Day one in rio

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Morning time and it finally feels like we are in another country! Had a lovely sleep under the great eye of Suaron despite waking up at one point and thinking the exposed wires where the smoke alarm is supposed to be was one of the big hairy south American bird eating spiders I read about, intent on crawling down the wall across to bed and onto my face.

Before leaving we took all the precautions advised to us to avoid any problems on the street. Don’t bring anything valuable, carry a plastic bag of whatever you need and carry a bit of money separately that can easily be handed over in the event of a firearm being pointed at your face. I was chosen to be the sacrificial lamb in this case and carried 30 Brazilian Real in my shorts pocket, we have dubbed this little paper and coin sacrifice as our “mugger money”. The other thing we were told to do is dress like the locals, wear shorts and throw on any t shirt even if it doesn’t match, considering this passes as your truly dress code during the rare hours of Irish sunshine back home this required no action on my part, much to the amusement of my travelling companion who on one occasion even choose a coffee cup so it would go with her shoes…got to love the Blondie.

Our hostel is 5 minutes from the beach and off we went, after about 2 minutes it was clear that a lot of the things said about Rio are quite removed from reality. The streets were well kept; the locals are extremely friendly and helpful despite my attempt to butcher their language every time I open my mouth. The beaches span for miles and are surging with people lying out on every square inch, massive 15 foot waves chew up the surf and you see the occasional surfer jetting along on top of them. The best part is looking back from the shore up at the hills that surround Rio. They are absolutely breathtaking and it appears that the entire city is cupped in a big giant hand with the jungle covered mountains resembling giant fingers. We forgot our camera that day but I’ll get some pictures up tomorrow.

The Brazilians love to be seen and are health fanatics, exercise stations line the beach and nearly all of them are occupied by people breaking a sweat or more commonly just posing. Police presence is very high with gangs of police sitting by idle cars every few blocks; I am told this is due to the trouble in the favelas before Xmas. Every now and again a police helicopter flies low to the ground along the beach front with armed men hanging from the side straight out of black hawk down. The police helicopter seems to be a tad excessive, the men on the side in headbands and body armour are giving it socks on the posing front as much as anyone on the beach, as the most frightening thing we saw during an entire day walking the streets on foot was the multitude of OAPs that walk about everywhere in nothing but a thong.



We had dinner on the beach, and got to witness some of the Samba, a open top bus cruises up the still crowded and heaving beach at about 5 pm, on the top deck a samba band roar into the microphone and hammer away on drums. The nearby beachgoers, men women and entire families just get up and get totally into it dancing away and begin following in the buses wake as it slowly inches down the beach. Pretty soon you have a whole makeshift samba parade that spans the seafront and you can’t help but be taken in.

Changing hostel tomorrow and oving further up the road to the jungle. Our current one is fine, the only sore point is that once the door is locked if you touch the handle a fraction your locked in and it takes a good ten minute jimmy with the key to get it open…fire officer’s dream!

Our next hostel looks lovely, up the hill in the middle of the jungle overlooking the beach!

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