River twisting through a dusty land: Rio de Janeiro!

*Apologies about scarcity of photos in this post. All but three of our lovely photos from Rio were deleted in a memory card faux pas by my travelling companion. Yes, words were indeed exchanged... Hopefully we can recover them from the card at a later date though, by some sort of sortware wizardry. *

Part Two of our trip began on the 6th of May, when we arrived in Rio after a 11 hour flight from London. The taxi ride from the airport to our hostel cost us a day´s budget, an incident which was to set the tone for our time in Brazil. Apart from the cost of Brazil, which is comparable to the UK for food and accomodation although higher for transport, other differences from Southeast Asia were immediately apparent. In a lot of ways, Brazil looked and felt quite familiar to Western Europe, while Southeast Asia felt very foreign. But perversely, SAmerica so far has proven harder to travel round than SE Asia, where tourists never have to speak a word of any language that isn´t English. Not so SAmerica, and wow, Portuguese really is not pronounced like it´s spelt!

We stayed at an ultra-modern hostel in Rio, where we were the only foreigners, although there were a lot of Brazilian/SAmerican tourists. The staff were very friendly, and invited us to a Samba party on our first night there - but unfortunately we succumbed to our horrendous jet-lag and were asleep before 9pm. We spent our first full day in Brazil walking the not-so-mean streets of Ipanema.

The beach was stunning - a sensuous curve of powdery sand and tempestuous waves. Rio itself really is a beautiful place - the roads are lined with ancient trees dripping with Spanish moss, there are beaches around every corner, and mountains peek over the skyscarpers. We walked around a large attractive lake in the centre, and discovered that good hot dogs and hamburgers are everywhere in Brazil, and there is a juice bar on every corner. These are perfect for people-watching, and the people are interesting - women in skin-tight animal print, topless men in skimpy shorts - just as well there´s work-out equipment on the beaches! We watched the sunset on the Ponte Copacabana, a rocky outcrop with views of Ipanema and Copacabana beaches.

We ended up spending our second day there with Jose, a Brazilian guy from Sao Paulo, whom we met in our dorm room at the hostel. Having someone who spoke Portuguese and knew how things worked to go round with was really, really great and helped us get over the inevitable culture shock. Jose was a lovely guy, and keen to see Rio too as this was his first visit there. He took us to a juice bar and bought us a bowl of acai berries - they come served like a sorbet, blended with ice and your choice of fruit. Then we all set off to get the bus to Cristo Redentor, which in itself was an interesting journey, through both leafy neighbourhoods and graffitied underpasses. Unfortunately, we found out on arrival that the recent mudslides in Rio had shut down the train to the top of the hill - the only other option was $35 per person. As the statue has scaffolding on it at the moment anyway, we decided to skip it for now and possibly return at the end of our trip.

Instead, we walked around Botafogo beach in the heart of the city, and then to Sugarloaf Mountain, where Dave and I got the cable car to the top. This again was heartbreakingly expensive but the views were definitely worth it. All the photos we now have left were taken from there! Later that night, Dave went out with Jose for beer and traditional Brazilian food, (rice and feijoada/bean stew, with a fried egg and chicken fillet on top) while I gave in to jet-lag and went to bed.


On our last day in Rio, it was still warm but raining torrentially. Nevertheless, being good Scots we wrapped up and walked along to Copacabana beach. It was deserted but still beautiful. We sheltered in a cafe and nibbled olives, while drinking caipirinahas (Brazilian national drink - made with sugarcane rum, sugar and lime) and Brazilian beer. The next day, we headed down the coast to the little town of Paraty - a journey which was to be the worst of my life! (So far....)