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Rio night life
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The people here never sleep.
We arrived on Saturday morning, and were told that Lapa was the happening place at night.
Since we and Szymon had taken overnight travel to get here we took a nap mid afternoon to get ready for the evening. We took a bus out at 10:30 and got there around 11.
Lapa is a few streets, packed with bars and clubs, which is not that different from Toronto´s club district. What is different, is that the action is outside on the street. There are thousands of people just hanging out outside, drinking beers, listening to music outside each bar, dancing, and just partying. We spent a good few hours just walking around with drinks, and stopping here or there to listen to music or dance on the street.
At one point we decided to head into a club, and a small crowd was getting increasing closer to Szymon. Malwina and I instinctively told him to be careful and watch his pockets. He kinda shrugged us off. Within 90 seconds, three guys got really tight to him, even though there was tons of space to pass by, and they all simultanously brushed up against him/bumped into him, and then walked away. As we kept watching them, they gave each other looks and shook their heads. Szymon had just been pickpocketed! He did not even know. We had to tell him, and he did not believe us. He checked his pockets and fortunately the only thing he had was a free map that the hostel had given him. That was now gone. The boys must have been pissed that all that effort and set up and such a clean job just to get a free map of RIO.
We ended up at a club that was playing some cool Hip Hop and R&B music and we were the only white people in the place with the exception of 4 tall blonde dudes from Germany. They all had long hair and were progressively taller from 6´ to about 6´6´´ They seemed to be everywhere we went all week long. We just chilled on the streets until we were quite exhausted and headed home. A quick stop on the beach to see what it is like at night, and back to the hostel where there was a huge party at the bar next door. We had to check that out, and hung out at what later turned out to be an Angolan aniversary party.We were fast asleep by no later than 5 am!
The next night was a big favela party, where the locals go. The hostel organizes a trip there and picked us up at 11 pm to head out. We were brought to this giant club, with maybe 3000 people. We had a VIP section upstairs with cheep drinks and some other gringos. Great music, great atmosphere, tons of people of all sorts, heterosexeuals, homosexuals, transexuals, metrosexuals, bisexuals and any other sexual you can think of. All dancing, no attitude, no nasty stuff, just a great big party with live DJ.
At one point there was a dance competition on stage. 14 or so sexy guys were brought up and had a bit of a dance-off. This was MCd by a very flaming dude who had the whole place just cracking up. He must have been very funny in Portugese cuz the crowd loved him. They even had 2 kids about 13 years old competing. Fantastic dancers and they did this move that none of the older guys could do. They sat down on the ground, hands on their chests and started bum-jumping/sliding forward REALLY fast. it almost looked like they were on a magic carpet. Incredible. Szymon and I tried the next day at the hostel. It hurt, and we sucked.
Towards the end of evening, Szymon noticed one of the other VIP (local with sling on his arm) was peeing and had semiautomatic 9mm sticking out of his pants. Nice to know we are in the safe section. :) The party ended around 4:30, and we got back in time to see the sunrise on the beach. Check out the picks of this.
We also had a night out at a Foro party, which sounds like a cross between polish folk music and german polkafest. The funny thing is that the club was packed with young people, all dancing in couples the Foro dance (kinda Samba beat, way different steps). They were incredible dancers and when we tried this thing, and failed miserably, people would come up to us to help us out, show us and try to teach us. The friendliness here never stops!
The music was played all night be live bands with accordians, drums and some sort of string instruments. We left the Foro party at a modest 3:30. On the way back, we passed by some small soccer fields, that are used for 7 on 7 soccer. They are kinda like larger tennis courts. At 4 am, 7 of these were packed with teams in uniforms playing futbol. They love their futbol here!
Szymons last night we headed to a Samba club. Fantastic drum beats as they gear for carnival and everyone was dancing like mad. How those girls shake those thing that quickly really is incredible!
From here we headed to Lapa where we met up with a bunch of people from the hostel and went to a few different clubs and bars, and headed to the beach to make sure that Szymon really enjoyed himself on his last night. About 10 of us chilled and had some drinks until about 9 am.
All this night life would not have been possible if Szymon did not come here. HE was the life of the party and we were so happy to see someone from home and be able to hear what life is like back there! Thanks for a week to Remember Szymek!
If anyone can find some time to come out somewhere, let us know when and where and we will do our best to schedule the trip around that!
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