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Bom dia!
How is it in sunny England?! Splendid i hope.
Soo.. i´ve done a bit since my last post.
Christ the redeemer was amazing- an adjective i think i will be over using from now on. it was definately worth the scary taxi ride to the top. It was a little misty, so my view was probably not as good as it could have been - and as i still don´t have a proper camera, i can´t share my view..but i would definately recommend a trip up cocorvado to anyone visiting Rio. it´s pretty ace.
Ok, so on Wednesday evening i met up with the group that i will be travelling with to at least Argentina ( a few of them will be with me until Lima). They are a mixed bunch, a few younger than me, a few older and again mostly English, American and Australian. There are a couple of couples, but it´s mainly people travelling on there own like me. Obviously i´m still getting to know them all, but they are all pretty fun, and the worst ones are at least bearable.
After meeting we went for dinner and then to a favela party in Rio which was an eperience (a good one for the most part), and as i had expected more than a little Jersey Shore. depsite the warnings, we were all ok and didn´t have any trouble or whatever, but it wasn´t your average night down the local.
We then had to sadly leave Rio on the Thursday afernoon, so i made a quick trip to Ipanema beach and watched some more speedo clad OAPs play volley ball in the morning, it was a real treat. We then had a bus and boat ride to Ilha Grande, which is an Island in the state of Rio. Ilha grande is beautiful, but very different to Rio. It it so incredibly laid back in the day, but then fortunately comes to life in the evening. There was a three night long street party whilst we were there, I think this was arranged initially to celebrate Brazil beating Holland, but alas, we all know that didn´t end up happening.
Watching the game on the beach with the Brazilians seemed like a good idea before the game! However, being the lovely people they are, they decided that rather than get lairy and kick off, they´d get drunk and party anyway, so it turned out to be a great night.
I was then convinced to go on a ten mile hike through the mountains to another beach on Ilha Grande the next day - i don´t know how it happened. The beach was beautiful but i think i would advise anyone to just get the boat there. We only saw two monkeys on the way and the pain was not really worth it. Inca trail? hmmm maybe not such a good idea. After a hard day on the beach, we ate dinner and visted the street party again. This time there was traditional dancers and they ended up dragging us up and trying to get us to Samba. In the midst of all of this a few of the more crazy locals decided to take a shine to us and this made for quite an interesting evening.
This is obviously a stereotype, but in my experience it seems that most Brazilians are constantly feeling frisky.´even the hoards of dogs running around are constantly mounting each other. We are all acting like ten year olds, laughing everytime it happens. But at least they´re friendly i suppose.
Yesterday we then got a three hour bus to Paraty, which again is in the state of Rio. It´s an old colonial town and mainy of it´s buildings are protected because of this. It´s extremely quaint and really beautiful. We hung out at the beach in the afternoon and then went to the beach at night for a bonfire party on the beach. We met up with another STA tour which was good, as it was nice to mix with some new people again.
And that brings me to today. I decided yesterday that i needed to at least participate in some outdoor activity and opted for a 3 hour horse ride through the hills and mountains to a waterfall. A couple of the people from the group joined me and i´m really glad i opted to do it rather than sit on a breezy beach again. We had spectacular views and my horse was lovely. The scenary really is awesome. The guide was really nice too and made sure we didn´t injure ourselves. the only downside is that we are all now incredbly sore (ouch- no cushion on the saddle) and have a 24 hour bus ride to Sao Paulo and then Iguassu falls ahead of us tomorrow. I´m really looking forward to getting to the Iguassu falls, but we´ve been told it´s much colder there and maybe expect to not be able to walk the catwalks to the edge because it is winter. Hopefully we´ll be able to, but they´ll be great to see anyway., apparently at their highest point they are five times the size of Niagra. ( thanks Lonely planet)
Anyway, i know i´ve missed loads out and i´ve just read this back and it´s extremely dull, but it´s hard to put into words everything that´s been happening and i want to go and get ready to eat more meat. Hopefully i will be able to buy a camera in Uruguay or Buenos Aires and will add some pictures next time.
Hope everyone is well and having fun. Send me a mail if you feel so inclined.
xx
Oh and think good things for Uruguay, I´ll be there for the final and selfishy i´d love it if they made it. i seem to have jinxed all the other South American teams though. fingers crossed.
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