Advertisement
Rio
Its offical name is 'Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho' The only flight I could book from
Salvador to Rio De Janerio was at 3am! it didn't leave on time this was the start of a bad day. We that's Luke, Mike and myself next found ourselves on a
Rio street corner at 9am the address of the hostel in the Lonely Planet was wrong. Eventually made it to the right address but then had to wait for our beds to be ready, no probs.......6pm still no beds! we got shuffled off to a sister hostel in Copacabana which wasn't very nice, but given
free booze for all the hassle so a happy ending really!
We stayed at the Che Lagarto hostel in
Ipanema, one of Rio's nicer areas and only two minutes walk from the beach! Rio life revolves around the beach which was quite handy for me as it fits with my preferred
lifestyle of lazing in the sun and enjoying fantastic views....of the local girls. On the beaches you find football, volleyball, surfing, sellers of everything you really don't need and of course everyone is posing. After seeing Rio's sights the rest of my days where spent on the beach.
The
Copacabana beach is huge, pretty
Rio
Luke looking cool dirty and the area is fairly dodgy, Rio's red light district. We went once just to say we've been but mainly spent our time on the Ipanema beach.
Brasilian men have looked to Germany for their
swim wear fashion, Speedo style! The Brasilian beach look is wearing the tightest brightest trunks then standing around the posing with your friends. After your done with the beach take a stroll along the streets, obviously still posing in your Speedo's. For girls the bikini line is all important the more the bikini line stands out the better, they like to show it off.
Our first night out in Rio was at the
Champions Parade, the top Samba Schools parade for one last time at the Samba Dome. The Samba Dome is a long strip of road with stands either side, takes about an hour to pass through the whole route. Each parade is a spectacle of people, costumes, colour, dancing and some outrageous floats. My favourite was the
Beetle float with the cars spinning on a carousel and the flags float which keep changing its banners. The only downside is the same song is used throughout the hour long parade.
Rio
The Vasco fans A trip up to
Chritso, the Jesus statue was a must it overlooks all of Rio, the views are fantastic. The other mandatory sightseeing (for me) was the
Maracana (actual name Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho), we went to see local rivals
Fluminense v Vaso Da Gama which ended 3-2. To be honest the standard of football wasn't as good as I'd thought,
Romario played for Vasco he's nearing his 1000th proffessional goal. The only footballer I've seen play a game without actually running. The stadium is huge and wasn't anywhere near full, chanting started an hour before kick off. We sat in a section which happened to be where the
Vasco flag was opened up. Everytime there was an incident on the pitch the flag is opened, this meant we missed all the goal celebrations! It was massive and covered our entire section.
We found it quite hard to get a hold of Rio's nightlife it was spread all over the city.
Lapa was one of the liveliest areas, Brasilian's are very friendly and one night in Lapa we got adopted by a local Samba School, basically a group of friends that like to dance. They spent the rest
Rio
Under the Vasco flag! of the night
teaching us how to dance especially to
Brasilian Funk. This isn't Funk as we'd know but a bouncy electro pop, I really liked it!
Rio is also famous for its
Favelers, the slum area's built on the hills around the city. While I was there the the local drug gangs stole machine guns from the Army, who weren't too happy about this and went in on force to get them back. The hostel ran guided tours, apparently its the safest way to buy drugs! you get to see kids with guns in the streets. I didn't go the money would probably have gone to the drug dealers and it felt a bit like paying to photograph poor people.
Mike and Luke left part way through my stay and I ended up hangin out with a good bunch of Aussies. Like'd to party.
On my last night in Rio
Laurent Garnier was playing at a club in Ipanema. The whole dorm got tickets even the 2 Argentinian guys who couldn't speak English. Its always amazes me how after a few drinks the language barrier is never a problem. Cracking DJ great vibe, had alot to
drink and danced all night.
Left the club at 6am, went
straight to the airport via the hostel to pick up my bags, not the best state to be doing that sort of thing. At the airport I nearly fell asleep in the queue bought a bottle of
Concasha, a cheese sandwich and Pride & Predujuice for the flight then
passed out in the departure lounge...luckily a very kind air stewardess woke me just in time to get on the plane or I would've have missed my flight!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0271s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Samu L
non-member comment
Swim wear
Get those Speedo's on big mouse!