Rio

In Rio it as cheaper to stay in a B&B in Ipanema than in a hostel. We were immediately confronted by just how expensive Rio was when we wondered out for dinner. They do steak meals for two which make It a little more affordable and we had a delicious beef stew with bacon and potatoes. We were particularly interested in doing a favela tour after such an insightful experience touring through the slums of Mumbai. The perception of the favela is very bad, full of crime, drugs and violence but our tour completely expelled those ideas from my mind. We went with Favela tours which were the first to start doing the tours some 20 years ago so our guide had great knowledge of just how much the favela had changed. Significant social change has happened in the last couple of years with a concerted effort from the government to “pull the favela into the middle class’. Police raids on known drug criminals were conducted and it was the drug and gang cartels that ran the favela and effectively ran the whole of Rio. Once they were out the governments built free hospitals, schools, sewers, roads so that parts of the favela could be access and gave direct access to the metro stations being built at the same time. The city has focused on a few favela in the city and when we visited they were clean with no visible signs of the guns that everyone once use to carry.  Unlike our tour in India we did little exploring the favela on foot through the intricate network of streets. An essential part of the government initiate was to give street names, numbers and property titles to the people living here this enables them to have a bank account. Another great plan was to put a bank in the favela. They are now well serviced cities within the city. It would be great to find a book detailing the specific social initiatives and how they impact over time, will keep my eye out.

An afternoon spent exploring the streets of Ipanema and Copacabana was on the cards. We found this great fruit market with the most delicious strawberries I have every tasted and beef pasties with fresh sugar cane juice – heaven. The beaches are divided into sections roughly for different types of people, so there is the sport section where you feel like a useless football player just by watching some kids, the family section, the singles section etc. The people are bronze and beautiful just as you would expect and my togs would make two sets of Brazilian style swimwear. There is not much ass left in the swimsuit! The sand is gorgeous and even on the weekdays the beaches are well populated.

We spent a day doing the two major sites in Rio Christ and Redeemer and Sugar Loaf Mountain and boy do they know how to charge! The old train ride up the mountain to Christ was stunning and the views offered at the top were sensational. It was a sparkling day and we could see for miles. The hand gliders and par gliders were having a field day in the thermal currents of the mountains. We were hesitant to go up sugar Loaf mountain for two reasons… neither of us are great with heights and this involved two cable car trips and we weren’t sure if it would offer any different views than we had previously seen. I am glad we went up as it was just as breath taking and the views down Copacabana. The cable car was terrifying but worth it.

We topped off our trip to Rio with a swim at Copacabana. So with a new pair of havaianas on our feet we left South America (via a quick overnight stop in Santiago and a very brief stop in Lima) headed to Cuba.

Brazil has a way to go on some things however. It is by far the most difficult country we have travelled round in South America for a number of reasons. Most of their ATMs are not equipped to handle foreign cards and some are just plain temperamental so they didn’t like F VISA at all. This meant that we spent considerable time looking for a ATM that would work for us. Heed the advice given in the guide books and take several cards with you and use the big foreign banks like HSBC when you find them. The other problem was getting around. We couldn’t buy bus tickets online because we do not have Brazilian ID numbers so we had to buy them at the bus station which meant that you physically had to go to the bus station. The other unavoidable problem we had was the beautiful language of Portuguese, so fast and so different from Spanish that we felt completely lost.