Rio de Janeiro

Well, not too many g-strings I’m afraid!

We arrived in Rio with blood shot eyes after a longer than usual bus ride, and went through the now almost too familiar ritual of finding a taxi and negotiating our fare, before signing into the hostel, and dumping our load.

For our first 4 days, we had pretty shonky weather. The city was gloomy, the beaches where deserted, it felt like it was only us trudging along in our poncho’s and thongs. A charming sight, but not quite what I had in mind when we headed for Rio.

We spent the days wandering, mingling with the rich and the very beautiful in their shopping malls, exploring food (juice bars on every corner, with juices made from all kinds of weird fruits, cocktails that just kept on coming, and buffets where you paid per the kilo), and we even went to watch another movie (I think Sara was expecting the Sex and the City movie to be showing, but it hadn’t opened yet and after watching the only thing on offer, I’m not sure if I’m glad or not).

Yesterday afternoon, we went on the city tour, only just got to squeeze in Christ the Redeemer one of the hills overlooking Rio, before the clouds closed in around him. It was a gamble, as we didn’t know if the weather would improve, but we made it the whole way through without any rain! The Cathedral was a definite highlight, so was the Sugar loaf.

Jesus on the hill

Samba street

The Cathedral is the most modern I have ever seen, and it was a colossus building with a very nice feel to it! The natural light was streaming in from thousands of little windows all around. We also passed by the massive soccer stadium “Maracana” (that was apparently built at massive expense in the 50s for the World Cup -to the publics disdain- in which unfortunately Brazil lost..), the main street of Carnival and Santa Theresa (a suburb of massive old mansions which was where the rich used to live… until the favelas decided they also wanted in on the area. As they built their massive, ramshackled communities up, the rich trickled out of town)!! Finally we made it to the Sugar Loaf, which looked a lot more daunting from the bottom, however, the ride up was a breeze, and the view was spectacular! It was excellent seeing Rio in the sunset and by night!

The Cathedral
The Cathedral

Cathedral Roof
Cathedral Roof

Copacabana
View from the SugarLoaf at night towards Copacabana

More night

Night still

Today was our first break, we have had sun all day, cruised the Ipanema and the Copacobana beaches. I have been keeping my eye out for the famous g-strings, but unfortunately, the hot bodied must also be employed, because all I saw was sour wedgies and cellulite… Sara didn’t do too much better, and only got the previous generation of stud muffins (50+ bracket, which is also where I was looking).

The lake
You can see Christ on top of the mountain in the background

Ipanema - The most sexy beach in the world!
Ipanema – The most sexy beach in the world!

Copacabana
Copacabana

Water is freezing
Water is freezing!

With a cruizy day like that, we decided that tomorrow we head to Ilha Grande so we can hang by the pool, and hopefully get some dives in.

Before I sign off, I just wanted to comment on Rio in general. It is by far the most expensive place we have been too in SA! But it is beautiful! And the food is awesome! We are eating so much nice fruit and food, the likes which we haven’t seen for quite a while! And with that, we only have 9 more days left here in South America. With any luck, we will post again before we leave here, but we are not promising!

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