Goodbye South America

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I am writing this Blog from good ol' San Antonio. After Iguacu Falls our group headed by bus for 24 hours to the city of Paraty while passing through Sao Paulo. Paraty was a nice little beach town in Brazil where you can go to Trinidad beach or head to the natural water rock slides. I decided to go to the rock water slides and headed over by local bus to the area. It was free to enter the area and it was mostly locals there. The area consisted of slippery smooth rocks with water following over them so they made a natural water slide. You could go down the slide on your butt which I did but some of the locals where standing up and surfing on the rock slides. After Paraty we headed by public bus to Angre de rios to board a ferry boat to get to our next destination of Ilha Grande. The island has no vehicles on the island so there is only walking and riding bikes on the island. It is a big island and while there I went scuba diving. Ilha Grande contains the highest concentration of ship wrecks in the world and I went ship wreck diving. My first dive was on the cargo ship Pinguino which sank in 1967 and you can enter and swim around its cargo holds. This was my first wreck dive so I was a little nervous entering a ship underwater but it turned out just fine. The second dive was on a reef and also contained the wreck of a helicopter under the water. The diving was great in Ilha Grande and I enjoyed the island. We left the island by ferry and got in a van and after four hours we were in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The cities traffic is horrible and I finally made it to my hotel located two blocks from Copacabana Beach. I headed out to see Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcavado Mountain, saw, saw the samba stadium where Carnival is held each year, and arrived on top of Sugarloaf Mountain for Sunset. The view from Sugarloaf Mountain was amazing and really showed Rio de Janeiro at its most beautiful. The next day I headed to the Favellahs (slums) to see how the poor of Rio live. There is many Favellahs and I saw just one. We traveled by van to the bottom of the Favellahs as almost all the Favellahs are located on the mountain sides. To start our tour we had to get to the top of the Favellah and we got on the back of Motocycle taxi's and hung on to the back of the motorcycle as the guy drove like crazy to the top of the Favellah passing many cars along the way and even going inbetween traffic. The government does not controll the Favellahs so the people that live there don't pay taxes. Also the people in the Favellahs don't pay for electricity or water because they steal it. You can see crazy electrical conections where people strung up there own wire to get electricity for there house. It was interesting walking through the Favellahs as they are controlled by drug gangs. The Favellah I entered was controlled by ADA gang but I have to say only about 1% of the Favellah population is involved with the gangs and drugs. There was several places on the tour where we could not take pictures and had to put away our cameras. One of the situations was a gang member was guarding an important gang boss with a machine gun and the other was when we passed a lookout who had fireworks and if police entered the Favellahs they would shoot off fireworks to warn the gang. The conditions in the Favellah can be primitive in some places as you get further into the Favellah as trash pickup hardly happens and raw sewage is flowing through several of the streets and you can't avoid walking through it. The Favellah tour was an interesting experience and idea to see how the majority of Rio's population lives. The gangs and drugs of the Favellahs have given the areas a bad rap as most of the people are normal and just trying to make a living. After the tour I headed to the airport and flew home to San Antonio as I have enjoyed my adventure in South America. So I say goodbye for the last time to South America.

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