Rio Rio Rio RIo

25/06/13

Right now I am sitting on my icky bunk bed in Cabanacopa hostel in Rio. Just finished theeeeee biggest meal of my life… (well not quite… fogo de chao takes that cake –may or may not be the time to mention Jess and I have booked the rio one for Friday night.) Anyway Jess and I have a sever problem with portion control (I blame her soley for my weight gain) but it is hard not to when this big mumma only cost us $3.25 AUD each!!

Oh yeahhh we get so excited when we work out how cheap we can eat for. He he he. But then again that wassss compensated by our meal the next night… Fogo is never forgiving on ones wallet.

The first few nights in Rio were mehschmeh… we decided to go out the very first night to Lapa with some Brazilian/ Mexican boys and a French couple. But yet again… the latin boys were way too touchy feely and too indecisive on where to go so in the end we decided to be party poopers and caught the bus back. After that ramshackled night we decided not to party again until the end of the trip (too broke anyway). 

Our next adventure was out to Ilha Grande, a smallish island about 1hr from the mainland. Sadly the weather wasn’t that crash hot so we didn’t really bother with too many pictures. We hiked to around 8 different beaches and coves on the one and two half days that we were there and sat in the sun reading like grandmas having a wonderful time. We also made a sand llama named Karl, but sadly the only wave of the day swept up just as we finished and Jess went to get her camera. So instead we made Karl the swimming llama!

I do have to mention though, our brave explorer buddies Cookie (after Captian Cook) and Ralph, two stray island dogs we befriended (after initially being bit by cookie) and kept company for the 7km trek to Lopez Mendez. It was a sad occasion when we had to abandon them due to the tempting yet very lazy boat ride home.

After returning from Ilha Grande, Jess and I moved hostels from Lisetonga (in leme) to CabanaCopa (in Copacabana). We are now closer to the action but Lisetonga staff were so nice… and well yeah I kinda regret the move. NO MATTER!!! The last night. Thankfully to our beautiful mothers will be spent in style at one of the beach front hotels in a delux twin suite. We are planning a night of a grande dinner, and movies in our hopefully plush beds like old school sleepovers. I will let you know how that all turns out.

Today, however, we spent lounging alllll day on the beach. We had frozen Açai bowels (actually pronounced a-sah-ee)

and got to watch multitudes of young (and old…) Brazilian women in what you can only describe as THE MOST Brazilian bikinis (aka full blown g-bangers). I mean I can appreciate the bums on some of the youngins but 60-70yr olds in thongs??? ummm sorry but there is such a thing as disturbing the peace. We sadly got to distracted by fro-yo and sun that we missed out on heading up Christo redonto (or however you spell it). So we will have to try and squeeze him and Sugarloaf mountain in tomorrow :D.

Ok so I have now finished Rio and can fill you in on the rest of the story! The next day we did indeed go up to sugar loaf. It was really hazy though and there seemed to be one cloud that was constantly shrouding sugar loaf (lucky us!!).

Even so we managed to get a few goodish shots through the clouds.

The rest of the day we spent walking through the little tourist markets around Ipanema and decided to locate our hotel for our last night together. Now the markets are good the first time you go, but every single market stall in every single location along the beach sells exactly the same thing…. football jerseys, incense burners, Christ Redeemer figurines, and sarongs all in the same print. Funny how I actually bought none of the aforementioned items. I almost forgot the Favela tour that we did on one of the days. Got to see the slums of Rio, all equipped with satellite tv's.... nahh thats cause we were only allowed in the police controlled ones for our own safety.

Next big attraction was the Corcovado or Cristo Redonto or for the culturally ignorant, the Christ Redeemer (big statue on the hill). We again left it a tadddd too late. Our original plan was to catch sunset and then stay for the lighting of him before heading down to dinner at Fogo. But in the end we got up when it was dark and only had about 15min there before we had to rush to dinner. I honestly could have stayed up there for hours just looking. The statue is amazing. Its so big, so close and just leaves your chin hanging open.

The view is another thing not to be missed. It was probably a good thing that we went at night due to the haziness that we had experienced. It was so pretty to see the little boats floating like lanterns on the harbor, the favela lights climbing up the hillsides and the slow (actually almost standstill) peak hour traffic winding through the streets.

Well Jess left the next day, but not before we went for a little shop. Along with some dirt cheap havaianas, I snagged a pair of my very own Brazilian bikinis. In saying this they are not true Brazilians. I did get the most conservative old lady ones that cover about a ¼ of my bum at least. After Jess left I decided to be a stubborn broke tourist and walked my suitcase 3kms along the boulevade. It seemed like a better idea before it took me 1.5hrs to complete on the rocky paving but I suppose I had nothing better to do. In saying that I may have also stopped at one of the exercise stations that occur every 100m on the beach front. It was there that I decided to see how many chins I could still pump out. My estimate was that I could struggle but surely do atleast 5. Oh how wrong I was… could only get ¾’s of the way up. Yup! I couldn’t even do one! I was so embarrassed because I felt and probably looked so cocksure about myself.

That night I met some lovely (but very noisy) brisith girls that overtook my room with pre-drinking bawdiness. Wasn’t too bad though left me with enough sleep to conquer my walk the next day J with nothing to do but wander with no money I walked all along Copacobana and around the corner to Ipanema in total it was probably about 12km but it took me close to all day due to the little stops to observe protests and farmers markets where a couple of chocolate filled churros may or may not have entered my hands (its winter at home right, I can still hide my travel weight under a couple of jumpers for a while yet).

Anyway again I will sign off (whilst enjoying my 1.2kg of duty free milka chocolate) and promise you a post from my next location. Not sure exactly where but will be in California with my toes in the sand :)

Laters,

Dee