Blogs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America - page 237

Arriving in Rio early morning, I made my way to the hostel, taking the shuttle bus, checked in quickly, Getting in to our dorm style room, 6 beds , was the 1st one to get here so got to chose the biggest and closest to the telly, yay! It is here in Rio where my Encounter overland trip begins, i think all the Dragoman and Encounter trucks meet up in Rio for the carnival then move on to follow their own itineraries all over SA. A Dutch guy arrived moments later, he is also starting his journey here, then comes the Irish and Canadian guys both getting off from the truck finishing here in Rio, Donagh, the Irish guy did the reverse of my trip and so he gave me some insights on what to expect. ... read more

this will be quick as we working on the details for our next destination. On sunday we got our chance to experience carnival and the parade first hand. We got to the sambadrome at about 9:30 pm and didn't leave till 8:30 the next morning. It is quite an experience to be in the thick of things; the crowd dressed up in many colors, the lights flashing, the fireworks to kick off each samba school, the music, standing up and dancing, sitting down and waiting for the next school. to give a quick sense of the parade....it starts with fireworks that are in the schools colors to kick off there program. the school then has 120 minutes to dance down the 700 meter parade route. in this 120 minutes each school will have about 8 to ... read more

Afternoon everyone - how is everything with you? We seem to spend so much time talking about ourselves, what´s going on in your lives? Hmmm....sounds interesting. Anyway.... Photos will hopefully be making their way onto this site at some point, as prompted by Andy´s Dad. However, I´m afraid he and the rest of you will need to wait until we find an internet cafe that lets us do that and work out how we post the pics. Rest assured there are some good ones. In fact, all of our cameras have taken a real hammering since you last heard from us. Having ummed and ahhed on Sunday night about whether to go to the main Carnaval sight, the Sambodrome, the fact that most of the city seemed at a standstill convinced us to go for it. ... read more

Evening all, 9pm Sunday evening here and a lots happened since we mailed you last. Before getting into it, a quick bit of admin. If any of you don´t want to receive these regular updates feel free to unsubscribe yourself. We won´t be upset I promise!! Anyway, rest assured things will be a bit quieter for a while once we leave Rio on Thursday. Anyway, Friday night was something of a write off after Thursday night´s shenanigans so nothing much to report. We woke up on Saturday really excited about the trip to the Maracana stadium to see the Rio derby between Fluminense and Flamengo. The bus picked us up at about 2pm for the 4pm kick off. Before we go any further, a few quick facts about the Maracana. It´s record attendance is about 180,000 ... read more

We found it! It's a place called Trinidade. About an hour long, at moments life threatening(dramatic effect), bus ride from Paraty. It's a peninsula where the the jungle is as accessible as the beach, and we did both in one day. It started VERY LAZY! Drinks on the beach catching sun and watching surferes in our wooden beach chairs. I think we did that for about 5 hours, hard to say, I kept falling asleep. And no watches allowed! We then walked to the edge of the beach, to a path up the mountain so green and with dirt so soft that no one wears shoes. We made it over to rocks and the next beach cove, with whiter sands and bigger waves, and camping right next to the beach. Eventually we turned back into the ... read more