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Published: February 27th 2008
John´s new life as a surfy
John takes to the waves for his birthday pressie!So, we have made it to Rio! All the songs about Rio have started coming into my head, which is good, as I was sick of singing the Braaaaziiiiiil song! ("Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand....", "When my baby, when my baby smiles at me I go to Rio de Janeiro, my o mi oh...." "the girl from Ipanema do do dee do", "At the Copa, Copa cobana..." etc)
But no songs about Sao Paulo.
We had a great few days in Floripa, day 2 was a little overcast but that didn´t deter Johnny too much from his new pleasure - it was horseriding and being a cowboy but is now surfing. I bought him a lesson for his birthday from the American guy Paul who offered to lend us money on our first day, and whose surf lessons were about half the price of a guy´s down the beach. I booked it a as surprise and didn´t tell him til we were on the beach for 9. Unfortunately it was a grey day and the sea looked flat. The guy in charge suggested we wait til 10.30 when some more students would also be
The ´tache
John´s new surfy look, tache n all joining the class.
I decided to take the role as photographer and encourager from the sidelines due to my traumatic surf experience a few years ago on Bondi when I got smacked in the side of the head from a stupid Swiss tourist´s board. Even so, I was invited to join the warm-up session with 2 American girls, an Aussie, John and the instructors. We did stretches and a bit of a jog on the beach. They did some practice on the sand and then got into the water. They all managed to get up on the board and seemed to enjoy it.
We took it easy for the rest of the day and headed into town to organise our bus tickets out of Floripa to Sao Paulo. 3 hours later we were organised. The following day we did our walk on the beach and had a bit of a swim before packing our stuff and saying goodbye to our little beach flat. We got to the bus station in plenty of time and I had a shower etc before our bus at 7.30pm. It was a pretty uneventful bus trip (the best kind I suppose) and we
both managed to get a bit of sleep. We ended up being an hour late because of traffic but my ex-student, Cristine, was waiting for us at Sao Bernardo do Campo station, a suburb of Sao Paulo. Cris was a student of mine in my advanced class at ACE in Bondi Junction a couple of years ago. The bus station turned out to be right near her house and we were there within 5 minutes. We felt like we had landed once again in a dream after a 13 hour bus ride, to be welcomed into the comfort of a home. We knew we were in for a bit of a treat when Cris parked her car in an underground garage along with 4 other cars! We went upstairs and met her mum, she showed us to our 2 rooms we had the use of, as well as 2 bathrooms. The house turned out to have 5 bedrooms, each with ensuite, as well as 3 offices and a myriad of rooms downstairs including a dining room with a setting for 14 people. Cris had to run off to a massage course but would be back at midday, in the meantime
her mum came and ate breakfast with us and told us about herself. She was born in Lithuania, moved to Germany and then to Brazil when she was 2, as her grandmother had come out here to work on the coffee plantations. They almost went to Australia but came to Brazil instead because of her granny being here.
Cris´s mum then showed us to the TV room, and what a room! In a little house separate from the main house was massive room with a huge flatsreen tv as well as a projector and a pull-down screen for dvd´s and of course surround sound. John was in heaven, he put on the footy straight away. As it was his birthday I left him to it.
When Cris came back we had some lunch (prepared by the maid) - beans and rice, meat and salad, plus "puddim" (pudding) for dessert, a kind of milky jelly stuff with coconut (actually very good!) We then took off with Cris in her car into Sao Paulo, along a massive highway. Took around 40 minutes to get into the city where we went to a park and art museum and walked around Estaçio
Luz which in our guidebook says is a really dodgy area and not to go there. We went anyway, Cris said it´s ok by day and there were heaps of cops around anyway. She had a nickname for the place which basically related to the fact that a lot of crack is sold in the neighbourhood. By night it becomes a prostitute area as well. It did feel dodgy but having the local with us made all the difference. I had told Cris I wanted to buy some Havaianas, the famous brand of Brazilian flip-flops ("thongs" to us Aussies). She remembered a shop which specialised in them, and a few illegal turns and a bit of aggressive driving had us there in no time, where I was in Havaiana heaven. Found a great pair in bright pink and we were out of there in less than 15 minutes. We had a quick look at a shopping mall and then skipped home through some more posh areas of the city. We got stuck in one of Sao Paulo´s notorious traffic jams (on Monday the radio announced that there was 124km of traffic jams in the city). When we got back we
Bovespa
Lookin like a couple of Yanks at Bovespa in Sao Paulo got ready to go out for dinner. We went in the family´s people carrier, Cris´s dad driving. I marvelled at the fact that despite being held up at gunpoint and their car being robbed a couple of times, they still were ok to go out on the road.
Dinner was another buffet place, these Brazilians do like their buffets!! John and I piled our plates high with salad and pasta, meat and fish, not realising that waiters come around with grilled meats and fish on skewers to pile your plate even higher! John was in heaven, though soon in hell when he couldn´t eat everything on his plate! We had a few caiparinhas and toasted to John for his 33rd birthday. Cris´s parents were then insistent on paying and wouldn´t take any money from us, saying it was John´s birthday present! We were totally floored by their kindness, we had only known them for a few hours! They said the desserts they had at home were better so we went back to their place for virtually an ice cream buffet! Flavours on the menu included corn flavour as well as coconut with pumpkin! We stuck to more boring flavours
Our "Family"
With our Brazilian "family" in Sao Bernardo do Campo (tho did taste the corn and it tasted exactly as you would imagine corn ice cream to taste.....didn´t go for the coconut and pumpkin though.)
On Sunday Cris took us into the city to look at the Asian area - a lot of Japanese people came to Sao Paulo in the past so there is a little pocket with a particularly Japanese feel in the centre of the city. Unfortunately it started bucketing down so our plans to look at the little market had to be abolished, but not before some shopping for origami earrings by Cris and I! (poor John was left holding the umbrella while we oohed and aaahed and agonised over which colours to buy) We went to the Italian area for lunch (another buffet!) and to listen to some traditional Brazilian music. After that it was too wet to do anything else so we went back to the house and checked out the state of the art home cinema and watched a documentary about Brazil Cris had on DVD which was really interesting. One fact that I remember: plastic surgery in Rio is so common before carnival that one year the city completely ran out of silicone implants! Plastic surgery is so big here that there is even a monthly magazine called "Plastica" or something like that, dedicated entirely to the subject!
We ate pizza for dinner in the 14 seater dining room with Cris´s mum and dad and had home made caiparinhas, and guarana drink (here they say 'gwa ra na' not 'goo ra na' like we bastardise. The brand they drink here is bigger than coca cola.) We listened to bossa nova which Cris´s dad later burned onto CD for us.
On Monday Cris had to work but we went with her in the car and she dropped us at the nearest subway station and we went into the city ourselves. We had a look at the cathedral (another area which felt a bit dodgy but had heaps of cops around), the town hall, theatre.......Cris had recommended a building where you can got to the top for free and get an excellent view of the city. We went into one building which we thought was the one, and John went up to the desk and says "Puede.....?" and points up at the sky. The woman just shook her head. Once we got outside we realised it was actually the wrong building. God knows what she thought we wanted to do. Once inside the right buliding we were sent packing again as we didn´t have any photo I.D. on us. So that was the end of that.
We wandered down the street a little and this guy came barrelling up to us with huge grin and outstreched arms "Let´s visit the Bovespa!!" and ushered us inside another building which looked like a bank. Once inside he started speaking Portuguese to us, but it turns out we were at the entrance to Bovespa which is the biggest stock exchange in Latin America. With nothing else on the agenda we decided to go for it. We watched a 3D film about Bovespa and watched some guys do a re-enactment of the stock exchange and what goes on, and another guy grabbed our camera and instructed us where to stand while he took photos of us.
We went to the Mercado Central area for lunch which was a huge food market area downstairs and restaurants upstairs. We chose Arabic food. By that stage we had seen everything that Cris had recommended we see and that she had circled on our map. We then got on the metro to a shopping mall and went to the cinema to see "Sweeny Todd" which we decided was just about as far removed from Brazil and Sao Paulo as you could get! We met Cris then at 6 and went back to her place again where we had a light dinner with her mum and watched some Brazilian soap opera on TV, with Cris translating for us. The soaps here are really popular in other parts of the world, apparently even translated into Russian! They tend only to run for 6 months at a time and are on 6 nights a week, usually a different soap at 6, 7 and 8pm. Cris was surprised when we told her Home and Away, Neighbours and Corrie had been running forever! The episode we watched was extra dramatic - there had been a helicopter crash in the Amazon and a popular woman had been killed. It had all been planned. All the beautiful characters were crying for the whole episode. I thought it beat Corrie handsdown, even though I couldn´t understand a word. At least the characters all had tans.
We were up early again on Tuesday for our bus to Rio. Cris dropped us at the metro again and we made our own way. We were really so greatful to her and her family, they showed us such amazing hospitality and generosity during our stay. Sao Paulo wasn´t much of a city, even though the locals would beg to differ. It was built up, polluted with not much to actually see. But our homestay was definitely worth it just to experience a little "real life" and get to know such great people.
We got the 11 a.m. bus to Rio. Getting on the bus we were given thick blankets, pillows and a little goody bag full of sweets, biscuits, chocolates and fruit juice (the small things impress me.) We arrived at 5 and got a taxi to the hostel. Once away from the bus station we saw the beauty of the city and realised what a dodgy area the bus station was actually in. Although we had booked a 4 bed dorm room we changed to a double when we saw how small the space was for supposedly 4 adults. It was raining when we arrived but stopped and was overcast when we got our first glimpse of Ipanema beach, a short walk from our hostel.
This morning it was sunny so after breakfast we took a long walk along Ipanema beach, past the surfing and gay areas, up to the headland with great views of the surf and the crazy surfers, then onto Copacabana which has a reputation for being a little more seedy. We didn´t see anything dodgy and have been amazed at how safe we actually feel, I thought it was more dodgy in Sao Paulo (touch wood!!!) There are cops everywhere and people walking around with i-pods and cameras, which I thought would be snapped up in seconds. There were beach volleyball courts, soccer pitches and covered kiddies areas on the beach, as well as people selling everything from coconut water to bikinis to sarongs on the beach, and renting beach chairs and umbrellas. All the while the beautiful people run up and down the paths and tan themselves on the beach. Not many swimming though - John went for a swim at Ipanema and was quickly transported from one side to the other from the extremely strong currents!
We enjoyed some fresh juice at one of the numerous juice bars and I had my first taste of "açai" (azay) which is a berry, supposedly from the Amazon and supposedly with various health properties (of which I have no idea, but it´s advertised all over the place so I was keen to try it) It´s a deep purple colour and served in different ways. I had mine with guarana. It was in a glass, frozen, and tasted really good!!
We had heard about the prices in Rio and have really been going through the money, despite only just arriving here! We looked at some flights online today as we need to basically get from one side of the country to the other in order to get to Bolivia. Went to a travel agent today to book them (we´re not able to book domestic flights online) and the guy said it´s actually cheap to fly straight to Bolivia, which is great because it´ll save us days and days on buses and allow us to go from expensive land to cheap land a lot quicker! So we´re booked on a flight for Sunday from Rio to Santa Cruz in Bolivia!
Until then, John is going to a football match at the famous football stadium here tonight and we´re planning to do a tour of the favelas (the slum areas) in the next few days. Apparently they have a lot of good community projects going on in the favelas and are trying to get a positive impression across of the culture of these communities. Other than that we still have Christ the Redeemer to see a little more up close, as well as just soaking up all that is Rio!!
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andrea!
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Matching outfits
so, I was scanning through photos when I noticed a theme starting to emerge - matching t-shirts. I am hoping this doesn't extend to matching pants but I do not feel reassured as this is not clear from the photos. You have not been married long enough for matching outfits. And anyway, matching outfits are meant to be tracksuits. Please explain......