The Marvelous City
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2008
1
3
23
Trip End
Sep 22, 2008
Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
Monday, June 9, 2008
On Thursday I took a tour that the hostel arranged, with Brazil Expedition, and I joined several others from other hostels in Ipanema to go around the Rio sights. It was well worth it! First stop was Pedra Bonita, which is a mountain sorta thing, and part of the tour was to hike up and down it. Justin, this guy from Washington DC and I opted for the posh route and didn't do the hiking - but drove up and hang-glided down. This was tandem of course, so there was a proper pilot who knew what he was doing going along with me. I loved it - a little nervous at first, but 15minute flight was so fun and had amazing views of Rio. It started 1500ft on Pedra Bonita and we landed on the beach! I would definitely do it again, maybe going up in extremeity.. bungee jumping.. skydiving.. perhaps? After this we visited the famous Christ the Redeemer statue, which is apparenly one of the new voted-for wonders of the world. It was massive and had great views over rio. Although it was a clear day, the views looked a bit misty because of the pollution / smog which is a shame really. Santa Teresa was our next stop, one of the oldest towns I think, and it was the nice part of the city. We ate at this great place that serve Rio's best feijoada's - the most common dish consisting of rice, beans, some kinda pork thing - which tasted good. On our way back we stopped by at the steps in lapa to view an amazing work of art - a constantly changing sculpture where tiles are continually added and replaced on the steps. There are tiles from all around the world, and his signature thing is a pregnant woman. I met the artist himself and he is a simple man, he told me that one of the 'Snoopy doggy' videos was shot on the steps - he meant that song by Snoop Dogg and Pharell was shot there, so its pretty cool. On that note, I've seen loooooooooads of cool street art in Rio and took pics of a few. The last stop was sugar loaf but I decided not to go as it was getting dark and I'd get mroe out of it in the day. That night I went around a few bars/pubs in Ipanema and Leblon, met a few cool people and ended up walking nearly 6km!
I started Friday with a jog by the beach which was really cool. I decided to visit the sugar loaf and took longer than most people, just relaxing and enjoying the views. I came back to copacabana, ate in some local place where the food is sold by the kilo, and hit the beach near Arpoador rocks, by Ipanema as it's nicer there. Friday night I hanged out in the Hostel, the bar provided me with a free Caipirinha, a sugar-cane spirit with lime and sugar, which was cool. Most of us from the Hostel then headed out to Lapa, which was an immense night!! People were dancing and drinking in the streets, loud music could be heard from every venue - some live music/samba type, brazilian funk, basa nova, reggaeton.. streets were so crowed, many stalls selling drinks and it was just one big party. We got back to the hostel around 5am, after having such a good time.
I woke up not long after 7am Saturday morning, unusally full of energy. So I went for a run down towards Ipanema as I usually do for a couple of hours, making it back in time for the complimentary breakfast. I decided I've had lots of fun in Rio, and felt like moving on as funds were getting low and I needed to get somewhere cheaper asap. So I said my goodbyes to everyone at the hostel - which was really good and really clean btw.. and set off on a bus to Foz de Iguassu.. a 24 hour bus ride!!
