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What a couple of weeks - Carnaval is utter madness and there is definitely no rest for the wicked. After a fairly arduous trip into Rio (seven hours on the road and then being stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours in 36 degree heat at 7pm), it's time to say some fond farewells to people with a final dinner for the group. The restaurant was a buffet style BBQ place where you pick your salads and the waiters come round with gigantic slabs of carving meat - I've not seen so many different types of meat in one place and they had rare meat, for the first time in Brazil. Definitely came out of there like a little stuffed piglet at the end - unfortunately I was still sick and my body didn't appreciate the food as much as my taste buds.
Friday was essentially a free day for us so we just meandered around for the morning, in the searing heat - Rio's biggest heatwave in 50 years apparently. Early afternoon I had to go meet Nicky, who was flying from London, unfortunately she'd missed her connection in Sao Paulo so only got in late in the afternoon. After a short dinner, we had a few drinks with my crew, but Nicky's jet lag kicked in and my stomach was still on it's own wavelength, so we called it a night.
Saturday morning involved a trip up to Corcadova, where an 82 metre high, 30 metre across Christ the Redeemer was. It was a spectacular view of the city, the only issue was some muppet forgot to charge her camera batteries so nearly missed out on the photos - luckily one of my mates had the same camera so came to my rescue.
Saturday night was football at the Maracana Stadium - which is supposed to hold nearly 100k´peeps. We watched a game between Vasco De Gama and Fluments(?). The atmosphere was manic and half way through the crowd were setting off fire works inside the stadium, so at one point the players could barely see the ball. A couple of us left early so we could get back before dark - (everyone was continually mentioning the dangers of Rio). The score was still 0-0 and we assumed that like English football it would end in a draw - we were wrong, we ended up missing a penalty shoot out, but that was ok, I just wanted to go for the atmosphere - might even try and go to an English game when I'm back in December!!
Sunday - Samba Night - I had imagined that the Samba Schools were kind of like a bigger version of the Blossom Festival, but I never realised how wrong I could be - each school has an hour twenty to get through the Samba Drome and has nearly a thousand people in each school. The floats were amazing - two or three storeys high - it kind of puts all the cartridge flowers I made for our floats when I was kid, to shame. It was a truly fantastic night and so hard to describe in writing - the music was fab, the costumes were just brilliant. At the end the schools that didn't make it into the final gave their costumes away so many a person in the crowd was wearing random large hats and dresses - it was all very entertaining. The night eventually ended (for us anyway) at about 4am, we'd seen 3 or 4 of the schools, but too much alcohol and lack of sleep finally got the best of us.
Monday - funnily enough I slept most of the day - I managed to get up at some point to get some lunch, but I went back to bed fairly hastily after that.
Tuesday - We spent the afternoon on SugarLoaf Mountain, which is another view of Rio. Tuesday night was Gay Ball night - we'd all managed to acquire feather boas and masks, whilst the guys all dressed up in girls' outfits - some of them looked absolutely fabulous. The Ball started at 12am with a parade down a pink carpet, unfortunately we missed most of the people walking down because we arrived late - however there was plenty to see once we got inside - more t*** and bums than you can shake a stick at. Some of the women (?) were amazingly beautiful and you struggled to guess their original sex - others were most definitely men, but still very stunning. Most of the costumes didn't leave much to the imagination and some really didn't seem to wear much of anything. It was really hard not to just stop and stare at everyone. Another night that ended at 4am.
Wednesday - A few of us headed up to Rococinha, which is the biggest Favela in Rio (slum). It was an amazing journey into an area that not many people go because they are too scared. The people were brilliant and all very welcoming - we took motorbikes up to the top and had the best view I'd seen of Rio. We walked down through the Favela and at one point even met some drug lords with guns in their pockets and drugs openly on display. The drug lords keep a fairly tight reign on things because they don't want the police coming in, so crimes like theft, rape and under age molestation are dealt with swiftly and quietly.
Thursday is our last day in Rio and it's time to say goodbye to some more people, like Bev from Tauranga who was a mum away from home for me. We met the new peeps that we'd be doing the next leg of the journey with down to Bueno Aires, they all seem like okay peeps.
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