Rio de Janeiro (the city of Wonders)

The final of our 13 weeks journey was 4 days in Rio aka the city of wonders, or for others the City of God. We gave the city the neccessary respect, and were walking around carefully (not too many pictures), but after our first night going out it did not seem that scary any more. The guys from the hostel took us out to an "Erasmus" party, and we were walking around on our way back, without being harassed, the same for the night in Lapa, where people drink and dance on the streets.

The first days were quite rainy, but still we managed to get a good view from the famous Christ statue. 15min later we could not see the statue from the foot of it because of the clouds that were blown in.

We also took the vintage tram to an old part of the town. We expected a San Francisco style tourist fun, when hanging off the side of the tram, but here it was more of a survival ride: lampposts, fences and walls were close enough to rip my backpack off, and it was really hard to hold your balance on the 10cm standing board. We got off before the final station.

Could not miss the Sugarloaf either. It is really the best view you can get from the town, although the priciest.

On our last day we went to one of the favelas and learned, that the City of God movie is about the drug business, but not about everyday life there. The circumstances were ok (brick houses, electricity, water) except for the sewage water flowing on the street, because of the unplanned constructions. Most people there have normal jobs in other parts of the town. The main difference was that law is not enforced by the police, but by the gang ruling the place. The 300.000 people favela we visited had 4000 "soldiers" mostly paid by the drug business, which earns them the healthy amount of 4M $ monthly. The whole organisation is run by a 23 years old godfather, who is one of the older ones, as these guys die young. Anyways, the bikeride up the top of the hill will be unforgettable.

Between all the sightseeing we managed to fit some sand and sun, first on Copacabana then on Ipanema. The sand was amazing, the water was nice and people watching ok. We didn't see as many fake looking boobs as I expected. Traditionally Brazilian man think it is girly to lie on a towell, so they sunbath on the hot sand, or sit on a chair/ piece of newspaper. I wasn't afraid to be seen as a gringo.

Finally we liked the city quite much, having amazing beaches at your front door (and the neccessary weather with it, dear Dubliners) is quite nice. The bay with the strange rocks sticking out of it looks uniquely beautiful.

On the 20th Decembre we embarked on a journey which we thought would be annoying, because we had to say good bye to America, and because it was long. Little did we know that it would turn out worse than expected, more to that later.

Paraty

After Brasilia we flew to Rio, that first surprised us with massive heat (30 °C and 90% humidity at night) and then with rain. We had a nice time going out with people from the hostel and subsequently seeing the dawn over Copacabana beach, but when we woke up it was raining and it didn't really stop any more, so we made shapes (Lucy this is to you).

Our target was a holiday place called Paraty. The village is stuck in a charming colonial style. It has small whitewashed houses and huge rocks for cobblestones, which are a local speciality and make walking or cycling around a struggle. Additionally In true Venice style water is filling the streets when the tide is high enough, but we have not seen too much of that.

The real attraction of the place are the sandy beaces and small islands that fill it's bay. Finally after the first less nice day the sun started to shine and we could work on our tans, which is something you really want to put a lot of effort in when you are coming back from holidays soon.

In our quest for sunshine, we even took a boatride one day, which brought us to otherwise unreachable beaches and reefs carrying a few fish. During the trip Fabio Biggie was playing soft guitar songs, which made me think of Israel Kamakawiwo'Ole, and we were eating some nice fish. It was the perfect beach day.

Back in Rio we could get up to Corcovado to see the Christ Statue, but in the meantime it is raining again :( We will still try to enjoy the last days. More about that later, probably from good old Europe.

Brasilia

After the touristy Igassu falls, it was time to go to a far less visited destination: the capital of Brazil. It is a pretty crazy idea to build a capital in the 1950`s out of nowhere. The city is divided around 2 main axes which give it the shape of a plane or a bow. People leave in districts called quadras. Every quadra hosts 3000 people, a school, a supermarket..That is to say, there is not such a thing as a city center and the distances are huge. This city designed in the 50`s is made for our 4 wheels friends:car. Therefore all the main avenues are empty and lifeless.. Not what we would expect from Brazil! But we more or less knew what to expect and we found it fascinating: Traveling around the city made us feel like an old science fiction movie. Especially that the city has many very cool buildings designed by Niemeyer and his peer architects.
Shame on us (in the middle of the Copenhaguen submit) we rented a car..In such a city designed for cars, it was definetely the best option. And Google Translate has been a great friend when we rented the car as no one in the renting car company could speak English: I hope the contract in Portugese we signed didn´t include some dodgy conditions (such as give a kidney or you first new born..).



On our last night, we adventured ourselves in a quadra: the streets were pretty dark and didn´t look to inviting but once we were in the center of the quadra, we discovered signs of life:) A lighted shopping street and very animated bars where we had some ´choppes` and some Brazilian fingerfood.
Very suprising fact is that waiters are tend to `tip` us. If the bill is 42 Reals and we give 50, they sometimes give us back 10 (btw 2 reals equal to 0,80 euros). We are probably so nice consumers that they can´t but tip.

Stories from the Igassu Falls

.....Speechless...This is the feeling we had when discovering the Igassu Falls! They are amazing, noisy and well very wet for the tourists traveling on a boat:)
In this part of Brazil (bordering with Argentina and Paraguay), it was super warm (and of course super humid). We could say even that we don t need too much clothes to go around. Well the good news is that we now don t have too much clothes to go around as half of our clothes got "lost" with the laundry service of our hostel Bambu. (The hostel should send them to our hostel in Rio..)



Like most of the tourists in this area, we dedicated 2 days to the waterfalls. First one, we went on the Brazilian side of the falls which gives a great overview of the size of the falls. The 2nd day we did a tour organised by our hostel to see the Argentinian side. There we did a boat tour to see the falls at the water level: it was a cool and very wet experience! We as well had the chance to spot quite some wildlife: a deer, an small anteater (!!), 2 iguanes and thousand and thousand of buterflies (I don t like these flying creatures too much, sometimes these little bastards were even landing on us..).

For our final day, we tried to change our travelerchecks (this expedition ended in failure) and we went to visit Itaipu: the biggest power plant in the world! No need to mention that this was Peter´s idea;) The hydraulic plant is amazingly huge and produces yearly enough electricity to meet the needs of Paraguay for 11 years. Not bad isn´t it?

Weekend in Curitiba

After the gigantism of Sao Paolo, we headed south by bus to Curitiba (aka for the Googlers ` Pedro `s city` btw Pedro says `Hi`).

In this peaceful city of 2M inhabitants, we discovered and enjoyed:

* Some live music in pubs and restaurants (we still didn t dare to dance)

* Feijoada. This is a typical brazilian dish very well described by one of Pedro´s friends as the "Brazilian goulash".

* The Oscar Nieymer Museum which had a great exhibition of Vik Muniz . We were as well so excited about the architecture of Nieymer that we decided to book a flight to Brasilia where he has designed many public buildings!

* The family atmosphere at Pedro´s house (with his wife, parents visiting from Portugal, friends, dog..)

* That it is not always warm in Brazil. Curitiba tends to have what we would call an Irish weather

* The Football riot at the end of the Coritiba game (broadcasted on TV)..Yes Brazilian people are indeed passionate about football!

Sao Paulo

Our start in Brazil was not easy: it was really hard to book a hotel in Sao Paulo, first me and then Amélie had a nice stomach bug, the weather was not too warm and it was raining cats and dogs in the afternoons.
This an the TV in our hotel room made it the optimal place to chill out for four days. We have seen countless episodes of Law & Order spiced up with Jurassic Park III and Godzilla. But there was a bit more of course:

The first main task was to buy some smart casual clothes, because we were meeting our investment banker friend in the night and did not want to be kicked out of places because of our hiking shoes. Based purely on the price we managed to get me some leather shoes and a shirt and Amélie got a top and flip-flops with glittery plastic (aka. diamonds). Edwyn is a very busy man as you would expect from somebody, who is in the rank of partner in Brazil's biggest investment bank. Also we were pleased to hear, that the crisis helped him a lot, as they founded this bank with 15 people and took everybody else over, who was struggling to get to a 1000+ employees company. Before anybody starts to denounce wild capitalism, Edwin told us, that the first thing they do with a company they buy is to make them pay taxes and employ people in a legal way, so not the tipical cut and sell operations of american investment banks. Unfortunately Edwin is working until ten on calm evenings and much later when under pressure, so he has no time to spend his fortune, but we were assured that a penthouse flat with pool and an armoured car are on the way.
For the rest of Sao Paulo we only saw the Sé cathedral and the excellent MASP. This also marked our first encounter with Oscar Niemeyer, but more to that later. Exhibitions in the MASP were great from Rodin to the Brasilian street artists, who honoured us with being present. Otherwise we were looking at people, fighting the floods in the streets, wondering how people can be so calm in the always stuffed metro and finally taking a bus to Curitiba.

Hasta Luego Peru

After 31 days spent in Peru, it was time for us to say good bye to this wonderful country.

We had an amazing time there from discovering the Incas sites to surfing on sand dunes or doing some ice climbing. And Peruvian people are very friendly:)

Below the pics of our 2 last days where we just relaxed in Lima (and ate a lot of sweet things)