Advertisement
Published: July 29th 2006
Edit Blog Post
From Christo Redentor
The views from the top of the Corcovado were pretty good though. So Brazil. Turns out the Spanish and the Portuguese dreamt up some line of longitude to separate their New World empires. Then they discovered Brazil. Or something like that. Long and short of that is they don't even bother speaking Spanish here. Well that's no bloody good, is it?!
Anyways, four months of lazily travelling far too slowly meant so far I'd cut short my stay in Costa Rica from three weeks to two days, scrubbed around Panama altogether and put Cuba off until later. So far so good.
Flying into Sao Paulo late January was a bit of a shock really. My biggest problems were assuming I'd be fine with Spanish - which I guess now is getting pretty OK - and not having a guidebook. English language books in Rio are surprisingly thin on the ground and it wasn't until the fourth day of looking that I found one I was happy with. Meanwhile I was in a rather dull hostel in the district of Botofogo; a nice residential part of town but with fuck-all for tourists. Oh, and it was raining every day 'cos I'd rocked up in the wet season.
So in 1502 some
Who's this cheeky fella, eh?
Yeah, didn't see many Acts Of God going on atop the Corcovado, although we were handing over mind-blowing amounts of money to get up the hill. Portuguese fella found Brazil. In short, he sailed into Guanabara Bay: thought it was a river, noted it was January and called the whole place Rio de Janeiro.
After a week there I decided to leave and give the weather a chance to clear up. Stretching 170 miles west from Rio is the rather tasty Costa Verde with the cute little colonial town of Paraty at one end of it, six hours away by bus. Lovely little place even if the cobbled streets really were a pain in the arse. I mean, there's quaint and then plain backwardness. They have been warned that one morning they're gonna wake up to find that, with the help of a lorry full of tar, I'll have dragged their sorry little town into the 21st century. After three nights there I made my way back towards Rio, attempting to stop off at Isla Grande along the way, a beautiful island home to some of Brazil's best beaches, some two hours west of Rio. I made it as far as Angra Dos Reis from where you catch the boat but three things conspired to keep me on the mainland: no cash machines in town
Nice picture, eh?
This is a photo I took. Of a poster. Bubbling over with pride right now. accepting Visa, having missed the last boat and having the world's most crazy stalker hot on my heels! This was one of locals I'd hung out with in Paraty. The last bit of the conversation at the bus station went like this:
- So I'm coming with you.
- No you're not! You've no money, you're late for work and, errrrrr.... I always travel alone
- Why?
- Errrrrr, to meet new people.
- What? And new women?
- umm... YES!
- OK, I understand.
- Yes?
- Yes.... I'll come tomorrow instead.
- YOU'RE CRAZY!
- Siiiii. Te amo...
Woah... scared...
So back in Rio and a mate of mine from home had recommended a hostel he worked in - Rio Backpackers on Copacabana. This was where the good Brazilian times started rolling. The owner chicks were all spot-on with their suggestions on where and when to go out, and I can't remember having that much fun since Guadalajara in Mexico all that time ago. The weather had started to improve too so by day we'd all mince off to Ipanema to fanny
The Stones.
This was the view from my penthouse, darling. And that's Copacabana Palace to the right... I COULD ALMOST SMELL IT! around on the beach and for the nights there was just so much going out to be done; samba nights in Guanabara and Mangueira's Samba School (a club as well as a school. Don't worry, no chance of me humouring the locals by offering to learn anything about their culture and besides how can you teach a man who knows everything?), Irish pubs, Brazilian bars, cool nights out in Casa Da Matriz (in Botafogo as it turns out) - a converted mansion with DJs in three rooms, old arcade machines in others, T-shirt shops in others still and lots more rooms to explore plus lots of people dancing all around the stairs and hallways. Definitely worth checking out if you're in town. As is Lapa, a part of town full of bars and clubs where street vendors serve up possibly the biggest, juiciest Caipirinhas - a tooth-rotting killer of a spirit-plus-no-mixer drink that'll have your gums aching for weeks. And it was here that I finally found some hardcore Drum 'n Bass to prance about to, which naturally made me very happy. Always worth checking out too, is the funk parties they have in the favelas. Your hostel can arrange transport to the one that features in the film Cidade De Deus. Pretty crazy, lots of fireworks and rockets let off indoors and cheap drinks!
And what about the girls, eh? Oh good God, they're hot! Fair play to them, it's about time girls can prance about with all the sexual confidence that men have everywhere else in the world and not be supposed to feel bad about it...
Well, after a few weeks in Rio, Carnaval was fast approaching and I had a hostel reservation in Salvador with my, err, name on it. But by now the Rolling Stones were due to give a free concert on Copacabana beach so it seemed worth hanging around for a wee while longer.
To say I got lucky here would be a cruel understatement. The Stones were playing on the beach in front of the Copacabana Palace - Rio's most famous hotel - and a friend of a friend of a friend of mine happened to own the penthouse suite of the block of flats directly next door to the joint. He threw a party for about 35 of his friends and family and decided to make a couple of quid on the side by inviting about 15 gringoes in for £50 a pop. The night was great and I read the next day that two and a half million people had turned up to pack the streets, desperately after something for free while I looked fifteen floors down at every one of them with nothing but pure and utter gut-wrenching contempt.
So kicked out of the flat by about 1am (What? You think I'm gonna leave a place like that through choice? I just wish I'd had the foresight to stuff my pockets with the remnants of the finger buffet on my way out!) and it was finally time to make my way northwards for the city of Salvador's impending Carnaval madness...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 13; qc: 64; dbt: 0.0445s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
ali
non-member comment
ooh check you out with the view from your penthouse, it's alright for some!