Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. One of the world's top five most dangerous cities. Not one person discuses Rio without a note of caution. On day one we went to the bank ¬iced a guard packing double magnums and standing behind six foot high built-in bullet-proof shield. The old Lonely Planet goes on like a broken record about not wearing, flashing or carrying unnecessary valuables. This has unfortunately meant even wearing the £4 calculator watch I bought specially was out the window & using my camera was restricted mostly to touristical spots where the dedicated 'Tourist Police' keep it real safe.
But in spite of this Rio hardly felt that dangerous or oppressive. A healthy degree of paranoia & vigilance is essential in all new and exotic pastures. Only out with spending money for the day we got up to all sorts of quality stuff. We partied late into the night at an edgy street party in the crumbling former mansions of the Lapa district, putting away too many potent 3 Brazilian Reil (75p) Caiprinia cocktails. We also hung with the local 'it crowd' at various unimpressive generic hiphop clubs. We ate at possibly the most random pay-by-weight churrasarie restaurant, where you stack your plate from a buffet & set it on scales before you eat. We also drank iced Brahma's on Ipaneama beach as the sun set & the locals came out to play volleyball & keepy-up. During the days, when we weren't turning into prunes in the hotel sauna, we did the cablecar up sugarloaf mountain & drove up to the Christ Redeemer statue trips, both of which have awe inspiring panoramic vistas of Rio's inlets & misty hills - keeping it real pretty.
Rio's really got a lot going for it. No less than 37 baking hot white sandy beaches for the mad dogs and Englishmen to choose from. Hundreds of mint condition colourful VW campervans rumble round, converted into pickups, buses, drinks stalls & bedrooms. Shops sell 12 packs of Brahma beer for just 8 Brazilian Reils (under two quid). Street hawkers pimp fresh coconuts & cinnamony churros crunchy doughnuts. Plus you can buy cans of Lime 'Ice Tea Goodness' and cheetos crisps. I proper love cheetos. After many a eurohike caravan holiday, they're as much a holiday flavour as the smell of suncream. Plus you get free 'super tattoos'! In two bags we got 8 tattoos! Get in. The drink of choice here to wash down these tasty crisps is either Brahma or, amusingly enough, Skol. Perhaps one of England's worst beverages. A tramp juice in the same league as special brew. But over here, served from the chiller, it tastes real nice & is cheap cheap cheap, which keeps it Reil good value.
Rio has also surprised me as being so clean and modern. While there are the omnipresent favelas, clinging to and usually on the very doorstep of better off areas, the cars are new & a huge force of bright orange uniformed street sweepers sweep up leaves & rubbish - generally keeping it real clean.
The food's been interesting too. While it seemed for a while that apart from suffering a little indigestion, man can live off beer, burgers and crisps alone. Though I've seen supersize me, so we've thrown ourselves into Rio cuisine & eaten all manner of strange black pig stews, giant seafood platters, traditional Fejiodas, random weigh your plate buffets & mediocre Brazilian style pizzas (which the waiters insist on serving in individual slices). Most food is served with a tin of what looks like car oil. Plus, one night we bought some real cheap and surprisingly tasty smoked cheese off a tramp, which was keeping it real economical.
While airports were being closed back home due to snow, we perched on the 13th floor roof garden in 36 degrees, splitting time between burning on the decking, swimming in the chilled pool & sweating out cachasa toxins in the Sauna. There was also a gym, but it may surpirse y'all that I never saw inside it. From the roof we watched fantastic panoramic sunsets over the copacabana district and out to sea. In the morning a huge buffet of fresh fruit, crepes & various sausagy friedness was served with intense coffee & loads of obscure fruit juices (cashew juice anyone?). The fresh juice was unsweetened proper freshly squashed exotic fruit goodness, not from concentrate, which is what it's all about... keeping it real tasty.
One day we decided to visit the Santa Teresa district of Rio. An area of dilapidated elegance. We hopped in a taxi, whose driver seemed confident he knew the square we wanted to visit, but after asking for directions twice it turned out our man was clueless. So we jumped out in the middle of Santa Teresa, on the Bonde tram line, by some colourful bars & shops with loitering bystanders. Literally a minute later, the tiny archaic yellow tram rolled round the corner packed with fancy dressed revelers playing brass instruments. People dressed in wigs, Viking hats, cross dresses, nappys. Following the tram were about 200 dancing drinking nutters. The tram pulled to a hault pretty much bang in front of us & a random impromptu street party began! We grabbed a couple of chopps (small cool beers) & bemusedly joined the fun for an hour or so, when the tram finally trundled on. From there we took a stroll up towards the square we were looking for, admiring the crumbling decadence and grabbed a bite to eat from a list of undecipherable Portuguese dishes. Point & hope. Keep it real random.
After a few days toasting in baking sunshine, churning black clouds rolled in and the heavens opened. Fat warm rain turned the streets to rivers & beat the sandy beaches into a pebble dash. We became a bit hotel bound, splitting time between spraying the bathroom roof with the bday and learning various fruity swearwords from the subtitles of '48 Hours' (staring Eddie Murphy). My Portuguese is coming along nicely. I'm informed they don't use the letters W or Y. Which seems to keep it real complicated when then they say James' surname, Willcocks. 'Veeeeelcokz'.
On our last day in Rio we get a taxi to the airport to bounce up the coast to Puerto Seguro, and to try & take our eyes off the crazy rain soaked traffic we race through, we spend a moment reflecting on how it's gonna be a bit less four star from here on. Rio's yellow taxis motor about like mentalists, carving two lane roads into four or more and screaming up into any available space. It's a white knuckle ride of perpetual fear, and I generally ended up stamping out a size 9 brake pedal in the passenger footwell. But where else in the world is getting a taxi any different? The same happens in Leeds. Taxis the world around - keeping it real dangerous.
Anyhoos, we're off to Porto Seguro next, a relaxed little town in Southern Bahia state. Then it's onto Salvador, where the carnival goes balistic. So from the whitest, most overdressed man on Copacabana beach, I bid thee well,
Barns
Current state of beard: patchy
Mental jukebox: Girl from Ipanema
To see all my photos so far: http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnabyaldrick
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