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Published: October 17th 2009
The next day I wandered off to do the touristy bits, the bus service is really good round Rio and every journey cost 2.30 reais - about 90p.
My first stop was sugarloaf mountain, when I was going up in the cable car I couldn’t help but think of the scene in Moonraker where Bond is tackling jaws:-) The weather wasn’t particularly good so the views weren’t brilliant. Without doubt I think that Rio has the most beautiful location of any big city but whether it is the most beautiful city in the world (as some commentators say) I would just say that they haven’t seen the parts of Rio that I have.
After Sugarloaf I met up with Warren and headed off into the Favelas. The tour we were on was Favelatour.com.br and it was a bit sterilised for me, I wanted to get down and dirty with the gangsters:-) I was later recommended the bealocal tour which is more entertaining. We wandered round the largest Favela (shantytown) - Rocinho which was a bit wild, the police don’t enter into them as it is too dangerous so the rule of law is enforced by the drug gangs. To
emphasise this point we saw a guy walking past us with an assault rifle like it was the most natural thing in the world.
There is a special wing of the police who do occasionally go in, but they are more like special forces than PC plod.
Later on in the evening the whole hostel went out to watch a local football game, it was their version of the Champions league with Botafogo from Rio playing a team from Ecuador. The stadium was only a quarter full but the noise the fans were making was amazing. Strangely enough the most noise was coming from a Celtic supporter (Glaswegian) decked out in his green hoops - no change there then!! Botafogo won 2-0 and the crowd went wild.
The next day the weather turned for the worse and I wanted to get out of Rio fast, it wasn’t the weather I was expecting. I had just been out for a wander round rain-soaked Ipanema when I bumped into some friends from the hostel who asked if I wanted to join them as they were going up Corcovada to see the Christ the redeemer statue. My head said that it
was pointless as the views would be rubbish but when 3 beautiful women give you an invitation it would be rude to turn it down:-)
A most pleasant end to Rio and early the next day I was off to Isla Grande - Ellen (from Belize) one of the girls from Corcovada decided to accompany me to Isla Grande for a couple of nights.
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