Rio de Janeiro (Eng. river of January) is a stunning location, where rich and poor, black and white, criminal and saint all seem to come together in one place.
I nearly didn't make it there as I sat at the airport waiting for my flight to start boarding, only to find the gate had been changed from the boarding pass. When another flight started boarding I asked if it was mine and they told me to go to another gate. I was just about the last one on board, but hadn't been called up yet. So from now on I wont always believe my boarding pass and keep an eye on the screens.
About 5 hours and two time zones later we were in Rio. Unfortunately some of my luggage didn't make it and I had to fill in some forms to help them find it. We got a taxi to our room which was about 2 blocks back from Copocabana beach. It was pretty posh, with people dressed up in posh uniforms pressing the lift button, to save us the effort. :-S We had a bit of a rest then went down to the beach for a look. It felt a bit weird lately because of the Peter Allen song "At the Copa-Copocabana" ... a bit sad really listening to that song in your head. Later on that night we had a great meal with some really well cooked vegetables which was a welcome change.
In Rio, people speak Portugese, not Spanish, and even though some words are the same in Spanish, most are not apparently, so we were back to being dumb, helpless tourists again with almost no language skills. We did learn 'obrigado' meaning 'thank you', which we used a lot.
The next morning I had a fresh juice from the shop across the road and later we did a tour of the city. The tour cost us about $200 Reals .. $130 Au, with just Kim and I being driven around in a car. Our guide spoke English and he took us to some of the more iconic parts of Rio. The first was the statue of Christ the Redeemer. Unfortunately it was foggy the day we were there, but that added a little spookiness to the photos, so it was still good. Heaps of tourists there as you might imagine. We drove around the city, through historic and commercial areas. Rio seems a bit like Sydney or Hobart, built around hills with lots of water. We also went up to the famous Sugarloaf on a cable car. It is a spectacular up view from the top and a James Bond film made here.
Our hotel was fairly expensive and one of the blokes on the front desk seemed rude and disinterested, so we walked around where we were and asked a bit about prices. In the end we found another hotel in the same street, with a balcony and wifi internet in the rooms for about 50 reals cheaper than where we were. They also had free breakfasts and blokes to push the elevator button for us.
We went to the beach a few times while here and spent some time trying to hire some bikes. It was really hot here when we first got here, say 34-37 degrees so we sad around drinking beer under shade near the beach ... as you do. The sand was too hot to walk on in bare feet. Lots of people were playing volleyball. The water was quite cold though which provided a nice contrast. Where the waves came in the drop off was quite steep and you would be in deep water quickly. One highlight was a bloke that tried to sell me a hammock for $130 initially, in the end I talked him down to $20, because the last thing I wanted was a hammock after already buying 5 in Nicaragua.
One day we took a tour to the Favelas where the famed underclasses of Rio live, right next to the richest people. Our tour guide told us about how everything in Rio is in reverse. The poor live on the hills with the best views, the rich live in the flat areas. People are safe because of the crime. We were told that drug dealers provide security to keep the police out and on one occasion drug dealers captured some police that were robbing a bank! The Favelas don't exist on maps yet house thousands of people. Their houses don't meet any building standards. These people provide the cheap labour in the city. We headed back on the bus and got dropped off near the beach in the rain. We had umbrellas but it was torrential and very windy. We waited for the lights to cross about six lanes on traffic and eventually got back to the shops and got some cover.
Thankfully it was about 28 degrees.
Our last adventure in Rio was the long wait to get on the cruise ship. There were about 5 cruise ships in and there were not enough customs staff to process the people traffic. So we queued up, made small talk with some people, got shifted from one room to another, then after about six hours got on the boat. It was a great feeling settling in to our cabin or "stateroom" and looking forward to two more weeks of sailing around the southern tip of South America.
