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Getting off the bus at Rio was a little mind boggling there is so much works going on in Brazil currently - mainly upgrading or building new infrastructure for the football (soccer) world cup in 2014 and no doubt also the Olympic games two years time in 2016. The current infrastructure is barely up to the job as it is, let alone another million people travelling through its systems... so it took us a while to get on our way find the right bus to take and head to our hostel for the next 4 days.
Karl selected a place in Copacabana in Rio as the places where we wanted to stay either sounded bad from all the reviews or didn't have a kitchen for us to use. So we are staying in this not too bad / little shady area 3 blocks from the beach. As it turns out suits us fantastically as the area is really cheap we are able to eat a full meal and drink for about $5 each. So after dropping our bags at our hostel we went for a walk around the local area for Karl to get orientated, and down to the beach where we had a drink at a beach front restaurant and to watch the sun set.
South America trip day 82ish... over it, OK so just to get it out there we are both extremely glad that we only chose a 3 month trip rather that the 6 month idea we had right at the beginning of the trip. Karl is looking forward to being back at work surprisingly and Jane is looking forward to Karl being... her sugar daddy. Being in Rio we had to do the obligatory tourist things right. So after getting very full on breakfast we navigated our way through the bus system to get dropped of where we could catch a mini bus up to Christ the Redeemer.
Today was a day of long lines in the direct sun and heat of the day and forgetting the sun block. So once up the top we lined up in the wrong line for a couple of minutes followed by finding the right line 200 meters from the start. So we waited for ohhh about 45 minutes and when we got our tickets by luck we managed to skip the next line by an usher pointing us in the directions of the next set of mini busses and up the hill we go again. Once at the last car park we followed the crowd not the signs (never follow non street signs in Brazil if you ever want to get where you want to go they make no sense!) up the steps up to the lookout and the statue.
The view from the top is truly amazing! You can see every bit of the centre of Rio. Karl had a hell of a lot of fun photo bombing as many people as he could, which really wasn't hard as there had to be at least 1000 people scattered over a 400 square meter area. (for those of you unaware, a photo bomb is jumping into someone else's photo). After much time was taken admiring the view and taking our obligatory photos. We headed back down, once at the middle car park the mini busses were few and far between, which didn't matter for the first 20minutes, as we had monkeys to entertain us.
Once we got down we jumped on the bus with the same number that we used to get to the drop off point, turns out it doesn't take the same route back... Oopsy! or so we though... it actually turned out quite well as we were able to see some of the sights around Rio that we ordinarily wouldn't have seen and figure out a plan for travelling for the next day. After finally getting back (hour and a half bus journey instead of half and hour) we got changed a little dropped off some gear and headed off for a walk along the beach of Copacabana.
We joined up while we were walking with some of the peeps staying in our hostel and ended up walking some of the way with them, until we had enough and sat down watch a family chase after their youngest (who was the only one who'd had enough of the beach) and ate our watermelon. Behind us a stage was being setup for a concert, we asked when the concert was, turns out that it started at 8pm that night so we headed back got some warmer clothes (well Jane did Rio is just not cold enough for Karl) and headed back out.
The concert was by an Brazilian organisation called Aquarius, that have since the 1960's been fusing symphony's with alternative media, music, and or dance. The one we watched featured Bach and a few other lesser known composers and a ballet/samba mixed with older European/carnival type costumes, it was quite spectacular and we enjoyed it quite a lot.
Day... we only have 2 & 1/2 days left in South America. So today we got out rather late and headed to what is known quite simply as the Lapa Steps (Lapa is an area in Rio). So the steps are tendered by an artist who finished the actual steps in the early 2000's using Brazil's colours - yellow and green (which happen to be the same as Australia... sucks for someone). Since then the steps evolved to include the surrounding areas and buildings, and are now covered in tiles from a huge number of countries. The works are under constant evolution and as different tiles slowly wear off they are changed with tiles that the artist is sent from around the globe.
After view this masterpiece we then headed off to an area called Ipanema that had a plentiful supply of cafe's, bars. We were distracted as soon as we got off the underground by a Market (dangerous when there are paintings because apparently if Karl likes he gets) so avoiding the paintings we headed around until the heat of the day had made us sick of it. After getting to the beach we were astounded by the amount of people there - you couldn't even see sand! Just umbrellas, (barely) bikini'd bottoms 'n' boobs, and too many speedo's! We tried to find a beach cafe that wasn't packed out which is an impossibility apparently. We headed back in between the mass of buildings found a restaurant and ordered drinks and "Portuguese Fries" which as it turns out are just freshly made potato chips not fries which is something close to what we were expecting. We then made our way to the Lagoon for a nice walk along its edge and then headed back to our hostel.
Last Day - we woke up late and went down to Copacabana beach for a swim. It was good - but really really rough! In the ten minutes we were in the water, Jane got dumped about 1000567 times. Sometime when she upside down in 50cms of water she realised she wasn't actually having that much fun! When we arrived at the beach it was a lovely day, in the space of our ten minute swim a Sea Fog came in and hid Sugar Loaf mountain and all the skyscrapers along the beach! It was quite amazing to see how quickly it came in.
In the afternoon we went on a favela tour. A Favela is the Portuguese word for slum. It was quite an interesting tour. We visited a family run bakery, an artists shop and a NGO that runs a child care for single mums who live in the favela. The favela is completely self made - the land was just claimed off the side of a mountain, they have jerry-rigged the water and power so that they get it for free. People who live there have built their houses from whatever they have available. They don't have any expertise in soils/urban planning an although the houses are normally okay, in the wet weather season they have quite a problem with land slides which kill a few people each year. The favela we went into has ben 'pacified' which means the police have taken back control from the drug lords, basically it sounds like they chased them off to the next favela, but at least it gives the 120,000 people who live in this one a chance to live a bit more peacefully.
So that was the end of our tour - tuesday we head home - we had a short delay. The flight we were on was delayed so we missed our connection. No biggie - LAN put us up for the 24 hours before the next flight to NZ. It was a nice time - put up in the Crowne Plaza, in Santiago Chile, so it was pretty fun.
It did mean that we missed a day in Auckland. But we had a 12 hour lay over an we met up with Karl's Godparents, it was a very nice day!
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