno and his dad
Hi dad owns several snack bars in Rio, very handy for topping up enegry levels whilst perusing the goods

Dangling above Rio
Yet another display of Jen´s daring. This time she went so far as to say she enjoyed it. Ant shat himself.

Young Boy or Big Horse
Hard to tell

Meaty
Look at the look in that waiter´s eyes. You wouldn´t dare tell him it was a bit stringy. Which it wasn´t by the way

Fear
That´s not joy, that´s fear

Comments

[T. Deregowski]

Great reading
I`ve been enjoying reading your blog- very funny with some excellent pictures. One thing that would be nice is a map showing your itinerary. Keep up the good work!

[Ant and Jenny]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad that you´re enjoying it. We did try to put in a route map a while back, but found that we´re following such a squiggly route that it didn´t really work.