Rio de Janiero - Week 30

5th to 11th April

We arrived in Rio at 9pm after a good flight that actually arrived 1/2 hour early!! The bus was very safe (and airconditioned - hooray!) and took us to within 200m of our hostel, the Mango Tree in Ipanema. We had a double room with aircon which was great, but it cost 35 quid a night, not good. The hostel was very nice though and being in Ipanema, one of the richest areas of Rio, very safe which is important in Rio! We went out for a quick burger (80p and delicious - the first of one a day for James while in Rio!!) and then came home for an early night.

We woke up to beautiful blue skies on Friday so decided we had to go up to Christ the Redeemer, the most famous landmark in Rio on it's highest mountain to get our bearings. We took the train up through the national park that surrounds the mountain right to the top and the views were amazing. Everything we've ever imagined Rio was going to be - we were quite emotional to be there!

With Sugarloaf Mountain in the background

(borrowed from Google as we couldn't afford the helicopter trip!)

Big J.C. and little J.S.

That evening we met an English couple in the hostel, Darien and Jackie, and it was her birthday so we went to a upmarket kilo restaurant for some top scram. A kilo restaurant is a buffet with lots of salads, vegetables dishes, BBQ'd meat, and at this one sushi, where you pay for your meal depending on the weight. They're very common in Brazil and a good way to have a tasty meal with a little bit of salad to pretend you're eating healthily! After that we took a taxi to Lapa where they have lots of samba clubs, with live music going on late into the night. We got into one that seemed popular and busy, got our table, had a few beers and then the girls attempted to go for a dance. They were not reckoning on the Brazil woman though. Space was tight on the little dancefloor and so Katie and Jackie were pretty much elbowed off the after a couple of minutes by Brazilian girls aggressively and jealously defending their territory!! Needless to say the men didn't get involved in petty girl squabbles, as they didn't even get out of their seat to go dancing as their were to many fine looking women to gawp at, a common problem in the genetically blessed Brazil...

So on Saturday, feeling a bit sluggish after the drinking and late night, we decided to walk around the lake behind Ipanema & Copacabana to the botanical gardens, which closed 15 minutes after we arrived there, nice timing. So we made our way back around the lake into Leblon, next to Ipanema and probably the richest area in the whole of Rio. There we saw the rich and priviledged shopping in the huge shopping centre (with well needed aircon) and lots of Range Rovers and BMWs. We found (more food - which is clearly a very important part of our trip!) a little bistro/deli with a delicious make your own salad option. That night we watched the Getaway with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw (as we had just read the book) in the hostel and an early night.

Sunday we went to the hippie market in Ipanema. We cannot say what things we brought as some of the items were gifts, but they did have lots of great paintings at reasonable prices. Not a practical purchase though with months of backpacking still to do. Afterwards we thought we should go down to Ipanmea beach with the beautiful people for a bit of sunbathing. With all the chiseled vanity of the local gays and the ridiculous beauty of the Brazilian girls, obviously Katie and I stood out a bit, and it was flipping roasting. So after an hour we slipped away leaving the gays to strut around in their tiny speedos and stubble haired chests, regrowth from a recent waxing session no doubt, to cool off with a beer. Clearly James was completely jealous of the physiques on show!!

That night we went to the Maracana Stadium to watch a football match. The Maracana is the national stadium and used to hold up to 200,000 people e.g. for Pele's last game, but now is 100,000 all seater. We were hoping big things after not being able to get tickets in Buenos Aires for Bocas Juniors. We watched Flamengo Vs. Americanas, but the atmosphere was a bit flat with only around 15,000 people due the the weird set up of the Brazilian football. They have two seasons a year with the winner of the first going into the final at the end of the second to play the winner of the second season, or something like that with some other peculiarities. Flamengo had already won the first season and so were barely trying this second season game we were watching, and so very few fans turned up. Probably the best bit of the game was halftime when this old boy comes out and does keepie-uppies for the whole 10 mins without letting the ball drop once. He's about 70 apparently and has been doing his halftime trick for over 20 years!Never mind the atmosphere, it was dead cheap (2.50) for ticket and so we would return...

On Monday we went on a favela tour to the largest in Rio, Rocinha, and a smaller one called Vila Canoas. We thought carefully about the voyeuristic aspects of doing this type of a tour and so looked into where the money went before we took the tour. Rocinha has 120,000 people living within it and is one of 750 favelas in Rio. There are only 5 schools in Rocinha for all these people. The profits from this tour go to run a school in the Vila Canoas favela, so a worthy cause we decided.

The guide was excellent and explained the acute social problems facing the majority of people in Rio and especially the people living in the many favelas. We were staying in Ipanema one of the richest and privileged (therefore safest) places in Rio and so the guide gave us a real feel for how Rio works as a city and how it is to live in for most people to live in. Many problems! See below for James's synopsis...

Ivson Lins, samba musician from Rocinha. You'll have to wait till we get home to hear his CD...

Anyway back to our privileged stay in Brazil. After the tour we went to a fab restaurant for eat-as-much-as-you-can and then we wanted to go up Sugarloaf Mountain for the sunset but it had started raining so we sacked it. As we were walking back to the hostel wondering what to do next we bumped into Esther and Patrick, a dutch couple we met in Panama so we ended up in a pub drinking caiparinhas (local firewater with crushed lime, sugar and ice) all night, setting the world to rights!

After an annoying start on Tuesday (trying to get washing done, nowhere in Rio having any change, losing things etc etc), we got our arses in gear and made it into the centre of town to check out some of the old buildings and churches. We weren't massively impressed (I think we're getting picky after 7 months - not good!) but we did go inside a beautiful reading room/library which had four walls covered in 350,000 very old books. It was a lovely building.

We then took the 'bonde' (very old tram) to the nice little district of Santa Teresa. The tram was originally built to take the rich businessmen down into the city centre from their mansions in the hills above. The tram was hilarious, almost like a run-away mine train type of thing from Alton Towers. You really had to hang on as it accelerated through the cobbled streets and precariously over the Lapa do Archos (below) up the hill to Santa Teresa. We had a fabulous traditional Brazilian lunch in Bar do Mineiro of Feijoada, which is a huge meat and bean stew served with rice, spinach and slices of orange - delicious!

The weather was lovely all day so we took our chance (it had been cloudy every other day) and took the cable car up to the top of Sugarloaf mountain. Lovely clear blue skies as we got in the cable car. Twenty minutes later we were at the top and as it started to get dark it covered in cloud!!! Sooooo annoying. So, didn't see much of a sunset as planned but actually, as it went dark, the city looked beautiful through the clouds and they cleared now and again so it was all worth it!

View towards Copacabana Beach

Botafogo Bay looking towards Corcovado and Christ the Redeemer

J.C. mysteriously rising out of the clouds...

A borrowed picture from Corcovado showing just how stunning Rio is...

On Wednesday we decided to have a final look around Ipanema and Copacabana before we left Thursday. It was the middle of the week but there was still people toasting themselves silly in the sun. We walked to the rocky point between the two beaches for a good view of Ipanema (below) and found a little beach gym in the style of the famous Venice Beach in California, but with the added value of everyone training in speedos - disturbing, very gay, but hilarious. So James joined in with a few chin-ups, dips and press-ups while Katie sat at a distance watching, wetting herself laughing as the gay guys came up to James to offer him technique tips. One particular guy in pink speedos took a real shine to him!!

That night we went again to the football with Pablo to try for a bit of atmosphere. We hoped for a more exciting game as Romario was trying for his 1000th goal. He had been on 999 for a few games/weeks and the papers were reporting that his team mates were getting cheesed off trying to carrying some fat 41 year old up front as a lone striker.

"why won't they pass to me..."

Waddling around up front on his own.

The game itself was crazy. We got there about 7pm as we were told the game started around 8:30pm. After many beers and almost 3 hours of waiting the game started at 9:45pm, with about 60,000 fans and a much better atmosphere. Lots of fireworks, singing and samba drums. 5 mins in and it was 2-1, 3 goals!! If you thought that Brazilian national teams had moments of dodgy defending, then you can imagine how bad the club teams are. They had a real attitude of never mind we'll just score more than the other team. At halftime (with the crazy old guy again doing keepie-uppies) it was 3-2. Next half each team had a man sent off for outragous tackles. Romario probably ran about 1km to his team mates 8km, just missing to get a body part on a team mates long range goal, poaching it for himself, and so still he is on 999 goals. It ended 4-4.

The crazy end score.

Afterwards I headed down to the beach for a few last 'on the beach in Rio' beers with Pablo as Katie was knackered. All in all a top week. An amazing place.

James's favela thoughts:

The favelas are of course known to be violent places, which they are. They are run completely by the 3 main drug gangs and drug money, with the obvious problem of drug addition amongst the poorest people in society.

The crazyness of Rocinha, Rio's largest favela

There are also postitives to the Favelas though. There is a real sense of community and although the goverment has not forgotten the plight of the people in the favelas there is only so much they can do, and so the people of the work together, not waiting for government to help solving problems within. There is minimal crime (outside of rampant and blatant drug selling of course!) with any theft or assaults dealt with by the people/drug gangs, as they do not want the police to get involved and come into their favela. The police get paid very little ($300/month) and have little guns compared to the US Army machine guns that the drug gangs have so there is not too much motivation amongst the police and a lot of corruption. The police watch the drug deals happen across the street from them and do not intervene - as long as they get their cut and nothing kicks off they turn a blind eye!

Although it all sounds chaotic there seems to be a fragile stability/equilibrium in the favelas most of the time, but when the stability stops...! A couple of years ago there was a massive fight between drug gangs with gunfire and fighting for days. The people can only lock there doors, lie on the floor wait and hope until its over, one gang wins or the police are driven back and the stability returns.

The only real hope for these people is education (or becoming a football player!) to leave the favelas. The education system here is the main problem. Although 97% of kids are in school the quality of teaching is generally poor. Teachers only get paid $500/month and so the best ones get easily poached by the good private schools. The good schools cost $400-$600/month in fees, the average salary in the favelas is $200/month. There are excellent public universities but only the best educated children can pass the entrance exams, and so only the rich kids can make it to Uni. So what happens to the kids that don't make it? The have very few options. Get a job earning maybe $150/month collecting rubbish, helping people park cars, selling sweets and drinks to the rich/tourists, or join a drug gang for $600/month, twice the likely amount their parents earn combined. Although the most people in drug gangs die before they are 35, many well before this, it is an easy option and many choose to join the gangs. The school we visited has made the difference to a few kids and they have gone to uni, but this school can only take 30 kids after they have finished at their other school...

Recently people from middle classes have moved to the favelas. The rent is much lower than in the rich districts, like Ipanema and Leblon, and so they have more disposable income and a better standard of life than comparatively poor in a rich area. Again there is also the sense of community that people feel in the favelas, the working together and looking out for one another.

The one stand-out thing from the tour was the nonchalant way that the drug problem was talked about. It seems like it has become an accepted part of everyday life to have drug gangs supplying drugs to the people of the favelas, they becoming addicted, providing more wealth to the criminals. It must come back to the fragile stability that the whole crazy system seems to provide within their particular favela, and the close-knit, shut off comunity closed it creates. There are 10 million people living in Rio, 2 million in favelas. 30% of the population earn 70% of the income. With such prejudice of the rich to the poor, the disparity of income and therefore education, Brazil's huge debt and interest payments to the world bank and the deep rooted drug gangs supplying drugs to the poor, there are no foreseeable improvements in the near future.

Books we read: Moby Dick by Herman Melville - very hard going, just about worth it!

As threatened here's a 'pleasent' picture of James doing the Copacabana thing, arse out in his pants on the beach. We cannot be held liable for the likely trauma and any long-term psychological problems induced by this picture. You read this blog entirely at your own risk!!

Salvador - Week 29

30th March to 4th April

Salvador proved very difficult to get to, but has been completely worth all the hassle...

When we arrived at Curitiba airport we found that Oceanair had canceled our flight! They managed to get us onto another flight with Webjet and so we waited an extra 2 hours for the flight which was now going to involve two stops and would get us into Salvador 3 hours late but that was fine as long as we got there. It was when we arrived at the first stopover in Porto Alegre and were told to get off the plane that we started getting annoyed... The plane was now broken and would take 2 hours to fix. Then the military air traffic controllers decided to go on strike and were arrested by the military police, practically on the hour of our flight was ready to take off again!!! Then the civilian airtraffic controllers went on strike too. A couple of hours later, with the all the planes in Brazil grounded, the government agreed to give them more cash. 6 hours later at 1am we were on our way again and we eventually arrived in Salvador at 5am, 10 hours later than the original plan. Never mind, look on the tight-arsed backpacker bright side - a night's accommodation costs saved!!

After a courtesy taxi ride on the airline company (I should think so!), we checked out some decidedly dodgy hostels (recommended in both guide books - really going from the bibles!) but eventually found a really nice place, Hostel Lanajeira, right in the centre of the old town and all the action.

We were pretty knackered all day on the Saturday after very little sleep the night before so we took it easy. We did go to a fantastic folkloric show in one of the theaters in the evening, though. It was a display of traditional Afro-Brazilian dance and ended in a fantastic display of capoeira (you know, that dance where they pretend to fight but aren't allowed to touch each other?) which was really impressive.

Traditional costumes

Capoeira in the steet

On the way back to the hostel we took some detours through the streets to soak up the atmos and saw the first of many drumming bands that we would see this week. The bands all practise in the streets so you can hear them somewhere in the city all day. This particular band was all-girls and they were having some sort of drum-off taking it in turns to play solo and whoever lost the beat was out. They were excellent. We could listen to this kind of drumming all day (which was lucky, because we did for 5 days!!).

On the Sunday we morning we had a wonder around the city to visit some of the museums and churches and took the obligatory trip to tourist information (mainly to find out which streets were not safe to walk on as we had been turned away from a couple of streets by locals telling us they weren't safe...). Then in the afternoon, we took the bus to Barra, a beach district 1/2 hour south of the city centre. It was lovely. We had an hour's respite from the oppressive heat in the air-conditioned shopping centre and then walked up the Morro Christo for a great view of the sunset.

That show over, we headed to a great bar recommended to us that had a live samba band playing who were brilliant, really good musicians, great songs but it was watching them enjoy performing that was the highlight. They were constantly laughing and joking with each other. Friends of theirs came up from the audience randomly, picked up a spare instrument and joined in. Then there were people getting up to dance in a most impressive way with the high speed bum wiggling you see African dancers doing. In all it was another example of the difference between Brazil and Brazilians and the Argentinians/Chileans we have met so far - they love to have fun and party. When they laugh and joke with each other they don't just have a little giggle, they laugh and laugh till they are crying with laughter!! This creates a brilliant atmosphere everytime you go out, always lots of laughing and joking all around. Brazil is far more about the people and they way then enjoy themselves than the scenery sights of the other parts of South America we have visited.

Samba band with Peter Kay second right!

Top quality cocktails here - strawberries squished with ice and vodka

On Monday, we decided to 'go tourist' and booked on a boat tour around the islands of the bay (it's the only way you can get to one of the islands...). Most of the people on the boat were Brazilian tourists and being the party people that they were, the caipirinhas were flowing at 10am and everyone was dancing to the samba band on board. It was like a trip back in time to the party boats we used to go on in Tenerife when we were 17!

It was really good fun and the islands we went to were beautiful. We had been told that there was a tour guide on board who spoke english and would take us for tours round the islands and tell us about their history but there was none of that which was a bit annoying. The closest we got to having a guide was a fat bloke at the front pointing everyone to the beach as we got off the boat...! Anyway, it was a nice relaxing day out of the city and on the beach.

That evening we went to a recommended restaurant to eat the local dish of fish and prawns in a coconut curry which was absolutely delicious:

On Tuesday we spent some more time wandering around Salvador. The city has literally hundreds of churches (apparently one for every day of the year) and most of them only have one bell tower to escape the tax on churches to be paid only when they are finished!:

It is a great place to wander round, you can just people watch for hours. There are people on street corners selling all sorts of kebabs, coconuts and traditional food, samba bands, capoeira groups practising and of course, the drummers playing all day and all night. Also, lots of big mammas walking around in traditional costume...

Tuesday is a religious day and therefore the biggest party night in Salvador. We went to the local mass at 6pm because someone said it was very different to mass at home but it turned out to be very similar but in Portuguese so we slipped out after a while. Then it was on to a giant stairway to one of the bigger churches which made the perfect seating arena for the live band at the bottom, the apparently very famous 'Geronimo'! The whole of Salvador must have been there, it was brilliant. Everyone was dancing and cheering and drinking lots of beer and caipirnhas.

The main square on Tuesday night

After Geronimo we went to a little square packed with bars and people and a samba band on a stage in the middle. There were bum-wiggling (ie samba) competitions on the stage and a dancefloor packed with locals. Someone made the mistake of telling Katie that she could samba so she got cocky and had a dance-off with one of the locals... Bad idea, James took a video (just of the arses, of course!) and Katie just looks ridiculous next to a natural!!

The rest of the night involved street food, more drinking and dancing and drinking and dancing, it was great!

Wednesday was VERY quiet. Managed to get out for something to eat late in the day with the people we'd been out with the night before but didn't last long..!

Thursday afternoon we were leaving for Rio but we managed to fit in a final church in the morning and discovered that we'd really saved the best 'til last. It was the most impressive church we've been in and being the sight-seeing geeks we are, we've been in a few! The whole of the inside was handcarved in wood at the beginning of the 1800's and covered in gold leaf so the whole church seems to glow. We weren't allowed to take pictures but we've bought postcards so you can see when we get home.

Then it was on the bus to airport for the flight to Rio - so excited!!

History (with Wikipedia's help!!) Corner with James:

The Portuguese landed on the southern coast of Bahia in 1500, and claimed the territory for Portugal. In 1549, Portugal established the city of Salvador, on a hill facing the Bay of All Saints. The city and surrounding captaincy served as the administrative and religious capital of Portugal's colonies in the Americas until 1763 when it was succeeded by Rio de Janeiro as the capital.

Bahia was a center of sugar cultivation from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Integral to the sugar economy was the importation of a vast number of African slaves; more than 37% (4,500,000) of all slaves taken from Africa were sent to Brazil, mostly to be processed in Salvador before being sent to work in plantations elsewhere in the country. An estimated 1.3 million slaves were put to work in Bahia before slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, double the number imported into the entire United States of America.

African slaves were enslaved instead of the indigenous peoples as they were less vulnerable to tropical diseases and to tropical conditions. The benefits of importing the slaves all the way from Africa far exceeded the costs. After 2-3 years, slaves worked off their worth, and plantation owners began to make profits from them. Plantation owners made lucrative profits even though there was approximately a 10% death rate per year, mainly due to harsh working conditions. The average life span of a slave was eight years.

Gradually the slaves revolted against their master and escaped forming large communities inland. They survived by growing vegetables and hunting, and by also raiding plantations. At these attacks, they would burn crops, steal livestock, kill slavemasters, and encourage the other slaves to join their communities. Obviously they Portuguese were terrified of this uprising and resorted to what any good-ole colonial power would do and retaliated with extreme violence. The slaves found to be planning to escape to join the slave communities were whipped in the main square in Salvador, called Pelourinho. Pelourinho is a stone column in the middle of the square that slaves were tied to and flogged.

These whippings were extreme not like where a person is flogged maybe ten or twelve times as you may imagine. The number of lashes meted out ranged from 250 to 1,250 - at a rate of 50 per day until the total was met. As one might imagine, wounds and sores became infected, ulcering and festering, and the beatings went on nevertheless, day after day, until the lesions became life-threatening. Only then was punishment was temporarily halted in order to give the castigated time to recuperate, before the lashing would again be renewed. Sometimes the slaves never did recuperate.

Curitiba & Ilha do Mel (Brazil) - Week 28

24th to 29th March

One of deciding factors in coming to Curitiba instead of Santa Caterina in the south was the railway from Curitiba, high on a inland plateau, down to the port of Paranaguá, where we would catch a boat out to Ilha do Mel. The railway runs a 110km passing through dense jungle and clinging periously to the hillside in places. The railway was opened in 1885 to export the southern states crops by ship to Europe. More than 9000 immigrants were hired to build the railway, but apparently more than 50% of these workers died due to the precarious safety conditions. James as you could imagine was over-excited with the 14 tunnels and 30 bridges.


The scenery was amazing and the little village that the train finished at, Morretes, was very pretty and we had a food moment (surprise!). Their speciality is barreado, a spiced meat stew that is cooked in a clay pot for 24 hours. It was apparently invented so that it could be left to cook and the women could party at carnival! It was delicious and the setting was perfect:

From Morretes, we took two buses to Pontal del Sur and then the boat to Ilha do Mel, just as the sun was setting:

This island is absolutely beautiful. There is not a single motor vehicle there so the peace and quiet is amazing. On our first day we walked up to the lighthouse, lounged on deserted beaches with the whitest, finest sand we've ever seen and swam in the crystal clear sea, bliss.


The second day we took the rather longer (an hour in the searing heat) trek up north to the fort there, built in the 1760s:



In the evening, after taking in another beautiful sunset, we went to the beach to meet some other revellers and drank beer and burnt things...


Books we read: Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry - so good it made us cry
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe - excellent

Colonia & Montevideo (Uruguay) - Week 27

20th - 23rd March

It was a strange feeling leaving Buenos Aires. We had grown fond of the city and had a really great time there. It was good to unpack the backpacks for 10 days and have our own space after cliquey tw*ts (insert 'i' or 'a' as you feel necessary) making loads of noise in the hostels we have stayed in the big cities. So it was a little sad to leave, but exciting to be going to a new country and soon to be in Brazil!!

We took the Busquebus boat across the Rio Plata Estuary, which was surprisingly wide almost as wide as the English Channel, to Colonia in Uruguay. It was a massive contrast compared to BA as it was so little, quiet and peaceful. We stayed in Hostel España, an colonial old house with courtyard, for about 6 quid a night.

Looking back to Buenos Aires, you can just see the outline of the skyscrapers

Colonia itself it very picturesque, with low colonial style buildings and old churches on a little peninsula out into Rio Plata. It was founded in 1680 by the Portuguese, Colonia was later disputed by the Spanish who settled on the opposite bank of the river at Buenos Aires. The colony kept changing hands from crown to crown ordering punch-up after punch-up, with lots of treaties signed. The British in the early 1800s used it as a base to smuggle items into Buenos Aires, probably packets of Benson & Hedges knowing the Brits!


More disturbing was the Uruguayan traditional school uniform which consisted of a science apron and a crazy Reg Holdsworth blue bow tie. All the kids from 4 to 14 seemed to be wearing it without exception or embarrassment...


As it is only a little place we moved onto Montevideo after a couple of nights. We were looking forward to going to MV as it does have a famous name. It is a good place to hang out and explore for a couple of days but it is quite small, but then Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America and so its capital was never going to be able to compete with fascinating Buenos Aires. The Uruguayan people were very proud though, probably with all the previous to-ing and fro-ing between Spain & Portugal over the years. Their main man, Artigas, (who was pointed out to us by two people the two times we walked past his statue in one of the "picturesque" squares of Montevideo) roused the population to revolution and formed Uruguay.


We found some interesting buildings though, the above being probably the worst and amazingly allowed to be built in their main square! There was the brother of the Palacio Robalo in BA, built at the same time and designed in a very similar style by the same architect. The architect's idea was that the lighthouse at the top of both buildings could be seen from each other, but in reality with the curvature of the earth over 20 odd miles it was not possible to see the light.


Just before we got to Uruguay they played host to George W, which went down as well as expected with the Latin Americans! Chavez went to Buenos Aires at the same time to have a dig at the American Regime, so unsurprisingly we found this welcome graffiti all around the city...

Out Bush!!

One of the most memorable events in MV was the going to another Tango night. This time singing and no dancing, which pleased James as there was minimum chance of the need to have to get on the dance floor.
The singers were both very passionate, lots of volume and lots of gusto, which probably made up for the obvious lack of outright talent. As we were most likely the only non-locals in there we had the delight of one of their tango singers on their night off coming and talking/singing at us. Interesting chat ensued, more proud Uruguayan passion, and singing (with passion) to Katie, much flirting and completely ignoring James!! Still the evening ended well as we went to the Casino afterwards were Katie with a 10 quid stake (big money on a traveling budget) won big time on the Roulette Wheel!! Well she covered the drinks bill for the night...

The next evening we were due to get the bus into Brazil and so we decided to make sure we had a big lunch, any excuse! The old covered market area was turned into a huge BBQ meat area with more than 30 grill/restaurants packed into the old market. All the locals were in there crowding round the barbeques with their friends sharing big plates of meat and bottles of whiskey. There were lots of men with guitars and groups of friends all over the place were singing passionate tango - it was great! We ate big and smiled lots - the picture below says a thousands words...