Round The World: August 2011

Sleeping in the heavens!

There are times when travelling the world is not only surreal but a little scary. I’ve found that Brazil is definitely the hardest country to travel so far by myself! I think having very limited budget has been rather challenging here too as Brazil’s prices are closer to Europe prices and accommodation and food are approximately the same as in Spain. A bit of a wake-up call as this was not expected.

I arrived in Rio after a 12 hour flight and was soon completely overwhelmed. It’s safe to tell the story now that it's long over. I had settled myself comfortably on the plane, really relaxed after spending such a great time with friends in London! About an hour in, the flight attendants handed out the immigration forms needed for Brazil. I scanned down and noticed the question – Where are you staying? Name, address telephone number. That was the point that I started to stress as I realised that I had no idea of the hostel name or address where I was staying! I only had a number to phone in case the person coming to pick me up from the airport didn’t pitch. I started to stress more when I heard that the airport has no WIFI connection, so the information which was safely on my g-mail account was very safely there and not accessible… I spoke to the flight attendants and eventually wrote down “Rio hostel” and the telephone number I had. From that point on, I was imagining every way that I may get stuck and how to get out of my predicament or how I could get on the internet. It didn’t really help that I was arriving at about 9pm at night and the plane was about an hour delayed.

View from Chris's balcony - the sugar-laof

The whole thing was a little anticlimactic as when I finally handed in the form 11 hours later, the custom’s official hardly glanced at it! The person collecting me was the last in the line of signs being held up for the arrivals. So, much relieved I was trundled off to my hostel in a clap-trap car by a young girl who could speak a little English and her father who could speak no English – nada. Yes Mom – I won’t do that again. I now always have all the contact details with me – including the name of the place I'm staying included!

Reflections of Rio

Unfortunately, this hostel was easily the worst place I have stayed in to date. I really didn’t like it. The reasons are so much part of my story of Rio that I can’t really gloss over them. To me, what happened shows how much I have been looked after on this trip. So, a bit of explanation is in order.

I was staying in a 9 bed mixed dorm – my first mixed dorm… I was told the main difference would be that guys snore more than girls... I have to say I tend to agree with that assessment. The bunk beds were 3 tiers tall and I was in the heavens. At first I was a little taken aback by the height of the bunk (no barriers for those who in sleep may decide to fall off in the middle of the night). But being on the top bunk did actually give me some privacy and safety and I ended up really enjoying it.

The Cathedral

More than anything though, I didn’t like the fact that the hostel was dirty and, I felt, in a dodgy area. My mattress was interesting and having a sheet over it helped only a tiny bit in that I could then possibly ignore it better. The bathrooms were, well, they followed the trend of the mattress.

Music played loud each night until about 12am, 1am. So, no sleep before then. Also there was a sick person in the dorm that made me rather sick myself. With very little English – any sort of conversation was a real challenge! So as you may have figured out, I was rather grumpy. But it did get better from there – much better.

Stain glass window's inside the Cathedral

The first day in Rio de Janeiro ended up being a Sunday. Thankfully. I ended up looking up English churches in Rio again and found that there were only two. And amazingly, one within walking distance. This was a tiny Anglican church with I would guess 30 people there. I ended up having a good discussion with a couple of people after the service. The teaching was solid too, which was really nice.

After church at coffee I met an older lady, Chris, who said she would give me a lift back to the hostel after the short discussion on the sermon that they had. So, sure enough, after the discussion I went with her. But instead of dropping me off at the hostel, she took me home for lunch with her and her husband Paulo. So, we had a delicious Amazon fish speciality of Brazil and I got a bit of a history lesson of Brazil which was facinating along with an amazing view of Rio from Chris’s balcony. Going to church was the really the best thing I could have done. I had walked out feeling so much better having met people. And I even had 3 numbers of people I could call in an emergency and Chris’s offer of her home if I needed to stay somewhere if the hostel got too much. The highlight of the day for me was that after lunch, Chris lifted me around the centre of Rio a bit and took me on a tour to a number of places that I simply could not have made it to without a car.

Inside the Monk's church

This tour included a visit to the Cathedral (a rather strange structure that you would not have imagined was a church with huge stain glass widows), a couple of other churches and streets of Lapa and a group of chanting monks that hold a service at about 6pm every day which was truly amazing. The church of this particular order of monks is really stunning. It’s all carved wood inside and all inlayed with gold. Intricate work and I believe recently restored due to termite damage. Yes, termites in a wooden church – bad idea. We bumped into a flamboyant Brazillian man there also waiting for the service and he ended up explaining with large sign language and much facial expression the history of the church (no matter that Chris spoke fluent Portugese). If my memory served me correctly, there have been monks chanting at this church since about 1612. It was a bit of a wow moment as we sat in the wooden pews, surrounded by intricate carvings listening to the monks chanting a number of Bible passages, including Psalms 109 – 112. They each took turns to lead the chanting. Sometimes there would be one voice, other times 3, other times they would all join in. It was rather intricate and hauntingly beautiful.

Geocaching with Rachel

So, my first day in Brazil was the most brilliant day – especially considering I expected it to be rather hard and lonely. Many thanks Chris for taking the time to make a lost tourist feel at home. I cannot tell you how much you helped me! I enjoyed every minute.

Even more amazing to me was that when I got back to the hostel (I was still dreading the next few days of trying to find an English speaking person I could get along with and tour with) there was an English speaking person holding the door open for me! Rachel was my second angel in Brazil and we were friends immediately. She is from England and a ton of fun…

Rachel was just about to finish her 3 month tour of South America and ended up giving me too many tips and tricks of the backpacking trade to count. She’d basically followed the route that I was going to take. She taught me about the bus system in Rio and general tricks to save money with food. We ended up cooking together that night and I introduced her to geocaching.

Carlos, Rachel and me on our geocaching jaunt

Rio has a couple of geocaching boxes so, I’m not too sure who dragged who around geocaching the next day. But I’m pretty sure that both Rachel and I dragged Carlos, a guy from Columbia around. The three of us set off and we found a couple of caches, much to Rachel’s delight. The highlight was the one on a hill in a park overlooking Ipanema Beach. This was my first huge view of Rio. Ipanema Beach stretched out in front of us into the distant mist. (The clouds were a little on the low side.) But what a walk to get there! It was one of those windy roads that snaked up the hill snake-style, to open out into a park with views to the hills.

The view of Ipanema

Ipanema beach

We wondered back down Ipamena beach, me trying to stick my feet in the waves without getting too wet and Rachel trying to avoid them and Carlos laughing at the both of us. Of course this ended up taking a lot of beach photos!

Copacabana beach - oooh!

Copacabana night market

Rachel then taught me about the cheapest form of transport in Rio, Taxi busses (similar to our taxies in South Africa, just looking a whole lot safer). We jumped beaches to Copacabana beach and the night market that they have from 6pm. One of those places they say you should see, but not alone. The market mostly had tourist trinkets but was rather interesting. A good place for Rachel to buy souvenirs – and for me to try not to spend any money.

Rachel

The next day, Carlos moved on and Rachel and I went searching for another cache in a forest in Rio. It was beautiful park and a little like how I imagined the jungle to be. We picnicked in the park and took lots more photos and sadly left without finding the box this time. Just too many possible hiding holes. But I loved being around trees and nature with no tourists in sight and searching for boxes. A bit of craziness. There was also an aquarium in the middle of this forest – this was my introduction to piranhas!

Piranhas!

Ipanema Beach

At this point, I think it’s appropriate to jump quickly to bus driving in Rio. Busses here are very interesting creatures. Basically really large South African taxis. They drive as fast as possible with hardly a gap between them and the vehicle in front, no matter the speed they are going.

So, lessons in bus catching in Rio: Lesson one: to stop a bus, you basically have to watch for the bus number you want and then half jump into the road and wave frantically at the driver, praying the bus is not in the fast lane and prevented from stopping by traffic and other busses.

Jungle gyms for men!

The busses travel as fast as possible, which also means they stop as fast as possible. It’s not uncommon to have a slamming of breaks to stop for a waving passenger. Lesson two: when on a bus, hold on! Even if sitting.

Lesson three: busses with aircon cost more.

Lesson four: the really stiff turnstyle in the middle of the bus is narrow and should be navigated while the bus is moving while paying the conductor.

Lesson five: there is no indication as to where the bus is at any moment in time, so watch your map and follow where the bus goes so that you know where you want to get off. Lesson five: pull the string stretched along the top of the bus to indicate you want to stop – if you can reach it. If not, hope that the buttons work. If nothing works, wave at the ticket conductor to indicate you wish to depart – and then hold on!

Copacabana

Ipanema at sunset

Rachel left the next day for the jungle, with the arrangement that we would meet back up in Rio together in a week after her exploits and my first trip outside of Rio. With Rachel and Carlos gone from the hostel, I wanted to change locations. So, I took my chance and changed hostels to one by Ipanema beach. This was a stunning hostel and I really enjoyed my time here. It was only a block to the beach, was safe and clean and people spoke English which made a huge difference.

A view point of Rio

I had picked the clear day of the week for the city tour of Rio. This included a visit to Christ the Redeemer, the Lapa steps, a tiny waterfall in the forest, a number of view-points and after our tour finished, a drop off at the sugar-loaf mountain.

Christ the Redeemer

There were a group of 6 of us that decided the sugar-loaf mountain was worth a climb for its amazing views. But I was the one pushing to make it uphill before sunset. To save a bit of cost, we climbed the first section of the mountain. (It’s a 2 way cable car to the top). It was a little interesting hiking up the mountain in flip-flops, but we made it to the top no problems. We even had a bit of wild-life viewing (monkeys in the trees) on the way which we wouldn’t have got if we had taken the first cable car instead. Sunset was stunning and well worth the climb. A cable car (second leg) to the very top of the mountain left us with classic views of Rio at dusk. Some of my favourite photos come from here.

The rest of my time in Rio was mostly recovery from being sick and a bit of beach bumming and working out how to get to the bus station in Rio and to Ouro Preto, my next stop…