Cidade maravilhosa

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Tim version cant exist here - sorry Tim! Rio is too damn big and there is too much to do! I guess it could be...
* Saw lots of stuff in Rio, too much to list.
* Loved the place, but beaches too crowded for me and not as great as Florianopilis for living, so if I ever live in Brazil I doubt it will be here =)

Hows that? Umm easiest way for me to write this for myself and my memory was in sections with little headings...

Christo

Located high up on a hill with a commanding view of his followers to command and those non-believers like myself to strike down, Christ The Redeemer has a killer location. Giving views of most of Rio, even going on a weekday its very busy. We took the easy way and jumped on a tour running from our hostel as we had only just checked in and weren't organised enough to know how to get there ourselves yet. The tour gave us a good history of Rio in some often broken English from an apparently fluent speaker, while we cruised through Rio and up the hill to the old hotel you will see in the first photo. This apparently used to be a very wealthy hotel used as a retreat for the Brazilian soccer teams when they needed to be isolated to concentrate before big games.Once they stopped using the hotel it was shut down. From there we took a second van up to a lift and stairs arrangement to get to the Christo itself. I was up for the stairs but was completely over-ruled (while I looked at the stairs saying "they don't look too bad" the group had already walked over to the lift) so took the lift. Expecting nice views from the lift all you see is concrete and the bored as hell looking guy whos job it is to sit in there allll day pressing up and down!

Up the top with some walking, an elevator, you arrive at The Christo, along with hoardes of tourists doing christ poses and taking photos up at it while lying on the floor. There is a Chapel at the back of the Christo but it is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen, cheesy and commercialised. You cant take photos inside but you can buy a Christ doll, go figure. The Christo is impressive for sure, and more so that it was constructed in such a difficult to reach location. From the viewing platform you can see all the major Rio areas such as Copacabana, Ipanema, the iconic Sugarloaf, Centro and over the bay Niteroi. We hung around, me wondering where the guide was, until after we'd been up there ages one of the girls said oh yeh we meet them down the bottom, and down the bottom everyone was, waiting for us not looking the happiest heh. A lift, escalator, and 2 van rides later we were down cruising around Centro (the central commercial district and original area of Rio) where we checked out some commercial places of interest and a large pyramid like church. This was followed up by a cruise through Lapa past the interesting old aquaduct and then back to the hostel.

Favela Tour

Always good to start a debate with over whether it is vouyerism, misuse of the poor, or a good way to get educated on areas where people live with their social and economic issues that you wouldn't otherwise be able to achieve (volunteer work aside which you need a lot more time for), I took one. I had a great interest in it after seeing Central America and it's rich and poor areas and after speaking to people in their various countries discovering the conditions they live in.

The Favela Rocinho in the one they mainly seem to tour and that is where mine took place. There was meant to be 3 others in my tour but when we arrived to pick them up from the hostel they had decided to give it a miss to make sure they were on time for the football (they'd already paid though so lost their money, crazy if you ask me) so I ended up with a private tour! Entering the Favela territory it truly felt like going back to Central America. Highly organised in a hectic way, buildings just keep extending upwards up to around 4 floors depending on how many generations of a family keep building on top of the original house, or if newcomers arrive and have nowhere else to build. Shops are scattered everywhere, with a few driveable roads running up and down into the favela. The power lines are crazy, criss crossing everywhere making huge high voltage spiderwebs that surprisingly actually had professional workers from the electricity companies working on them! If you have seen City Of God, it is right on the money as far as scenery goes. The poverty is bad but I couldn't help thinking through the tour that it looked about as organised and really more well made than many Nicaraguan towns! Shanty towns there, and in El Salvador were so much poorer, houses often consisting of 5 sheets of asbestos or corrugated iron propped against each other held up using sticks and the roof held down using old tyres. Even the ghetto areas in Mexico were more cramped with more basic housing than here. So while it is still certainly a very bad level of poverty, with issues such as education and health being big big problems, it actually wasn't nearly as bad as I expected (which sounds quite horrible but is true). I am very very glad that I went on it and it gives a much better insight into the problems facing the poorer classes of Rio and Bazil in general and personally I would recommend going on one if you get the chance. I even got to see a couple of "Friends of Friends" gang members keeping lookout on a corner, one with a radio and both with machine guns that would seem extreme if held by the Australian military let alone 2 kids probably not even 18 yet. No photos of that though obviously, not exactly allowed...

Football

More of a religion to the Brazilians than Catholocism, I HAD to see a football (soccer in Australia and the US, football to most of the rest of the world!) game while there. Luckily the first weekend we were there was the final between two Rio teams, Flamengo and Botafogo! We all went along to that, most of the hostel coming along, and rocked up nice and early to see the mass of fans outside the stadium crowding around, chanting and singing, psyching up for the game ahead. No alcohol though, even from bars outside the stadium to keep the fighting down, which killed me as I woulda loved a beer but I fully understood why. The passion was highly visible as fans donned themselves up in all the colour of their team, watching re-runs of old games, cheering and yelling for the goals and missed chances on the TV as much as if the games were live.

For a little extra entertainment there was a gentleman dressed up as Barrack Obama with a couple of fake secret service guys around him, people taking photos with him and getting autographs. The excitement around him was quite serious though so Im not sure if the people realised it wasn't really him...

Inside the stadium after a quick security weapon check we were shown our area of seats, which was meant to be a Flamengo area but from the look of the shirts looked more like just a confused fan area as people supporting both teams were all around intermingling, passionate but not quite fighting each other. Then there was us, a big bunch of gringos stuck in the middle as confused fans ourselves. The build up to the game had re-runs on the bigscreen as the crowd poured in, Flamengo having about 5 times as many fans as Botafogo (Flamengo is the red and black coloured team). The game kicked off after a few hours and was awesome with the skill level of this local game killing anything you would see at any soccer game in Australia. "Teamwork" didn't really seem to be the main aim and instead it was more about showboating and faking injuries, but it was bloody entertaining to watch! The game stayed level all the time finishing after some extra time as 2-2, so we all expected overtime to see this awesome final finish. Instead to our dumbfounded amazement when the final buzzer rang everyone started walking off the field, and the fans started leaving! My first thought was ahh yeh they're all just going to get a drink or something in the break... but all 60,000 or so of them is a bit much! Then one of the Brazilians explained to us that nope, that was it, all over! As much as this was the "final", it wasn't the ULTIMATE "final", that came next week! A little flattened after hearing that, we all muddled out of the stadium and found our ways home. Bloody glad I saw the game, but really wish I had of known it wasn't the ULTIMATE final, as I still would of gone but would have been a little better prepared!

Hangliding

Why I haven't gone skydiving or hangliding or anything like that yet I do not know but in Rio it was finally time to fix this. Skydiving it looks like I may be able to do while quickly passing through Bolivia or in Argentina (should I still have enough money...) but hangliding looked the best in Rio ever since I planned the trip. I signed up but was the only one, as seemed to be the norm in the hostel each day when someone went, but at the last minute when my pickup arrived a girl from the US decided she'd join me. Why not, the more the merrier! I also know that she's be nervous and when I feel a little nervous but I know someone with me feels more nervous, it has the effect of totally taking my nerves away! And thats just what happened =)

The van that picked us up drove us through the city to the other side of the town, stopping to refuel at a petrol station where we could see little black shadowy figures flying off the edge of cliffs - our future in a short amount of time. The second stop was at the beach, the point where they land so entertaining to watch, where we had to sign our waiver forms which included no liability cover for "sports injuries", which had a definition a mile long including "death". Hell of a sports injury. e then continued the drive up the hill, tackling some rather steep tracks where it looked like the car might roll back if we stopped, all the way up to the final carpark. By this time the adrenalin had started, as the views driving up the hill showed just how high we were! We had to wait 20 minutes while our hanglider was setup and we queued for take-off, giving us a good bit of time to watch others take the dive and jump off the edge of the ramp. The differences in take-offs due to the wind ranged some some launching and going upwards, gaining some serious altitude up into the clouds some couple of hundred metres above as, all the way to those who launched and just kinda went down!

I went first and when finally at the front of the cue on the ramp looking down at the big drop below the wind went all random. We had to wait for about 4 1/2 minutes, ready to run at any moment, until the wind turned favourably. All the time you get to be nervous while running is a quick "ok, run now!" and within 5 steps you're off. Mine at least was a very smooth take-off reminding me a lot of dropping into a mellow wave, sliding down its face a little before leveling out and just cruising. We got about 20 minutes air time, soaring not quite with the eagles as we didn't get the upward air current needed to take us as high as some got, but high enough to truly appreciate the experience and we cruisde for a good 10 minutes without losing any altitude at all! The Rocinho Favela, perhced on it's hillside, with arich shopping mall at it's feet and the beach just beyond that makes for a beautiful interesting view. Its a very mellow ride, all the way down to the landing. I expected to have to run for a bit when we landed imagining it more like how parachuting landings often end up but instead I did about 5 running steps in the air then when we hit the ground we just stopped perfectly! No need to run at all =)

The US girl, who ended up flying with another pilot just after me, got lucky and caught the upward draft, and got into the bottom levels of the cloud enough to be able to collect water in her hand and feel the cool moist air all around her, very cool. Its the luck of the draw wether you get it or not.

While its an adrenalin rush when you take off, I felt totally comfortable a few seconds into it until the end, so am definitely now searching for something more, and skydiving has got to be the next step... if only I had the skill to basejump Angel Falls (search youtube for that, there are some incredible videos). Now THAT would be a serious rush!

Sugarloaf
More iconic and important to me (largely because its a natural formation) I really wanted to see Sugarloaf, and a few days into Rio I got my wish. It was an easy bus ride there with Alice from our hostel in Ipanema and we arrived in enough time to climb the first part. As a quick description for those going there (and so what I write makes sense), there are 2 natural rock type mountain/hill things next to each other, with Sugarloaf being the highest with extremely steep sides. You can climb the first one by taking a small walk around the side of it on a concrete path before climbing uphill through a bush track that doesn't look like anything deliberately made so is easy to walk past. It is however the first path uphill through the bush on your left so that makes life nice and easy. For those who don't want to walk there is the cable car too. At the top of that is a helipad, lots of chairs, a small cinema showing movie on the history of it all, some snack stands and toilets. We then took the second necessary cable car to the top of Sugarloaf. The only way to get around using this one is to rock climb the near vertical faces of Sugarloaf, not quite something Im able to however while riding the cable car it was incredible to see people in the process of doing it!

The top has more food stands and all that rubbish, but it comes along with an absolutely killer commanding view of the whole of Rio and Niteroi. While the day time view is impressive, it was the night time view to me that was the best. Rio lights up and casts its shadow across the bay and ocean, light density showing where the life. The amount of power being used here must be scary. Having the Christo light up high upon his perch, with the clouds rolling past creating a Christo Peep Show is truly awesome. I hope the photos do this view some justice. We chilled up there (both in the temperature and relaxation meanings, the wind chill factor gets pretty bad up there!) for a good couple of hours probably, spellbound, until hypothermia took over and we decided enough was enough and we headed back to Ipanema.

Lagoa, Ipanema, Niteroi
Copacabana - famous, lively, full of life and danger, and after seeing it, no attraction to me! Ipanema is where I headed, and its pretty beautiful. Beautiful in a this-place-was-once-much-more-beautiful kinda way. To me it looks like Rio has had it's day and the wealth has moved on but it is still a pretty amazing city. I am pretty harsh on Rio I think coz it was built up to be so incredibly amazing. Its beaches, while fine, are to me overcrowded and the surf at least in Ipanema is terrible! Terrible not in just the sense that you wouldn't really bother surfing it, but terrible in that the current is strong, the waves quite large, and they break in closeout sets when you are only waist deep in the water making it a pretty deadly uncomfortable beach for people to paddle and swim in too! The big bonus of Ipanema over Copacabana however to me is that I really did feel comfortable wandering around there at all hours of the night without a need for taxi provided you stick to the main streets. Everything you need is available, and although it costs more than most of the rest of Brazil, a reasonable income could lead a very happy life here I think. The nightlife is of course crazy, with there always being something on somewhere, however on a backpacking budget that I have really loosened a lot for Brazil I still found it very difficult because everything is cover charges! And not small cover charges either but rather more than I have ever paid for any club at home as the norm, ranging to much more expensive.

One place to party though that fixed all that and reeeally appealed to me is Lapa! Lapa street partying, amazing!! Just catch a bus or taxi there, quite cheap, grab a beer from a street vendor for cheap and start dancing with the crowds outside the bars and clubs! Yes its a more dangerous area, but use your head and everything will be perfect. We spent the best night there, with a good hour spent having a ball dancing to a live band in a crowd that was playing in the room between two pillars holding up a bridge, incredible! The music perfect, the crowd happy, the dancing rubbish (mine) to totally skillful (the Brazilians), and the cost - nothing! That to me is the real Brazilian party spirit as no-one needs to spend a single $ if they don't want to so nobody is financially excluded.

Heading over to Niteroi (the city opposite Rio, often confused as an extension of Rio itself) is a pretty easy affair, using just one bus all the way to the Contemporary Art Museum there. This is the iconic round museum with the reflection pool below it. Its a beautiful building, with a good but not massive art collection inside. The art collection isnt of any interest to me as its not a type I like, but still I could appreciate it. The rest of Niteroi, at least near the beach across from the museum, is really nice and I felt more at home there than Rio. Rather than a tourist city it felt much more homely and would probably be my choice of place to live should I need to work in Rio. It has an ocean facing beach (the one you see from the museum is an inlet facing beach) that from Sugarloaf looked like it would receieve some pretty good surf if it has the ground to turn it into decent surfable waves, and the feel I got was that the lack in popularity versus Rio also meant that street crime was less attracted to Niteroi.

Rio finished
After seeing and doing everything I wanted at a nice slow pace I opted to head to Ilha Grande for a final bit of island fun before I leave Brazil!

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Photos

Leafcutters
Leafcutter ants hard at work in the Botanic Gardens

Its got water in it!
A fountain in the Botanic Gardens with water in it! A very rare thing in many of these central and south american parks... usually its just past-glory dry concrete

Little monkey-thing
Monkey thing coz I I think it was a monkey but wasnt 100% sure... looks like one eh? Cute little thing, tiny, maybe 1 1/2 times the size of my hand

Tree carvings
Smart people in Rio. WHen they need to lop a tree down they dont just leave an ugly stump, they carve it into something beautiful!

Former glory
A shut down hotel near Christ the Redeemer, shut down after the famous Brazilian football teams stopped using it apparently

Classic Christo shot
The same photo that I think 99% of the people there had on their camera heh

I can see my hostel from here!
Well, not really... but the beach you can't see is Ipanema. THat lake is beautiful to walk around, about 8km.

Ipanema and surrounding mountains
Ipanema at the beach anyway. Closer areas have different names.

Sugarloaf aint too far away
As you can see in about the centre, Sugarloaf. On the other side is Niteroi

City views
Niteroi and a bit of the bridge, as well as the closer Centro area of Rio