Rio

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Trip Start May 07, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Jan 06, 2009 Next
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  Rio de Janeiro, State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Thursday, November 20, 2008

Hi everyone

Well, we got to Rio pretty quickly. As it was a national holiday when we decided to go (!) the airport was heaving and the queues for check-in were phenomenal but moved quickly thankfully. The flight was only 45mins so no sooner had we taken off then the crew were throwing hot cheesy dough balls at us and pouring out tea and then we were landing again. We were very lucky with the weather so the arrival into Rio was scenically incredible. Just stunning. The domestic airport to which we were arriving was tiny and the runway was on the ocean and so involved a skim over the water before touching down on the tarmac!! I thought we were going to kiss the fish at one point!

Livia at the travel agency in Sao Paulo had booked us a Hotel. We were lucky to get a room as Rio was throbbing, apparently. Livia told us it was a historic building in Copacabana (yes, like the Barry Mannilow song!). Historic building sounds good we thought, more interesting than a 1960's concrete disaster. When we got there, the Hotel was indeed central. It faced the massive, sweeping strip of Copacabana golden sands with beach cafes, sweaty men playing volleyball.....Let me just pause there for a moment.........

.... Ok...so....roller bladders, cruising cars, joggers, dog walkers...reminded me of Miami Beach. Just gorgeous. Leading on from Copacabana beach further up was Ipanema beach. Yes, I drove David insane with my Barry Mannilow rendition and my "Girl From Ipanema" whistling! I thought it was funny...

Strangely, the 'Historic Hotel' was a bit like a Dr Who Tardis.

Our mental bathroom in Rio!

It transported you back in time. We got transported back to India. It was both hell on earth yet farcically funny. Our room, the size of an airport, was furnished minimally.. The carpet was olive green and smelt of a Nursing Home. Our bathroom was just like many we had stayed in in India. Beautiful blue tiles (see photo) but they gave you a headache after 5mins of being in there. A delayed reaction to the hot tap spurted water out at your groin!! (David: Something I discovered. Much to Lois' amusement) The safe in our room was like a Victorian jewellery box!! Just a metal box with a pull down lid and we had to put our name on a list in reception to get the padlock! In case we ran off with it!? (David: There's something very satisfying, comedy wise, with the idea of someone stealing the padlock to a safe.) You had to break your thumb every time you forced the metal lever down on the loo to flush it. On a positive note....however, the view from our window was stunning, facing the long, sweeping beaches and the shower (in the old huge enamel bath) was very powerful but the ceiling was covered in mould.

Architecturally, the building was beautiful with marble and ceramics and columns and mosaics but it was just so tired and decaying and desperately in need of a make over. Really sad. It's a vicious circle though: if you get no guests, you have no spare cash to update the place and if you don't update the place, you won't get the guests. Sometimes you just have to risk it if you want to stay afloat.

David and Ipanema Beach

It was the afternoon, so we immediately went out to find alternative accommodation. We threw open all the windows in our room to rid the wee smell and then walked along the beach, in the sun. It was just beautiful. Full of life, sunshine and freedom. And Transexuals! One man/woman was black as a witch's hat and must have been at least 6 foot 5 tall with massive mammograms and a rather fine package too underneath his grass skirt - (he quite happily stood in the middle of the beach road scratching his balls and arse while chatting obliviously to his friends!) So funny. (David: Reminded me of the hippos in Walt Disney's Fantasia.)

We went into Hotel after Hotel along the front. Unlike our Historic Hotel, these were modern, big and bright. They were all fully booked though. And oddly most had a stream of blacked out Mercedes and Limos lined up outside with waiting chauffeurs...was there something going on in Rio this week end? We walked some more, watched the burning red sunset over the ocean and then went for something to eat.

Back at the Hotel, we experienced the final straws that broke the camel's back. Could there be more problems?? Only one bedside lamp worked (I think they were bought on ebay..) The socket on my side was broken. Also, as lovely as it was the Hotel facing the beach and the main road, the noise, however, was absolutely brain-crushing. It was almost 12am and still the traffic roared and reverberated along, the beach cafes were still wining and dining, people were laughing, singing, taxis were hooting, dogs were barking.

Beautiful sunset, Ipanema Beach

We may as well not have windows! It was a great atmosphere outside but not when you want to sleep. We decided pulling the metal shutters down (at least the 2 that worked anyway!) may just block out some of the noise. A yank on the fabric pulley resulted in one shutter thundering down at the speed of light outside our window with a metallic cacophony and staying down forever as yanking on it simply resulted in the pulley flying loose out of its socket and out of our hand!! Great. The 3rd and final window pulley worked a treat...but it was a bit like trying to pull a freight liner with a piece of ribbon! The noise outside was still as deafening. We resigned ourselves to the fact that sleep would be a rare commodity that night. In a room which smelt like a Nursing home and where the air conditioning was a simple brown box on the wall that looked like a 1970's gas heater! There was just the one switch: On and Off.

God knows how, but we did get a good night's sleep. Eventually. The bed was actually very comfortable. Even if the sheets did smell of damp! Worse still, the towels smelt of cat's wee. Which is always a lovely treat when you're dripping wet. We made a very swift decision then to spend the whole morning finding alternative accommodation for our next 2 nights in Rio. Coming back to this room at the end of a long day would be grim and pathologically depressing. It seriously was like being in India again. Bizarre.

We found a Hotel up the road from us. It was modern and bright. Only one standard room was left with no view.

Santa Teresa Tram

No problem, we told the receptionist. The view was of a concrete wall. And the kitchen was below so the smell of food wafted up regularly. Well....Anything was better than Hotel Historic.

The weather had turned and was now grey and rainy. We went to Saint Teresa. A small town on a hill that overlooks Rio. Cobbled streets, colourful houses and an artists haven. To get there involved a taxi to the bottom of the hill and then a rickety, wooden tram. The tram was famous in Rio and fantastic fun. It could only hold about 50 people but if you could hung on the metal frame outside you didn't have to pay the fare! This was a popular activity for children of all ages! As the tram rattled through the steep winding cobbled streets of Saint Teresa, children sprinted along trying to leap onto the tram filling the air with giggles.

After the 20min journey, the heavens opened on us so we ran into a little bar and drank a cold beer while we waited for the rain to stop. Saint Teresa is just a beautiful place. Charm, colour, history, breathtaking views over Rio. We had lunch at a fantastic little restaurant. Again, a spur of the moment encounter. Inside the small room were basic wooden tables and chairs and a crowd of people all slurping beer and chatting loudly in Portuguese. We found a table at the back and no sooner had we ordered some food then the 4-piece jazz band started up, who were absolutely fantastic, especially the saxophonist. Brilliant. We spent a good couple of hours there drinking beer and tapping our fingers and toes and "woo-hooo-ing".

Later that night, we walked along the seafront where the night market was on.

Jazz band and lunch

An endless row of stalls selling jewellery, paintings, games, clothes, everything. Then David and I sat at a beach café listening to a woman play the guitar underneath the Rio stars while we ate chips and drank coconut juice from...er...the coconut. Scrummy stuff.

The next day was again grey and raining! We wanted to go and see the famous Jesus statue but the clouds were shrouding the top of the mountain so visibility would have been nil. We decided to hold out for tomorrow. Had we brought the weather from England?! Instead, we went up 396metres instead to nearby Sugar Loaf Mountain by cable car. Apparently, Sugar Loaf Mountain is so called because it resembles...er....a sugar loaf. Ok........The cable car was large, probably holding about 50 of us, rammed in like sardines in a tin. At the top, the view was absolutely outstanding. Overlooking the harbour, the bizarre 'ocean airport' and miles of small communities scattered around the mountains like confetti around a church.

We also decided to go to the Carmen Miranda museum. On the map, this appeared to be 'round the corner'. Realistically, it was a 40 minute walk. Right. The walk was great though as we saw lots of Rio architecture, local children jumping into Rivers from bridges and stretches of golden sandy beaches fringed with chugging traffic congesting the streets. We ended up in a small park. The map was useless. So we asked, what we thought, were a policeman and policewoman on a golf buggy riding through the park. They were actually park rangers.

Free Tram fare-dodgers!

As the policeman tried to tell us in Spanish "left, right, cross over, left again..." his female colleague suddenly signalled to David and I to just jump onto the back of the golf buggy and so they then personally escorted us to the Carmen Miranda Museum, as we drove over pavements, past bus stops and mingled with traffic while locals stared at us open-mouthed, wondering why two tourists were sitting on the back of a Park Ranger Golf Buggy and laughing!! Such a laugh.

The Carmen Miranda museum was a complete shock. This is the actress, who moved to Brazil from Portugal as a child and who famously wore fruit on her head with bright red lipstick and a huge smile. She was a beautiful Hollywood actress and reputedly promoted Brazil all over the world. In recognition of her fame and fortune then, Brazil decided it would be highly respectful to honour her achievements by housing her jewellery, eclectic and wonderful costumes and brief life history in....a bunker. Yes folks. Carmen Miranda's name lives on in a grey concrete bunker, the size of a stationery cupboard, surrounded by a children's playground and a completely inconspicuous sign that it was in fact the museum. (David: Clearly they don't want terrorists blowing up her fruity headwear!) Blink and you'll walk past it. Bizarre and terribly sad.

That night, we had booked to see a Samba show. We got collected at the Hotel and, along with two Spanish men, we went for some pre-show dinner at a Brazilian buffet restaurant. The food was fantastic and tons of it.

Back of my head looking out to Rio!

After dinner a South African couple joined our mini bus and so the 6 of us got taken to the theatre to see some Samba dancing. It was a fantastic show. Really excellent with men dripping in sequined bikinis and exotic feathers posing for photos with tourists. I mean it was a real tacky tourist haunt but good fun anyway. The highlight, for David and I, were two female dancers who obviously hated the sight of each other. The really smiley girl waved her feather boa into the un-smiling dancer's face which resulted in the un-smiling dancer having to spit out feathers mid-dance with a seriously peed off face and then when the lights went out the smiley dancer grabbed the un-smiling dancer's arm and dragged her into the wings like a dog dragging a rabbit into a bush!! Really funny. It had been a really great night.

The next day, we checked out of our Hotel, left our luggage with them and decided to go and explore the city. Our flight was not until 11pm so we had a little bit of time to kill! We walked...and walked...and walked...some more. We walked around a massive lake in Rio fringed with historic buildings and shiny high rises, we got some lunch at a great restaurant with a beautiful buffet and then we tried to find the Botanical Gardens but must have missed the turning for it. All day, the weather was grey and miserable and it rained. But it was warm. The rain suddenly pelted down and David and I got absolutely and completely soaked to the skin. We were so drenched there just wasn't any point in seeking shelter now as we were so close to our Hotel. The rain never stopped. I was wearing a white vest which was now like a wet t-shirt competition and David's linen shirt was just tissue paper. We got to our Hotel and the Manager who had been so helpful and friendly during our stay laughed at us as we approached reception, looking like a couple of drowned dogs. We asked him if he did day rates so we could just have a quick shower before our flight that night. They didn't have any day rates but after some deep discussion with his colleague, he agreed we could have free use of a room someone had recently checked out of. The maid hadn't been in there yet though so he gave us two clean towels to use. So good of him. The room turned out to be fine and the previous occupant had obviously left in a rush as all towels were unused and still hanging up in the bathroom. It felt good to be clean and dry again. (David: The rain continued after we left Rio and we've since learnt that there have been several people killed near to Rio in flash floods!!)

We got to the airport eventually. Our flight was delayed slightly but it was ok. We were flying back to Sao Paulo for our onward flight to Lima, Peru. Rio had been great fun and a fantastic place. We hadn't really thrown ourselves into the whole Rio-partying thing. The weather was grim. We weren't really in partying mood. It was just a taster of Rio. We knew we would return.

Peru turned out to be absolutely beautiful and a complete surprise to both of us.

Love, us xxxxxxxxx

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Rickety bridge on Sugarloaf Mountain!	Great weather and a cable car	Sugarloaf mountain jungle walk	Lovely red flowers...and my bottom!
Yes, it's a tree Lois...	Cable Car wires in the fog	Kids jumping into the river	Carmen Miranda Museum!!!
Acrobat at samba show	Exquisite dress	Samba costumes	Rio's sand sculptures!
David's sandcastles are better!	Rio seafront samba dancing!	weird fruit	...and me saturated in the rain!
David saturated in the rain

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