Rio!

Well getting here wasn't the best thing in the world! it seems that just recently, i have not been the luckiest person when trying to travel places, but anyway. I ended up flying to Sao Paulo, as after a 42 hour bus trip from Calafate, to BA i decided that i could not stomach another 40 odd hours on one, so my flight left at 7pm, and was going to get into Sao Paulo at 10:30 ish. So the plan then was to stay in Sao Paulo, then the next day get a bus to Rio, making my timing to get there perfect.

Firstly i got to the airport what i thought was an hour earlier than expected. But turns out this part of Brasil is 2 hours behind and i thought it was the same as in Argentina. Anyway, that was just a confusion instead of a problem, my problem was, because i had paid for my flight in cash, i had taken it out of a cash point in BA, which meant that when i got to Brasil, i had reached my daily withdrawal limit and couldnt get anymore dinero out. So there i was, sat in Sao Paulo airport, not being able to do anything, with no money, or food, waiting for my bank to let me take some money out. i kept trying the bank in hope that it would let me take some out, but to no avail. I did have some money, but it was only 25 Argentinian Pesos, which would be perfectly ample to get some food and drink, but the problem there was that i would need to change my money at the change place, but it charged $5 to do it, which, i didnt have!! So i was there feeling like Tom Hanks in the film "Terminal", surviving on the water from the drinking fountains! quite amusing, but after 12 hours, kind of boring. So all i had to amuse me was the randomers that kept walking past me at 4am, and the old laptop. So i spent most of the time catching up on epiodes of lost i had downloaded, and wandering over to the cash machine to try again.

At last it decided to let me take some monet out, so i grabbed the bags, said bye to the aiport worker i had been talking to, and got into the first cab i could find.

So from Sao Paulo, i was going to head upto Rio on the bus, so i got to the bus station, which is the biggest thing i have ever seen, but i guess with Sao paulo being the 3rd biggest city in the world (pop. 17mil) you would expect it to be pretty big. So i got my bus ticket, and finally, it was upto Rio. Overall, i had been on a 42 hour bus ride, and a 3 hour flight to get here, so having travelled nearly 3000miles, i hoped it would have been worth it.

When i got to the bus station at Rio, i realised that having no Portuguese under my belt was going to be a problem! but hey, i was in Rio. I got to my hostel, which looked nothing like a hostel from the front, so i was a bit dubious about the taxi man dropping me off, but turns out it was. It just looked like a house. No signs or anything, but anyway, the room i was staying in was hilariously full of beds. All of them, bar three were triple bunks, which is something i hadnt seen since arriving in S.America. I'd been told about them, but had never seen them, but i took a photo of them anyway. So all in all, there were 15 people stayin in my room. All of them were really nice. Two guys from Sri lanka, three irish guys, a young couple from London, who were awesome, two Norweigan guys, me and a couple of other who i didnt really talk to. so i dumped the bags, and tagged along with these guys who were going to go get some football tickets for a local derby later that day. Turns out, for the carnival, the 4 teams that belong to Rio, were going to have their derbys. I just think, that rather than them being well timed, they had done this to gain as much revenue for them games as possible,but anyway, i was going to go watch a team called Vasco play against another team called Floriempolis or something, but whilst i type this, i cant really remember the other team, but it was a good game none the less, although im probably not the best person to comment about football, only having been to about 6 in my whole life, but hey, it was ok, and 8 goals were scored. 4-4. I did take some photos, but the main shame about being in Rio, is the level of crime.

Having wrote this after my trip to Rio, i heard of 6 muggings on people, and that was just from our hostel!! This meant that if you went out at night, you couldnt really take your camera, or your wallet, for fear of this.

Rio is an amazing place, dont get me wrong, but with all this on the back of your mind, it kind of gets spoiled.

The football game was played on the first day of carnival, so later that night, a load of people from the hostel were going to a blocka party. which is basically a big party on a closed street, which after about an hour moves onto another street, and so on throught the night. The hostel i stayed in was pretty basic, but like in most hostels, its not the hostel that makes the stay an awesome one, its the people. And this hostel had a great group of people. So we partied on through the night, drinking 2 real cans of skol (50p) until the wee hours.

The following night, as it was most peoples second day here, people had gone off into their "groups" from the night before. The people i mainly hung around with were three manchester girls (Caroline, Jess and Mel), a couple from London (Caroline and Stu), two lads from Ipswich (James and Alex) and a few other dotted about from different areas of the world.

Over the next few days we got upto all sorts of stuff....went to the one and only Copacabana Beach......Ipanema Beach.....up the hill to see Christ, which was amazing, and in real life, is way bigger than i thought he was going to be. The views were amazing though. Went up sugarloaf for the sunset, which again made for some good photos, and pretty much every night went out into the area around our hostel (Lapa) and partied with the locals.

Luckily for me, i didnt get into any sort of trouble with regards to muggings etc, but there was one Aussie guy called Ash, who got done over twice, which i must imagine to be horrible.

So all in all, an amazing week was spent, but like i said before, at night, you could never relax as much as you wanted to, which spoilt it a bit. But from Rio, as it was a pretty hectic week, me, Caroline, Stu, James and Alex were going down to a place called Ihla Grande for some relaxation.