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Rio Carnival, Christ, footy and stuff...
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So, I arived back in Rio at around 9pm on 14th - the bus ride was really chilled, just around 4 hours with air conditioning and luxury seats! I got a cab from the bus station and had my first brush with the Rio evil that everyone keeps going on about!! The stories everyone tells about being mugged or ripped off in Rio are just amazing - you wouldn´t believe the number of people from the hostel who claim to have been mugged!! Anyway, this cabbie was the closest I came to being robbed - the fare should be R$20 but he was trying to charge me R$49 so I had my first arguement in my finest Portugese, which consisted of me repeating veinte alot and him repeating stuff I didn`t understand!! Anyway, I ended up chucking R$25 at him, got out and walked off which was a pretty successful end to the dispute!!
I checked back into Mellow Yellow and went to the bar to see if Jen was around, had a couple of beers and went to bed.
15th Feb - the hostel put on a `deserted beach` trip - around 50 of us were taken by coach to a beach outside Rio and then to another one a bit further away which we had to hike 40 minutes to get to - it was a really nice hike, but the beach was a bit duff - the waves were so big I nearly lost my bikini bottoms as soon as the first wave hit me!! It was a groovy day though, the bus was supposed to pick us up at 6.30pm but it didn`t turn up til nearly 8pm so we sat and had some drinks and chatted whilst we waited which was very amusing. An American guy called James was entertaining us pretty well.
This guy thinks that the Danish and the Dutch are the same people so you can imagine how he could be quite entertaining!!
I went to a pay per kilo place with Saralyn (Canadian) for food when we got back and then had a pretty chilled evening in the bar.
16th Feb -The boat trip / booze cruise. Everyone from the hostel was on this one and a few other ex-Mellow-Yellowers too. The boat trip went from Gloria and chugged around Sugarloaf for a bit and stopped for a couple of hours for people to dive in and swim. All the booze on the boat was free - caipirhinias or beer so things started to get quite messy fairly quickly! The centre of the boat became a dance floor - not a particularly safe one tho`, it wasn´t long before someone fell off and did her ankle in - poor girl was on crutches for the rest of the carnival!! The boat then took a little tour over to the big bridge thing - still never found out what that was, it looked quite impressive though - there`s photos of it!!
We got back to the hostel at around 8.30pm and most people went to bed because Friday night is the best night to go to Lapa for the street party after midnight. I went to the bar fore a bit, decided a snooze was in order - went ot lie down and next thing I knew it was 5am!! Wasn`t too upset tho`- at least I went to Lapa before so I didn`t totally miss out.
17th Feb - Went to a football match today - totally the best thing I`ve done in Rio!! We saw Vasco play Luminense which was a local derby. The atmosphere was just electric - the Vasco fans drumming and chanting and waving huge flags.
We had to keep moving when the guys held up the flags because we couldn`t see past them - the stadium wasn`t full so it wasn`t a problem. The drinks sellers come around all the time so we had an endless supply of beer, popcorn and all sort of other stuff. Romeiro came on for about 20minutes - I`d like to pretend I know who he is, but really I don`t!! The only stuff I know is that he was the guy who did the cradling the baby thing after he scored a goal at the world cup a few years back, and that he`s just 10 goals away from beating Pele`s 1000 goal record....so I guess he`s quite good. The final score was 4-4 and the last goal came from a Vasco penalty in the last few minutes so it was really exciting. It was such a brilliant day - I`m gonna try to get to a match in Argentina too if I can.
Went out in the evening - (at midnight as usual - night life in Rio is always post-midnight) there were supposed to be some street parties and carnival stuff going on at Copacobana & Ipanema so loads of us went hunting for them, but it seemed that either they never existed or they were already finished so we went to Emporio Bar - nice and cheezy, Bon Jovi stylie music and heaps of tourists!! Met a couple of fun girls from London so drank with them til 4am.
18th Feb - Finally got some washing done - clean clothes!! How exciting!! Did some chores today and then went to find the gay parade on Ipanema - I have to say, this whole carnival thing isn`t quite what I expected - the gay parade was rubbish - there were a few great looking trannys around but it was really just big crowd walking along the road behind a bus with a band on!! I had imagined that carnival fever would just take over the city for the 4 days, but it seems you really have to hunt for it!! The main parade with all the amazing costumes happens in the samba drome and you have to have tickets - it goes on from 9pm til around 6am. The hostel package at Mellow Yellow ran from 14th til 20th and they very kindly bought us tickets for the samba drome for 19th so we go to that all night and then have to check out next morning! ...helpful!!
Anyway, although it`s not quite what I expected, there is always something going on in Rio so it`s fine.
19th Feb - As I need to chcek out on 20th and they don`t have space for me to book another night, I decided to go book a bus ticket out of Rio. Met up by chance with Saralyn, Chris and Noelle at the hostel spa and they were just about to leave for the bus station to book tickets so I tagged along. We were all heading the same way so managed to book the last 4 tickets on the bus to Iguazu, leaving 1.30pm on 20th. A 24 hour bus ride, cost R$190 (around 48 GBP) - hoorah!
We went for a pizza and then Noelle and I took a taxi to see the Christ statue - it is massive!!
The view from there is incredible - you can see right across the city. The cabbie waited for us to take a load of photos and then took us back to Copacobana.
We went to the market on Copacobana and I bought a new top to replace the one I lost on Ilha Grande. I lost Noelle somewhere along the way so made my way back to the hostel.
Had a shower and headed up to the bar to meet everyone to go to the samba drome. Everyone was really excited and we headed out on the metro together.
There were loads of people dragging their costumes on the metro too. We arrived and made our way through the streets past all the street vendors etc, people having shaving foam fights and messing about. The hostel booked us the cheap seats in sector 13 so we had to walk all the way around to the other side of the drome. It was so crowded, a few of us waited to use the loos (much like festival loos) and then went to find a good place to stand to watch the show - no clue where most people went. I ended up standing with an Irish girl from the hostel and we eventually found a few other people too. We went for a Bob`s hot dog - there are Bob`s burger shops everywhere in Brazil - it seems they`re more popular than MacDonalds. The food tastes just as disgusting though!!
The show was amazing - the costumes and floats were sooo extravigent. We could see a big TV screen from where we were standing so we were able to see what the costumes looked like close up on there before they went past us which was good as we werèn`t close enough to the action to see them properly as they went past us. We stayed til around 3.30am and then headed off. The metro runs all night during carnival so we walked back all the way around and jumped on that.
20th Feb - Checked out of Mellow Yellow just before noon, bumped into Emma from Trindade briefly, just arriving but had to rush off and jump in the cab to the bus station - Emma if you`re reading this, sorry had to leg it, cab was waiting outside - hope you had fun in Rio!!
We got on the bus to Iguazu and were really disappointed - the air con was rubbish and the seats were rubbish and didn`t recline very well!! Decided never to use Pluma bus company again!! I can sleep pretty well on any mode of transport so it wasn´t too bad - the 24hours went pretty quickly. The pit stops were pretty regular too, and they were quite nice places too which was a bonus.
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