Rio de Janeiro... Oh Oh When My Baby!

October 1-6, 2007

Arriving in Rio involved mixed emotions for both of us, excitement, nervousness, anticipation and a little bit of sadness having left England, our home for over a year.

It lived up to most expectations and turned out to be one of our favourite cities in the world. One expectation it failed to live up to was the danger. We came expecting to be mugged and robbed and therefore initially carried nothing that we weren´t prepared to lose. This expectation was avoided partly due to the area we stayed in. Ipanema is a very clean, safe and wealthy area of Rio. It neighbours the famous Copacabana beach and a lot of locals seem to think it is surpassing it in beauty and happenings these days.

Our first few days were spent lying on the beach. Why not! The sand was so fine and after being in Europe for so long and ¨putting up¨ with thier sub-rate beaches (hahaha) this was heaven. Not to mention the other scenery. The rumours about the g-bangers are true. Neither of us really digged the latest fashion for men though. They were like bike shorts but without the leg bits. Normal budgie smugglers with a bit more material. Sorry for inducing those nasty mental images.

You could pretty much buy anything you needed on the beach. From coconuts to cold beers to fried cheese (they even carried around mini stoves to fry it) to much loved air biscuits. And the characters selling these items were much loved or much feared as well. Especially the bloke selling pineapples who wore a big hat filled with pineapples, big yellow washing gloves and crept up behind innocent beach loungers and yelled ´pineapple´at them in Portugese. Not sure if he sold many?

We met up with Davo´s mate Liana, whom he met while studying Spanish in Barcelona earlier in the year. She was our tireless and most helpful guide for the week and we can´t thank her enough for all the trouble she went to for us.

The first place she took us was up to the famous Jesus Statue (Cristo Redentor). An obvious place to start site seeing in Rio. Perched high up on the highest of Rio´s many peaks, it gave us a spectacular view of the city and it´s beaches. This was followed by an awesome all you can eat restaurant serving all sorts of traditional Brazilian dishes like rice and beans, fresh fish and sushi, cheesy empanadas and meat carved of a spit straight onto your plate. Belisimo! Who could have thought our day could get any better when Liana invited us to a private beach party on Copacabana beach with free beer! It was part of the International Film Festival in Rio at the time and we were mixing it with famous Brazilian movie stars. No really!

The next day Davo spent in hospital, thanks to his old mate peanuts. You´ve probably read the email... if not, read the email.

To recover the following day, Liana invited us and our new Aussie mates Michael and Anna, to lunch at her mum´s house in Leblon for a beautiful, traditional, ´nut free´ meal. We also did a drive by tour of some of the main areas of the city. In the evening we joined a crazy possessed bunch of about 70,000 locals at Maracaná (the Rio football stadium aka holy turf) to see a football match between top of the table Sao Paulo and lower ranked but much loved (in Rio) Flamengo. Literally all of the locals we met in Rio were Flamengo fans. They weren´t expected to win but we saw them get up 1-0. The atmosphere was incredible. Try and picture 70,000 people ripping off their shirts, waving them above their heads in unison. The dancing, drums, music, chanting, flares all create an electric atmosphere that us Aussies don´t come close to replicating in a sporting arena.

Who would have thought this day could get any better, when Liana took us to a late night samba club (also famous in Rio) where we mixed it with a different group of locals, including one old timer dressed in a white suit with white shoes and a red tie, who danced with two girls at a time on multiple occasions. Legend! The seven piece live band set the scene while Fi received a few free lessons from some more than able teachers and Davo did his best not to stand out.

Our last morning in Rio, Davo impuslively decided to jump off a 525m high cliff with a hang-glider and capable pilot attached. There was a ten second lesson before we jumped which involved running with an arm over the pilot´s shoulder for ten metres and then we were flying. We flew over buildings, mountains, favelas (the local slums), beaches and hotties on the beach - apparently one of the best places on the planet to hang-glide. It was an amazing experience.

We climbed another of Rio´s peaks in the evening, called Sugar Loaf, because that´s what it looks like. This time we climbed by cable car. We chased a few monkeys around the hilltop before wittnessing another beautiful sunset, apparently worthy of a round of applause (the second one of these we´ve seen on our travels, the first in the Greek Islands).

Rio is a fascinating and vibrant city and it doesn´t entirely deserve the ¨dangerous¨ tage that it gets, although some parts it certainly does. There is a great divide separating the classes of society from the rich and wealthy around Ipanema and Copacabana to the poverty stricken favelas. We only saw a snippet of the action, the night life, the dancing and can only imagine what it would be like during Carnival. Hopefully we´ll be back to enjoy it one day.