More stuff in Rio:
Football match. On Wednesday we went to see a game in the South Americas Cup between Brazil´s top flight club Fluminense and Argentina´s top team. Unfortunatley the Maracana stadium - which holds over 100,000 - is shut for repairs and the match was at a smaller stadium with only 3,000 present, even so they made enough noise and colour for us to imagine what the full experience would be like, what with the drums, coloured flares and HUGE flags, and their passionate advice given to the coach and ref. So passionate in fact that when the home team scored a guy in front of us forgot he was holding a pint of beer and it went up in the air and all over his mate, neither seemed to mind though. Another guy near us was practically having a cardiac arrest, pacing up and down shouting furiously, Luckily the home team won 3-1. Back of the net!
Christ statue. There was finally a break in the cloudy weather and we dashed up to the famous Christ the Redemeer statue that towers over the city. A 20 minute cog train ride takes you up to the summit and Angie joked that it would be typical if there was scaffolding up (as it often seems there is when you are visiting tourist sights). Funnily enough when got to the statue we saw scaffolding wrapped around it´s base! The views were magnificent though and we got some great pics of the iconic monument. Spiceworld!
Botanical Gardens. The botanical gardens are very beautiful with lots of native plants, an amazon section, a japanese garden, an orchid house and various lakes and fountains. But the best bit was monkey river - where we saw dozens of tiny monkeys swinging through the trees and coming down to eat fallen fruit just metres away from us. Then we saw a hummingbird and a toucan, all within about 15 minutes. Best wildlife spotting record yet.
Ipanema beach. On Friday we went to Ipanema beach to catch some rays and strut our stuff with the cool kids, thonged beauties (their slang for thong translates as dental floss!) and gay men in tiny swimming trunks. After about half an hour the sun went in though and it got so chilly Angie had to put her cardi on. Not quite what we´d imagined, but we still had fun singing ´The girl from Ipanema´ incessantly.
Samba club. On Friday night we visited one of the famous Samba clubs in Lapa district. The venue was fantastic - in a big old mansion, spread over 3 floors and was crammed with eclectic collections of antiques - everything from taps, old cash registers and tricylces (hanging from the afters) to a huge old waterwheel and an old british telephone booth. There was a 12 piece live act playing a Jazz samba fusion - Nice! - on the ground floor and a dancey clubby area on the 2nd floor. The music was an improvement on our previous clubbing experiences but still a bit cheesy...
Nightclub. On Saturday we decided to try a proper club like we have in the UK. We choose Bunker94 in Copacabana as it had 3 rooms and seemed best suited for us. It was very similar to what we´re used to. There was a main room playing RnB and Hip Hop, a small room playing Trance type music and another room - that smelt of vomit! - playing their homegrown style of Forro. The sound systems were very LOUD, I said VERY LOUD and they had the minimum amount of lighting in the two smaller rooms. The crowd were very young and trendy, we fitted in brilliantly!
National park. On Sunday we spent the day in Tijuca Forest which is part of a National Park that is within the city limits - the largest urban park in the world infact. It´s Atlantic Rainforest which is older than Amazonian apparently. We had a bit of a problem finding it as we missed the bus stop (we´d clocked another couple of backpackers on the bus who looked like they were also heading to the forest, clutching their guidebook, and thought we´d get off when they did. Unfortunately, they must have thought the same thing about us and as the park entrance was not at all clear we all overshot it by about 15 minutes ride!). When we finally got to the forest we purchased a map and set off to see some of the waterfalls and viewpoints. The jungle was lovely and lush with lots of tarzan-like vines hanging from the branches. But the signposting was atrocious - there was plenty of it, but none of the signposts had the same type of map, some were upside down, others were just part of the park, and they didn´t use the same number system or key as our map. After almost getting lost on the many crisscrossing paths we decided to play it safe and stick to the main road circuit. We headed to a viewpoint. It might have been a viewpoint 10 years ago, now all the trees had grown up and you couldn´t see through. Then we saw some caves and stopped by a waterfall for our picnic. Here we saw some spider monkeys high up in the treetops. After that we headed for another viewpoint - I´m sure this one would have been lovely but by this time we were inside a cloud and could see nothing but swirling mist! On the way back down again we stopped at an artifical lagoon and had a very close encounter with a Quati - a member of the raccoon family - who was very sweet and curious and snuffled around in the undergrowth while we crept closer and closer. Darren got within about 15 feet. Then the little furry snouter decided to wobble off to his burrow and that was it. But it made our long wet walk back to the bus stop worthwhile!
Sambadrome. We visited the famous Sambadrome where the carnival finale takes place each year. Its a purpose built site that seats thousands and thousands. We did the proper tourist thing and had photos taken with carnival outfits on (see piccies).
Crime and homelessnes. We haven´t mentioned the crime here in Brazil. It´s oft mentioned that it´s really dangerous but to be honest we haven´t seen or experienced anything bad yet (hmm, only 2 days to go here and now we might have jinxed ourselves!) . There are loads of Police here, Tourist police, Military Police, Federal Police and most of them are togged up like robocop with body-armour, guns and 3 foot long batons. We saw a cash machine being re-filled and the guy had two minders with automatic shotguns. The blocks of flats here are all fenced off with 24 hour security at the entrance gate. There are loads of homeless here, and they must be pretty badly off if they can´t even afford to live in the favelas. They range from kids of 8 up to OAPs of 80. We saw a ouple with all their possessons on a massive trolley and many mothers with babies, it´s very sad. The rich Brazillians literally have to step over them as they leave their luxury gated apartments.
Cheap hotels. Rio is much more expensive than Salvador and the other places we´ve been to in the north, so after 3 nights in our lovely hostel double room, we had to move to a budget hotel. We spent a few hours looking round for one and thought we´d chosen the best of a bad bunch. But when we checked in they showed us to a room that was different to the one we´d seen. It was tiny, and smelt of stale cigaretes. It had a very narrow double bed featuring a plastic mattress, moth-eaten sheets and kind of inflatable plastic pillows. The huge spooky dark-wood wardrobe dominated the room. There was no glass in the windows, only big wooden shutters. The rest of the hotel was like a cross between the ones in Taxi Driver and The Shining. It even had 2 strange looking little girls who suddenly popped out of a laundry basket as we walked down the endless narrow corridors to breakfast! We don´t mean to sound too moany - it was cheap and at least it was clean. But after 2 nights (with building work starting at 7am right underneath us, making the bed shake) we escaped to a much nicer slightly pricier hotel just along the road. At least there was room to walk around the bed in this one.
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