Rio Take 2

Foreword
This is a very long blog, so make sure you are comfortable, and in my defense i haven´t written one for a week so there was a lot to say. Enjoy...


I’ll start with the main event Sambadromo, which is the massive parade where people wear amazing costumes and follow elaborate floats down a road for all to admire. And dance the samba of course. It was so impressive. Just the size of the floats and the detail and colours were incredible and the stamina of the dancers because even though the show was from 8pm till 7am it was hot the whole time we were just sweating watching from the stands but they had to dance for 1.5 hours in massive heavy costumes. We did see a few people faint. It was interesting how often we assume we were watching girls dance then realized it was a guy. They all wear dresses and heaps of makeup so it’s hard to differentiate. It was an amazing experience made our time in Rio well worth it.

Rio was fun but exhausting, filled with cool experiences and difficult ones. We had the usual language barriers which resulted in us paying 27 Reais for our laundry (approx 23NZD). A guy from our hostel had a gun pointed at him when trying to buy tickets to Sambadromo from a scalper. There was a drug raid at the markets (we were not there, just heard about it) two hostels were taken over by gangs with guns and grenades and every safe was forced open. Crazy stuff was happening and yet we never came across it ourselves thankfully. We actually felt surprisingly safe wherever we went and the only people who came up to us were beggars, who although are very persistent, didn’t seem dangerous. In fact my concern to my safety while in Rio was that I might be crushed by our ridiculously unstable bed. And it was a very real concern as it had already happened twice before we arrived and then on the day before we left our mate Joe from Adelaide, told us that a bed had crashed down on his head while he was sleeping, he had a big red mark on his forehead. His mate Nathan had panicked because being top bunk that had crashed down he had thrown himself off thinking he had killed his mate. And that’s quite a height to fall from so he was in a bit of pain too. When we left Joe was asleep on the couch so I hope he didn’t have a concussion. But the amazing thing is the lack of concern from the hostel, the beds kept collapsing and yet they were not willing to do anything to fix it. Although we had a great time at our hostel it was just because of the people we met, the hostel itself was crap.

But onto the fun stuff. On the second night we went on a boat party organized by the hostel. It was fully catered and an open bar. It was so much fun. We went sailing around the bays of Rio could see Sugarloaf Mountain and Christ the Redeemer as well as other mountains and islands. The views were gorgeous, the drinks were very strong and we having an amazing time. Then the boat anchored in a bay and we jumped off the side and went for a swim, the water was warm and we even managed to jump off the second storey of the boat once (before someone banned everyone from doing it :p) Then we were up the front of the boat and the dance floor dancing while the sun went down, and we even managed to get in a second swim before it got dark. Once it was dark the skyscrapers were lit up all along the beach and Christ the redeemer was lit up on the hill. When I realised we were almost back at the port I was disappointed because I had been having such an awesome time.

The next day we went up to see Christ the Redeemer. It was cool to know that in most places in Rio you can see the statue. I expected it to be a bit bigger but in saying that I’ll still admit that it’s massive. It was an incredibly hot day and we bussed out there and as soon as we stepped off the bus a man was offering us a deal to be driven up the mountain rather than take the train, we checked the train out and found the mans offer was cheaper and he was with a legitimate company so we took him up on the offer. It was cool cos it meant we got to see the statue from a helipad at 610 metres before driving up to the statue itself at 710m. When we got up there we were found it a tad ridiculous that you can either take stairs or an escalator the get up to the statue, we picked stairs because it felt more respectable but i´ll admit we took the escalator down because it was a novelty. The statue was awesome but the heat was intense so we stayed up there for all of 5mins, took a few photos and got out of there. On the way home we found a great café that sold juice and crepes and had a delicious lunch.

That evening we went to a block party which wasn´t as exciting as we had hoped, basically there were just music playing and people dancing in the streets. Anthea and I went for a walk around to see what was going on and we were disappointed to see that there wasn´t even a band, just a DJ! But we did see the most gorgeous little brazilian boy wearing a tarzan outfit, with a little blonde haired girl, both about 2 and the girl was trying to get the boy to dance but he would not oblige. It was soo cute. The block party ended early so we wandered down the beach and saw a few street performers and then checked out the night markets and found a few bargains, although generally the markets were more expensive so we tried to hold off on buying heaps as they will be cheaper in Bolivia.

The next morning we went to the Ipanema markets which also had some good stuff, I bought a coin purse and a bracelet. That afternnon we just napped and got organized and then went to sambadrome. I´ve already talked about that so i´ll just mention that we stuck out the whole thing which a lot of people don´t manage. And by the end we had a lot of energy again and it was less packed so we were dancing and trying to copy the moves of the real dancers. It was hilarious. We taxied back and went to the beach before getting back to the hostel at 8am just in time for breakfast and then went to bed. Woke up aroud 3 and tried to go to the Sugarloaf Mountain cable car for the sunset but by the time we got orgainised we realized it would be too late so we just went to ipenema beach and watched it from there. It was still very pretty. That evening we just hung out and drank at the hostel and chatted with the other backpackers because we were still very tired from Sambadromo, but we were still up til 4am and I ended up waking at 8 so was still running on almost no sleep.

This was our last day and also Claire´s birthday so we had planned on going to get manicures and pedicures because they´re so cheap but as it was a public holiday they weren´t open. So we went to the Botanical gardens with this guy british Johnny. The gardens were beautiful especially the palm tree lined pathways. That evening us girls, Johnny, Marcel, Mira and Sheena all went up to Sugarloaf, and we timed it better this time. Half of us walked up and the other half took the cable car. I chose walking and it was tough but I saw monkies!! So that made it worth it. For the second stretch we all took the cable car and the view was amazing. There wasn´t much of a sunset cos it was cloudy but we saw an awesome lightning storm which in some ways was better.

We headed back just before we got rained on and went out for dinner to celebrate Claire´s birthday. Then had a few drinks at the hostel before heading out to a street party. I decided to stay home cos I had gotten sick and was feeling pretty crap and we were leaving for Ilha Grande at 4am the next morning so wanted to get a couple of hours sleep. So woke up feeling like i had never slept, got ready and went down to wait for the txi who was late. When he arrived it seemed he had no handbrake so the car would start rolling when he tried to put our packs in the back. Then half way through our journey to the bus station we heard a bang and we had a flat tyre. He got out and inspected it, confirmed it was indeed flat and then got back in and carried on driving. He wasn´t exactly driving very slowly and the sound of the tyre got louder and louder and a strong smell of rubber was coming through the windows. We were considering telling him to stop the car but we realised that its 5am and were in the middle of nowhere in Rio so we´re better off in this crazy cab ride. People on the road were staring at us as we bumped along but we managed to get to the bus station without any further accidents. The tyre was ripped to shreds, but the guy just took out our bags and carried on his way. With all these delays we had missed our bus but we hadn´t pre booked so it didn´t really matter and we caught the next one. From lack of sleep and claire feeling a bit hungover we were in fairly low spirits and in desperate need of a bed. But instead we had a 2 hour winding bus ride, a three hour wait on the port, a 40min ferry ride, a walk uphill in the intense midday heat and then finally we were at our hostel but we were drenched in sweat so had to shower before getting into bed. Although its now day 3 of Ilha Grande, i´ll end this blog now cos its already ridiculously long and start a new one soon.

Thanks for sticking it out til the end :)

Ciao!