On leaving Bolivia and
flying across the continent to Brazil we moved from one of the poorer South
American countries to one of the richer. But our first impressions weren’t with
the contrast in wealth but with the contrast in clothing. Obviously weather
plays a large role in the dress codes of the respective countries but so does
lack of inhibitions! Brazilians seem to spend so much time on the beaches that
their swimwear is effectively their national dress but in most cases its far
closer to a state of undress!
Built more with an all
round tan in mind, the locals wear them with pride and for the locals in
question it doesn’t matter if they’re built to wear a thong or not! No holding back
with this lot so whether the subject entices you to look at them or to avert
your eyes, they really don’t care. Not a bother on them and certainly
contributes to a day at the beach being a feast of people watching. It’s not often
your wife turns and says “this’ll be the only country I’m likely to say this in
but quick look at the ass on that girl over there!”
We flew into the second
city, Sao Paulo, but hadn’t scheduled much time there so any fans of the city have
a right to feel neglected. So after virtually skipping Sao Paulo we began our
trek north by heading to the wonderfully named Paraty. Any city with party in
the name is fine by us and by the luck of the Irish, didn’t we arrive there on
St Patrick’s Day. If you’re celebrating Patrick’s Day abroad, it’s always nice
to go where there are loads of Irish so that you can celebrate together. As an
alternative route we went to a town where we were the only Irish so that we
could be treated like Z-list celebrities for a night. “Hello Ms Brazilian girl,
I see you’re wearing green, did you know we’re Irish, oh you don’t speak
English, how about I show you my passport and point out the word next to
Nationality instead. Bingo, new best friend for the night, easy as!”
As well as being a place
that loves Patrick’s Day and the Irish, Paraty is a very nice cobblestoned town
with great access to beaches and has lots of things to do. Our first 5 days
were spent between here and a nearby island, Ilha Grande. They gave us a nice
welcome to Brazil and especially to Brazilian beaches. It has almost 7,500km of
coastline so you can be sure that they have plenty of amazing beaches to show
off. We dipped our toes in to prepare ourselves for Rio and some of the most
famous beaches in the world.
Brazil has a reputation
of being a dangerous country and to a certain extent its justified but on
travelling through the country the vibe that comes to the forefront is more
their love of life and fun rather than anything darker. They certainly know how
to have fun and we did our best to try to jump on that bandwagon by going to
the beach and drinking beers, just like the locals. We did give the thongs a
skip though!
The owner of our hostel
in Rio had a funny anecdote about Brazil culture- he told us that there are many
rich people in Rio and many poor people in the favelas but once they get to the
beach, all Brazilians are equal. “We all wear the same type of togs, we all
drink the same brand of beer, we all sit on the same sand and we all rent the
same deckchairs for a dollar…….. because Brazilians are all lazy, we don’t want
to carry our own chairs down to the beach!”. Sums them up, they really do have
their priorities right!
Rio is an awesome city
and is a city best enjoyed while bathed in sunshine- I suppose most cities are
but visiting there and not being able to avail of the beaches is such a tease.
Thankfully after arriving into Rio in the rain, the weather cleared up and we
really got to see what all the fuss is about. The postcard picture of Rio is of
Christ the Redeemer. As it is so big and is so high up, there are plenty of
places around Rio where you glimpse it looking down on you. It’s a fantastic
thing to be walking along and randomly glimpse the site of it through a gap in two
buildings.
Once the sun came out,
we said we would make the trip up the hill to get a closer look at Him. Shuttle
buses run regularly up to the hill and from there you can walk the last few
hundred metres, or catch an escalator if you’re feeling the heat. On getting to
the top, two things will strike you:
1. The statue
is really cool and the views from the top are spectacular
2. Tourists are
such funny creatures!
We were there during
their low season but even still the place was thronged with sightseers each
trying to capture the perfect moment of them with the statue and nobody in the
background- a virtual impossibility! Given the height of the statue (34m) it’s
hard enough to get a photo that includes Him and you, let alone get the angle
right to exclude everyone else (although using a Brazilian flag to block out
the crowd was one of our better ideas!). You have people everywhere, you have
people walking into photos, you have silly poses, you have people lying on the
ground hoping you don’t get stood on to take a picture- guilty on all counts,
your honour! It’s manic and it’s fantastic.
But all that fooling
about shouldn’t take away from the views, Rio is definitely best viewed from a
height. White sand beaches all around surrounded by skyscrapers, with the bays
full of boats. Spectacular. Our next stop was to get another view of that scene
but this time, higher up and including Christ the Redeemer in the vista. In
order to do that we crossed the city and took a cable car up Sugarloaf Mountain
for another spectacular view, this time with the sun setting over the city. It
made for definitely one of the most memorable days of our trip. Rio in all its
glory and it very much lives up the hype.
Along the way we were
introduced to one of the joys of Brazilian cuisine- the “per kilo” restaurants.
These are very common restaurants that are a buffet style restaurant whereby they
weigh your plate each time you go up and charge you whatever their per kilo
rate is. Quite a good way to eat and we had varying success with them.
Obviously all of the restaurants operate with a different per kilo rate but
generally they’re a pretty cheap way to eat. One of the quirks that we learned
early on was to check what type of plates they use because there’s a
considerable price difference from when the restaurant uses plastic plates
(good!) to when they swap them out for large heavy ceramic ones (bad!). In
these restaurants presentation isn’t the key measure for how we evaluated them!
This links in with the
funny way in which their nightclubs operate. On entering the club you’re given
either a docket or a plastic card with your name on it. Every time you want a
drink you hand it over and its added to your tab. No money is paid over the
bar. But the catch is that the bouncers will not let you out of the club until
you provide them with a receipt proving you’ve cleared your bill. In an
instance where you misplace or lost your docket, fines can be up to 500 reais-
not an ideal outcome. As was mentioned previously our Spanish is at remedial
levels, however compared to our level of Portuguese we’re A-level students! So trying
to decipher why the bouncers wouldn’t let us out of the club when we hadn’t
bought anything took a while. The trick then came when we realized on going to
get our exit stamp that there was an entry charge- very clever! I suppose now
that I think about it, it’s probably akin to an exit fee rather than an
entrance fee. We were hostages within a nightclub- could be worse I suppose!
So besides beaches,
sunshine and strange billing systems, what else does Rio have to offer? Well,
actually quite a lot, we did a wonderful walking tour one day around the city,
which gave us a great insight into the history and a lot of the sites that we
may not have been comfortable doing ourselves. I suppose that is one of the
unfortunate things about being a tourist in Brazil- you are confronted with so
many warnings not to walk in certain areas, to get taxis most places, to always
watch the stuff you have and to always bring minimal things with you. Generally
during the day we had no issues and no reasons to feel uncomfortable but it
does affect your overall experience as we happily walked around Asian cities
one after the other without any hassles. I suppose its better to be too
cautious then too cavalier. That was a long explanation for why we found
ourselves on a walking tour rather than walking ourselves!
But by walking alone you
definitely miss out on the history so it was nice to get some anecdotes about
the place- my favourite being that at one stage in its history Rio de Janeiro
was the capital of Portugal! The only South American city to ever be a capital
of a European country- I suppose it figures that it wouldn’t be that common an
occurrence! On our tour, we visited the Seleron steps which are fantastic- the
story being that a local artist (Seleron) who lived nearby thought they were
very dull so decided one day to paint them to brighten them. When he was
finished that he decided that tiling them with colourful tiles would be even
better and so what turned out to be a lifelong art project began. As time went
on, people from around the world began visiting and Seleron continued to put
down new tiles. This constant evolution was assisted by those tourists sending
tiles from their own country to him to put on the stairs! All this ended very
strangely when he was found dead on the stairs one morning, no explanation has
ever been given for why he was there or how he died…….
So Rio was a big hit
with us, one of our favourite cities. Lots to do during the day, lots to do at
night. We stayed five nights but would happily have stayed five more but we had
lots of places to see so another night bus was boarded and off to Ouro Preto we
go. It’s a lovely little town with narrow windy cobblestone streets and lots of
hills. We spent a lovely afternoon walking up and down these streets as we
navigated around the towns 23 churches! No town this size needs 23 churches but
it’s a great way to spend a day. All very different styles, all with varying
views. Some of them built at the top of hills amongst bushland are really
beautiful.
Continuing our voyage
north, we hopped on a plane (we do have a night bus limit!) and headed for
Lencois and the national park that is around that area, Parque Nacional Chapada
Diamantina. It’s off the beaten track but well worth the visit. We did two day
trips here into the park and did not regret it. Beautiful sites, very different
to anything we’d seen anywhere else. The highlight of the first day being a
swimming stop in the turquoise blue water of Poco Azul. When you’re in there
you realize that the water is actually perfectly clear but that the amazing
colours are coming from a combination of the sunlight and the rocks underneath
you.
The itinerary for the
second day was changed from the original schedule as rain the previous week had
ruled out one of the commonly visited sites for us. We weren’t too happy about
this but to compensate us we were going to visit some caves instead. In
hindsight we were incredibly lucky. It always helps when expectations aren’t
that high starting off but the Torrinha caves were one of the highlights of our
Brazilian trip. We spent two hours underground, going 2.5km into the mountain
to view the incredible array of formations that were to be found there- too
many stalactites, stalagmites and columns to count as well as one formation
that has been found nowhere else in the world and they are still confused as to
how exactly it formed. But it wasn’t just the constant views that entertained
us, it was also the fact that many of the routes to get through the caves
involved crawling or stooped walking to get through. Luckily we were behind in
laundry so clean clothes weren’t being worn! We were going along routes 2 and 3
through the caves. When we enquired why we weren’t going on route 1, we were
told that this route was no longer safe. Oh OK! When do you expect it to be
reopened? Probably never we were told. Well, that’s emphatically uncomforting! Thankfully
routes 2 and 3 proved nice and stable and rewarded us with a great afternoon.
Reward for our bravery came in the form of sunset over the valley and a bottle
of wine back in Lencois. It’s the least a brave tourist deserves!
Lencois as a town was a
lovely chilled out place full of lovely cafes and restaurants. Perfect base for
tackling the national park. It did have more cobblestones to test our decision
to buy wheelie rucksacks over regular rucksacks- we stand by the decision based
on them being put on our backs twice in a five-month period but they really do
not work on cobblestones!
Our final stop in Brazil
was to Salvador, the afro Brazilian capital. A big change in vibe and skin
colour- we definitely didn’t blend in as easily! It’s a really fun city, very
vibrant with lots to do. As with a lot of these cities, the main tourist area
lies in the Old Quarter where all the buildings are protected and so it’s like
taking a step back in time. In Salvador its very hard not to notice that there
is a very heavy police presence around these areas also. Keeping tourists safe
was clearly a priority. We had a lovely time there getting to experience the
local culture, which is very music heavy with a bit of capoeira (Brazilian
fighting/ dancing!) thrown in.
This is where we spent
our Easter so got a chance to see the locals take on the stations of the cross.
We also spent time looking at the local churches- Brazilian is over 60%
Catholic, hence the large amount of churches. Makes a change from all the
temples in Asia we visited! Our favourite was Sao Francisco church- amazingly
ornate, huge silver chandeliers, massive amount of gold inside there all
contribute to the spectacular view inside. However the devils in the detail and
it’s the little touches that make it so much different. The church was built by
the slaves in 1700’s but the slaves weren’t allowed to practice their own
religion. As acts of defiance the slaves didn’t carve the cherubs as you
traditionally would, instead they carved some of them deformed, some of them
pregnant, some of them very well hung! It’s bizarre but certainly adds to the
story of the place.
On one of our last
nights in Salvador we went to Barra, which is a beach suburb away from the CBD.
While there we watched sunset and discovered that the Brazilians in this region
really do love their sunsets. The beach was thronged with people and once the
sun disappeared over the horizon the whole crowd burst into applause! It was
brilliant and apparently happens whenever they watch sunset (the same thing
happened in the national park)- in many ways it’s a nice way to sum them up,
they are generally just a very happy bunch who appreciate the little things in
life.
So this is the end
unfortunately, a fantastic few weeks. We had a rainy start but the sun shone on
us emphatically for the last few weeks. We met some great people, saw some
amazing things, tasted many caiprinhas and really got to know the Brazilians
and their love of sun, beaches, music and fun- our kind of people!
Now it’s
time to samba onto a flight bound for Bogota and see what the Colombians can do
to compete with their neighbours. We can’t wait!
Click here to see a selection of photos from our Brazilian trip
Our route:
Fly to Sao Paulo, bus to Paraty, bus & boat to Ilha Grande, Rio de Janeiro, bus to Ouro Preto, fly to Salvador, bus to Lencois, back to Salvador, fly Salvador to Bogota, Colombia
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