Smellies Stay
Trip Start
Jan 18, 2007
1
9
17
Trip End
Jul 01, 2008
Foz de Iguacu,
State of Parana,
Brazil
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Sound Track: Stuff n Shit: Cos Stuff n Shit is cool.
Hello everyone. Firstly the little title at the top is a Nathan Barlism so don't get worried. We're not that kind of family...... Any more.
It's been three weeks since I last sent any kind of message of how I am doing.
This wee blog entry has been cut in two as it is probably a bit long. Well this one already is.
I will start with my little birthday section which includes two of my top ten favourite people in the world.
First and foremost is my Nan she's been celebrating in Latvia with me sister and Mum. So Happy Birthday Nan.
Next up is Bobek. My big brother, he's taking the next step to 30 on Friday when he turns 28. Have a goodn you massive shit.
Other birthdays include. Max K and Sarah TC of the Canterbury cru celibrating on the 11th and 13th respectively.
Natasha P.K will be celebrating on the 23rd too.
Happy Birthday the lot of ya.
From birthdays to anniversaries featuring my another two in my top ten people in the world. Mum and Dad, happy 29th . This year I'm sure you'll be celebrating in the customary 29th Anniversary way with. Some kind of thing and stuff, etc.
Right pleasantries over with.
Last time I updated you I was awaiting the arrival of my sister from England. She arrived, late. On top of the 12 hour delay she had been leg to endure at Charles De Gaulle airport due to missing her connection flight his blame can be laid firmly at the feet of Air France. Her next flight was the 2 hours late landing. Really this was no sweat off my nuts and I just had to sit around waiting. It was Ellie we should all spare a thought for who was not only delayed by a very long time. She was also feeling unwell. On top of this she was given the Vegan (See "Evil Creepy Weirdo" on wikipedia for a definition on these putrid beasts) option, which by all accounts consisted of some paper, some screwed up tissue and some damp cardboard. The staple parts of a Vegans diet.
She was obviously very tired when she arrived so we just had a little walk down the beach and planned our time, kinda.
That afternoon felt a strange numb feeling in her leg. Now it was probably nothing we thought but I had to pipe up with it could be DVT, which was then compounded by Dan saying it could be DVT. We decided if she was alive in the morning we'd take her to a hospital.
The next morning we went to Ipanima hospital. We were clearly too poor looking and they turned us away to go to a place which apparently had the only A & E in town. This was clearly a lie but we went anyway.
After telling the receptionist what was wrong with Ellies numb leg we were sent through to the bones section. Strange we thought nothing to do with bones. The doctor then asked if it hurt at all. Ellie said no, it as just numb. Said in both English and Portuguese. "Ok then" the doctor said "Go and have an x-ray and come back. "
OK pretty odd we thought seeing as its nothing to do with the bones n shit what's the point in an X-Ray?
We waited for a bit. Then decided we should try at the other hospital again saying we weren't poor. It didn't work. We went back to the hospital jumped the queue for the X-Ray, jumped the queue to see the doctor and Ellie was prescribed some nice tablets probably to thin the blood, we didn't really know though.
That dealt with we went out for pizza and looked on to what we should do the next day.
We had decided to beach then go up Sugar Loaf. Now, I have recently discovered beach work great as a verb as well. "Shall we beach?" Meaning lets go tan ourselves and swim in the sea.
We went up the Sugar Loaf in time for the sunset which was quite obviously fantastic and something I think I could do 1000 times without ever getting bored of it.
What happened right after my second visit up the Sugar Loaf however is something that I would like to stop happening.
As we were returning home we were set upon by a little runt with a knife asking for money. Whilst the knife was thrust in my general direction I tried to calm him down a bit whilst getting my wallet out to get the money I had. A kid then turned up and took Ellies phone from her pocket and they then both ran. For the second time of being robbed I've managed to keep my fairly expensive camera. On this occasion I kept my camera, Ellies camera, my phone and my wallet. The theiving little c*nts just took off with the money and Ellies phone. I didn't fancy being the tough guy A. because I didn't want Smellie getting hurt and B. I've seen the state of the hospitals here.
So a great first few days on holiday for my sister went to hospital, got robbed. The bad luck ended there though thankfully as we were going to see Fluminense in their final home game of the season the next day.
It was a great game. Fluminense beat Juventude 3-2 with a couple of really fantastic goals. Each when we were in a losing position. It was a very entertaining game. I was quite sad come the final whistle as this would be my penultimate trip to the Maracana and the next wasn't due to be a football game it was a concert. I was really stupidly happy we'd won because this was the final time I'd ever see my beloved Fluminense play again and I would need to find and Asian team to support. Ellie and I decided on a rule. If you are a real football fan you will have only 1 team you support. This will be the only team you can truly love. You can however put strong support behind any second team from a different continent as the teams are unlikely to meet at any point. However it is ok to enjoy the football team within your continent.
We were treated with glorious weather to go up and see Christ up on the hill. We decided that after seeing our other older brother we'd go and trouble the decorative cows lining the city as they were being taken away the next day and I'd only taken pictures of about 4 in the 6 weeks they'd been there. As were we, we were off to Foz De Iguacu.
As a farewell to Rio diner we had a Cervantes. It had a bit of a twist on this occasion.
When ordering Ellie was feeling like a massive gay and didn't want to eat a whole sandwich so she decided she wanted some cheese. I asked if the cheese on the menu was the same as the stuff on the beach. "Yes, of course" Mr waiter tells me using his cute chubby face and little bow tie to fool us into thinking that we were certainly not getting the cheese from the beach. Oh no my friends it was something special. The cheese plate was a small plate piled high with squares of cheese you put with pineapple on sticks at "interesting" shin digs. This time with no stick or pineapple just a massive plate of rubbery, dry cheese. What made me laugh more was the fact that when she bought some bread to help this stiff down it took the price of her foot to being more expensive than my deliciously overstuffed stuffed Ham Cheese and Pineapple delight. Which in my opinion is the greatest fast food the world has ever seen. 2 minutes from order to belly, the hassle of paying doesn't come until completely satisfied from your mini feast in a roll.
Our flight to Foz was on an interesting kinda plane. Oceanair. Flying us the whole way from Rio on the coast to the massively inland Foz de Iguacu. The planes don't cross the ocean how are the called Ocean Air??
After discussing with Ellie the merits of lucky charms and shit that we should be fine and those noises are normal with every plane engine.
She grabbed for the safety card because they didn't appear to want to give a demo today on how to put your life jacket one.
I scoffed, "What's the point in reading that they're all the same"
"Yeah". She laughed before pointing out that instead of having a life jacket we were to use our flotation cushion. "Great". I thought. How useful a flotation cushion will be the bolts fall out of this National Express coach with extremely flimsy looking wings and angry sounding engine and we plummet to the solid ground. We are crossing the whole fucking journey! The reason they do it is there's no point in having fucking Life Jackets if we crash you die.
Ellie I beg of you to now take a picture of that flyer and put it on facebook immediately. This combination of not so great looking points was great for Ellie who now had about 8 take offs over the next 2 weeks. Ellie really doesn't like take offs. Apparently 90% of flying errors happen in take off. I decided just before we got on I should tell her we were lucky we weren't going through Sao Paulo because the day after we had arrived there had been a massive error in landing and loads of people died. It did get a bit much, when our "bus" had to do a quick stop to pick some people up along the way before it dropped us off and went on to 3 further destinations.
The weather in Foz was even more amazing. Not a cloud in the sky and temperatures of up to 45 degrees. Which is great unless you are stupid and go to a 7 hour outdoor attraction and forget to put sun cream on.
The Falls were again amazing. This time however providing a beautiful and serene environment different to the rainy season when it was less beautiful and more umm, ferocious. More than that, awe-inspiring really fucking massive and scary looking equally as fantastic as in the dry season, but in a different way.
Another good thing about lower water levels was we could go in a speed boat under some falls and got soaked through. So much in fact that people were walking around in bikinis and no tea shit. It was great this wasn't like any normal tourist attraction people were all most naked. Orsen Fuckin' Welles.
I also go to see the Devils Throat.
To get there first though we had to make a few changes to our polite British ways. We adopted the mentality of taking the wrong exit to get close to the front of the queue of people all on their way to fill the attraction. All we needed to do was over take a group of Japanese tourists. Which we seemed to do with consummate ease and rushed to the attraction which was almost clear of tourists. I did my impression of a Japanese tourist and took as many photos as I could as soon as I was there. Then I still had time to do more "artsy" photos before they arrived. I felt like a child when I got there it was great. This has to be in my top 3 things of most amazing things I've ever seen in my life without a shadow of a doubt. Hair on the back of the neck all on end, shaking with joy at something so incredibly perfect.
That night we just chatted to some English girls who were apparently had less money than the people begging on the streets in Peru. Yeah sure girls you have nothing in the world.
Right rant over. The next week of my sisters stay is going to come in a few days.
Cows n ting
Iguacu
Sugar Loaf
Stuff n shit. Cos Stuff and Shit is cool.
Sound Track: Rage Against The Machine:Rage Against The Machine.
(Quite simply because it is the greatest album EVER.)
We returned from Foz and decided that it was a must that we should go to the water park in Rio. So we did. It was fucking awesome. Slides n shit I really can't get enough of it. Ellie pointed out in China they'll have maximum height barrier as opposed to the opposite everywhere else.
It was nice to be looked upon in awe as the kiddies at the park took in the Gringos had come to their distant water park. Somewhere the gringos hadn't reached yet. They made sure they looked and didn't touch because they might catch gringitus or more likely get a smack round the chops from an angry honkie.
Ed, a gringo sailor and generally all around good guy, I'd met in Sao Paulo suggested we go to cream fields the next day a kinda festival thing with rubbish music. I drank a lot to persuade myself it might be good fun. The music was bad so I just got silly drunk then got a cab the hour journey home Just in time for the sunrise.
Fit sisters are Cool
Sound Track: Stuff n Shit: Cos Stuff n Shit is cool.
Hello everyone. Firstly the little title at the top is a Nathan Barlism so don't get worried. We're not that kind of family...... Any more.
It's been three weeks since I last sent any kind of message of how I am doing.
This wee blog entry has been cut in two as it is probably a bit long. Well this one already is.
I will start with my little birthday section which includes two of my top ten favourite people in the world.
First and foremost is my Nan she's been celebrating in Latvia with me sister and Mum. So Happy Birthday Nan.
Next up is Bobek. My big brother, he's taking the next step to 30 on Friday when he turns 28. Have a goodn you massive shit.
Other birthdays include. Max K and Sarah TC of the Canterbury cru celibrating on the 11th and 13th respectively.
Natasha P.K will be celebrating on the 23rd too.
Happy Birthday the lot of ya.
From birthdays to anniversaries featuring my another two in my top ten people in the world. Mum and Dad, happy 29th . This year I'm sure you'll be celebrating in the customary 29th Anniversary way with. Some kind of thing and stuff, etc.
Right pleasantries over with.
Last time I updated you I was awaiting the arrival of my sister from England. She arrived, late. On top of the 12 hour delay she had been leg to endure at Charles De Gaulle airport due to missing her connection flight his blame can be laid firmly at the feet of Air France. Her next flight was the 2 hours late landing. Really this was no sweat off my nuts and I just had to sit around waiting. It was Ellie we should all spare a thought for who was not only delayed by a very long time. She was also feeling unwell. On top of this she was given the Vegan (See "Evil Creepy Weirdo" on wikipedia for a definition on these putrid beasts) option, which by all accounts consisted of some paper, some screwed up tissue and some damp cardboard. The staple parts of a Vegans diet.
She was obviously very tired when she arrived so we just had a little walk down the beach and planned our time, kinda.
That afternoon felt a strange numb feeling in her leg. Now it was probably nothing we thought but I had to pipe up with it could be DVT, which was then compounded by Dan saying it could be DVT. We decided if she was alive in the morning we'd take her to a hospital.
The next morning we went to Ipanima hospital. We were clearly too poor looking and they turned us away to go to a place which apparently had the only A & E in town. This was clearly a lie but we went anyway.
After telling the receptionist what was wrong with Ellies numb leg we were sent through to the bones section. Strange we thought nothing to do with bones. The doctor then asked if it hurt at all. Ellie said no, it as just numb. Said in both English and Portuguese. "Ok then" the doctor said "Go and have an x-ray and come back. "
OK pretty odd we thought seeing as its nothing to do with the bones n shit what's the point in an X-Ray?
We waited for a bit. Then decided we should try at the other hospital again saying we weren't poor. It didn't work. We went back to the hospital jumped the queue for the X-Ray, jumped the queue to see the doctor and Ellie was prescribed some nice tablets probably to thin the blood, we didn't really know though.
That dealt with we went out for pizza and looked on to what we should do the next day.
We had decided to beach then go up Sugar Loaf. Now, I have recently discovered beach work great as a verb as well. "Shall we beach?" Meaning lets go tan ourselves and swim in the sea.
We went up the Sugar Loaf in time for the sunset which was quite obviously fantastic and something I think I could do 1000 times without ever getting bored of it.
What happened right after my second visit up the Sugar Loaf however is something that I would like to stop happening.
As we were returning home we were set upon by a little runt with a knife asking for money. Whilst the knife was thrust in my general direction I tried to calm him down a bit whilst getting my wallet out to get the money I had. A kid then turned up and took Ellies phone from her pocket and they then both ran. For the second time of being robbed I've managed to keep my fairly expensive camera. On this occasion I kept my camera, Ellies camera, my phone and my wallet. The theiving little c*nts just took off with the money and Ellies phone. I didn't fancy being the tough guy A. because I didn't want Smellie getting hurt and B. I've seen the state of the hospitals here.
So a great first few days on holiday for my sister went to hospital, got robbed. The bad luck ended there though thankfully as we were going to see Fluminense in their final home game of the season the next day.
It was a great game. Fluminense beat Juventude 3-2 with a couple of really fantastic goals. Each when we were in a losing position. It was a very entertaining game. I was quite sad come the final whistle as this would be my penultimate trip to the Maracana and the next wasn't due to be a football game it was a concert. I was really stupidly happy we'd won because this was the final time I'd ever see my beloved Fluminense play again and I would need to find and Asian team to support. Ellie and I decided on a rule. If you are a real football fan you will have only 1 team you support. This will be the only team you can truly love. You can however put strong support behind any second team from a different continent as the teams are unlikely to meet at any point. However it is ok to enjoy the football team within your continent.
We were treated with glorious weather to go up and see Christ up on the hill. We decided that after seeing our other older brother we'd go and trouble the decorative cows lining the city as they were being taken away the next day and I'd only taken pictures of about 4 in the 6 weeks they'd been there. As were we, we were off to Foz De Iguacu.
As a farewell to Rio diner we had a Cervantes. It had a bit of a twist on this occasion.
When ordering Ellie was feeling like a massive gay and didn't want to eat a whole sandwich so she decided she wanted some cheese. I asked if the cheese on the menu was the same as the stuff on the beach. "Yes, of course" Mr waiter tells me using his cute chubby face and little bow tie to fool us into thinking that we were certainly not getting the cheese from the beach. Oh no my friends it was something special. The cheese plate was a small plate piled high with squares of cheese you put with pineapple on sticks at "interesting" shin digs. This time with no stick or pineapple just a massive plate of rubbery, dry cheese. What made me laugh more was the fact that when she bought some bread to help this stiff down it took the price of her foot to being more expensive than my deliciously overstuffed stuffed Ham Cheese and Pineapple delight. Which in my opinion is the greatest fast food the world has ever seen. 2 minutes from order to belly, the hassle of paying doesn't come until completely satisfied from your mini feast in a roll.
Our flight to Foz was on an interesting kinda plane. Oceanair. Flying us the whole way from Rio on the coast to the massively inland Foz de Iguacu. The planes don't cross the ocean how are the called Ocean Air??
After discussing with Ellie the merits of lucky charms and shit that we should be fine and those noises are normal with every plane engine.
She grabbed for the safety card because they didn't appear to want to give a demo today on how to put your life jacket one.
I scoffed, "What's the point in reading that they're all the same"
"Yeah". She laughed before pointing out that instead of having a life jacket we were to use our flotation cushion. "Great". I thought. How useful a flotation cushion will be the bolts fall out of this National Express coach with extremely flimsy looking wings and angry sounding engine and we plummet to the solid ground. We are crossing the whole fucking journey! The reason they do it is there's no point in having fucking Life Jackets if we crash you die.
Ellie I beg of you to now take a picture of that flyer and put it on facebook immediately. This combination of not so great looking points was great for Ellie who now had about 8 take offs over the next 2 weeks. Ellie really doesn't like take offs. Apparently 90% of flying errors happen in take off. I decided just before we got on I should tell her we were lucky we weren't going through Sao Paulo because the day after we had arrived there had been a massive error in landing and loads of people died. It did get a bit much, when our "bus" had to do a quick stop to pick some people up along the way before it dropped us off and went on to 3 further destinations.
The weather in Foz was even more amazing. Not a cloud in the sky and temperatures of up to 45 degrees. Which is great unless you are stupid and go to a 7 hour outdoor attraction and forget to put sun cream on.
The Falls were again amazing. This time however providing a beautiful and serene environment different to the rainy season when it was less beautiful and more umm, ferocious. More than that, awe-inspiring really fucking massive and scary looking equally as fantastic as in the dry season, but in a different way.
Another good thing about lower water levels was we could go in a speed boat under some falls and got soaked through. So much in fact that people were walking around in bikinis and no tea shit. It was great this wasn't like any normal tourist attraction people were all most naked. Orsen Fuckin' Welles.
I also go to see the Devils Throat.
To get there first though we had to make a few changes to our polite British ways. We adopted the mentality of taking the wrong exit to get close to the front of the queue of people all on their way to fill the attraction. All we needed to do was over take a group of Japanese tourists. Which we seemed to do with consummate ease and rushed to the attraction which was almost clear of tourists. I did my impression of a Japanese tourist and took as many photos as I could as soon as I was there. Then I still had time to do more "artsy" photos before they arrived. I felt like a child when I got there it was great. This has to be in my top 3 things of most amazing things I've ever seen in my life without a shadow of a doubt. Hair on the back of the neck all on end, shaking with joy at something so incredibly perfect.
That night we just chatted to some English girls who were apparently had less money than the people begging on the streets in Peru. Yeah sure girls you have nothing in the world.
Right rant over. The next week of my sisters stay is going to come in a few days.
Cows n ting
Iguacu
Sugar Loaf
Stuff n shit. Cos Stuff and Shit is cool.
Sound Track: Rage Against The Machine:Rage Against The Machine.
(Quite simply because it is the greatest album EVER.)
We returned from Foz and decided that it was a must that we should go to the water park in Rio. So we did. It was fucking awesome. Slides n shit I really can't get enough of it. Ellie pointed out in China they'll have maximum height barrier as opposed to the opposite everywhere else.
It was nice to be looked upon in awe as the kiddies at the park took in the Gringos had come to their distant water park. Somewhere the gringos hadn't reached yet. They made sure they looked and didn't touch because they might catch gringitus or more likely get a smack round the chops from an angry honkie.
Ed, a gringo sailor and generally all around good guy, I'd met in Sao Paulo suggested we go to cream fields the next day a kinda festival thing with rubbish music. I drank a lot to persuade myself it might be good fun. The music was bad so I just got silly drunk then got a cab the hour journey home Just in time for the sunrise.
The next day I hauled my arse down to the beach and listen to some radio which alarmingly had me tapping my feet to Tina Turner. The reason for this being I had only heard Sean Kingston and That other really cuntingly annoying song Umbrella. Which is only out played by a song with A Brazilian artist called Vanessa De Mata who sings some bullshit with Ben Harper. Other than those 3 songs that haunt me in every juice bar, every taxi, every bar, every club and every fucking beach stand on the beach.
They played a song by The Police. It reminded me that I was going to the gig later and so I got out of the sun.
That weekend was however fairly disappointing. Arsenal Lost. Also the tickets for the police gig that had been sent to Mariana on a secure on line booking system from a bank. Turned out to be fake. I see a massive complaint coming on here. The bank will certainly refund the money to Mariana's account so at the end of the day alls not lost.
Or so I thought whilst I was wading back doing what would be called the walk of shame into hoards of people all rushing to get into the gig. I was more bothered about missing such a big even at a great stadium and the 3 months anticipation had just been snatched away. I was pretty bummed butt I got very confused later on.
I had been listening to her excuses to the door people and I hadn't thought I'd understood the previous fake ticket bank mess up which I had assumed ad happened.
When I got home I asked Kan if what I thought she'd said was true and if she really thought that it would have given us more chance of getting into the concert.
She had told the door men that she had bought tickets online from citibank (no receipt she left that at home). She had then swapped the tickets with a friend of a friend to help them out. The fake tickets she got back were for a cheaper and less good place.
Ahh well remind me never to swap some tickets of the most sought after gig in the past 5 years to a friend of a friend.
Last Little thing I'd like to wish anyone who ever reads right to the end of my blog a Happy Christmas and a Sweet arse New Year. I'll be sending an update after Sarah's wee sojourn to Brasil.
Over your Christmas dinners spare a thought for those of us far away, having Christmas on the beach.
Lot's of Love all of you
Peace and Fucking
Hxx
