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Published: March 5th 2009
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We’ve arrived, and in true Brit fashion we managed to burn ourselves on the first day! Whoop! My feet are now blistering and Steve’s back is looking nasty! But we’ve had an amazing couple of days (well apart from today but more of that in a bit). Steve is sat in a hammock opposite me at the mo, drinking beer! Sorry, it’s true!
We arrived to boiling heat, it’s been in the low 30’s every day and coming from Plymouth it’s taking some getting used to. Our Hostel is really nice, one block from Ipanema beach!! And thank god not everyone looks like Gisele - in fact the whole thong bikini thing is fascinating - I just can’t stop starring - people that would shop in Evans in the UK in thongs! I love it - no one cares!!
After being on the beach for only about an hour on Monday we decided, because the weather was so good, we’d go too Sugarloaf mountain and headed out walking along the Copa, Copacabana!!. After years of having that bloody song sang at me I’m there!! We hadn’t realised it was 4.2km long and there’s only so many times you can
enjoy a bit of Barry Manilow before it starts to grate! Once we got to Sugarloaf we took the cable car up and the views were just stunning - I’m pretty sure the sunset we saw was the best I’ve ever seen - it was just amazing (hope you like the pictures!).
Yesterday we then did something I’d been really looking forward to - the Favela tour!! This was on my list of ‘things to tell mum and dad after you’ve done it!’ especially as it involved jumping on the back of mopeds, and speeding up from the bottom the favela to the top holding on to some large Brazilian man (Steve wasn’t allowed to hold on - ‘it would give them the wrong idea!’). The Favela is called Rochina - the largest slum in Latin America and has over 200k residents. We were taken round by our guide, right through all the back streets until we reached the bottom. Along the way we were told when we were and weren’t allowed to take pictures (basically if there was a drug dealer close by we had to put the cameras away) and then as we were walking happily along
we heard the sound of machine gun fire!! Having watched City of God I knew what this meant - the police were around! The tour guide said he hadn’t heard this in ages and just shrugged and carried on (and so did we!).
Today has been a bit of a nightmare - basically we just ended up getting totally lost and a part of Rio we shouldn’t have got lost in - everything was ok but it wasn’t great! Then tonight we got on a bus to Copacabana and ended up being on there an hour and being ordered off at a bus station in the middle of nowhere, pitch black, a group of kids on scooters across the road staring at us and no taxi’s stopping. Eventually one stopped and we jumped in and yes, I had a little tear at how scary that was!! After a crap day we ate meat in the bar where they wrote The Girl from Ipanema to cheer us up!!
Tomorrow we go to the Maracana to watch the football and hopefully see Christ if the weather stays good!!
Steve's blog -
So, Iola’s is a little too good at
writing for me so I’ll keep it brief. Not much swell kicking around, there’s alot of offshore islands that block out the swell around Rio. Had a bit of a body surf on Monday but that’s about it. We’re heading down the coast in a few days so hopefully we’ll get something at Ilha Grande. The last few days have been pretty cool; Well no actually it’s been ridiculously HOT!! Sugar Loaf & the Favela tour were cool. Today’s city trip less so. The guide says “Santa Teresa is now home to bohemians and artists”, what it should say is “Santa Teresa is full of smack heads, crack whores and drug dealers” or at least the road up to it seemed that way. Yeah pretty scared. Anyway all good, having a great time sweating loads, back to the hammock and my beer.
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Charles
non-member comment
Thong-tastic!
What a fab first entry! It sounds like you're having a great time over there. Iola's blogging skills are spot on - you could have a career at Lonely Planet soon! I feel for your dodgy bus journey - I had one of those in Lisbon a couple of years back - makes your trip more colourful though! Looking forward to the next entry. CJ