Hola de Brasil!
Hello,
Right, just a quick update at the moment, as it´s hot and sunny outside and it´d be a waste to spend too much of the day indoors on the internet!
Made it to Brasil fairly uneventfully, decent enough flights with TAP although Lisbon airport isn´t the most fun to transit though as they shuttle you everywhere in buses rather than use jetways, and seem quite happy to leave you on said buses for ages. Spent quite a bit of the Lisbon-Rio flight (which is longer than I thought, about 10 hours or so) playing puzzle games, and much of the rest frantically mugging up on Portuguese. Needless to say, mine is still hopeless, but I seem to get kudos for at least making an effort. I have Yes, No, Please, Thankyou, Where are the toilets? and Can I have a beer/caipirinha? down already.
First impressions of Rio (once my pickup for the hostel arrived and found me at Rio Internacional airport) were the smell coming over the bay - I think some of the areas we went through were favelas, and the sanitation didn´t seem brilliant - and the sheer lunacy of Brasilian traffic. A taxi ride in Rio has got to rank right up there with a moto ride in Saigon as one of those experiences where public transport verges on an extreme sport. Numerous lanes, everyone drifting in and out of them overtaking on the inside and outside at will, indicator light use strictly optional and separation that could be measured in feet even when doing over 100 km/h, all done over a landscape of urban motorways and tunnels as you cross the city. If there isn´t a computer driving game out there based around surviving Rio, someone´s missing an opportunity!
On arrival at the hostel, immediate reaction is that it´s busy, it´s loud and fairly casual. Pretty indicative of Rio as a whole. They seem to go in for triple-decker bunks in a big way here, which isn´t great (as the last one into my dorm, I understandably got one of the top ones and crashed my head a couple of times on the ceiling!), but the free breakfast this morning out on the veranda/patio area was pretty nice. I got moved to a different dorm today, which actually has more people but seems rather airier, and I´m now in a middle bunk, which is an improvement. Also, the barmaid there makes a pretty mean caipirinha (though these changed to caipiroskas part way through the evening, as the hostel had drunk the entire supply of cachaca so she had to switch to using vodka...). A lot of people were heading out on the town for a big Saturday night (most headed to the district of Lapa), but I had a quiet one in after a seriously long day, and just hung around chatting and having a few drinks.
Anyways, this morning I´ve been for a wander along the beach here at Copacabana. Or rather, I´ve been along the section of the promenade next to it, as I didn´t feel like braving the crossing of the futebol and volleyball courts to get to the area where people were clustered in their deckchairs and the like in masses. It´s really busy, so much so that they close off the seaward side of the Avenida Atlantica, the main road by the beach, on a Sunday for people to walk, skate, or cycle along. And everyone is at the beach. I mean everyone. This is where the Brasilian beach stereotypes start to break down as, whilst those on the sports courts are in pretty good shape, many of those along the promenade are not the kind of people you want to see in their swimwear (especially given the Brasilian fashion trends when it comes to these things - yes, the budgie-smugglers are alive and well in Rio). I´m no artwork myself, but then again I´m not wandering along in my speedos...
Think I may head off and try and make my way over to Sugarloaf Mtn as it´s a gorgeous day and hopefully would be a good view.
Take care and have fun,
Pat
Right, just a quick update at the moment, as it´s hot and sunny outside and it´d be a waste to spend too much of the day indoors on the internet!
Made it to Brasil fairly uneventfully, decent enough flights with TAP although Lisbon airport isn´t the most fun to transit though as they shuttle you everywhere in buses rather than use jetways, and seem quite happy to leave you on said buses for ages. Spent quite a bit of the Lisbon-Rio flight (which is longer than I thought, about 10 hours or so) playing puzzle games, and much of the rest frantically mugging up on Portuguese. Needless to say, mine is still hopeless, but I seem to get kudos for at least making an effort. I have Yes, No, Please, Thankyou, Where are the toilets? and Can I have a beer/caipirinha? down already.
First impressions of Rio (once my pickup for the hostel arrived and found me at Rio Internacional airport) were the smell coming over the bay - I think some of the areas we went through were favelas, and the sanitation didn´t seem brilliant - and the sheer lunacy of Brasilian traffic. A taxi ride in Rio has got to rank right up there with a moto ride in Saigon as one of those experiences where public transport verges on an extreme sport. Numerous lanes, everyone drifting in and out of them overtaking on the inside and outside at will, indicator light use strictly optional and separation that could be measured in feet even when doing over 100 km/h, all done over a landscape of urban motorways and tunnels as you cross the city. If there isn´t a computer driving game out there based around surviving Rio, someone´s missing an opportunity!
On arrival at the hostel, immediate reaction is that it´s busy, it´s loud and fairly casual. Pretty indicative of Rio as a whole. They seem to go in for triple-decker bunks in a big way here, which isn´t great (as the last one into my dorm, I understandably got one of the top ones and crashed my head a couple of times on the ceiling!), but the free breakfast this morning out on the veranda/patio area was pretty nice. I got moved to a different dorm today, which actually has more people but seems rather airier, and I´m now in a middle bunk, which is an improvement. Also, the barmaid there makes a pretty mean caipirinha (though these changed to caipiroskas part way through the evening, as the hostel had drunk the entire supply of cachaca so she had to switch to using vodka...). A lot of people were heading out on the town for a big Saturday night (most headed to the district of Lapa), but I had a quiet one in after a seriously long day, and just hung around chatting and having a few drinks.
Anyways, this morning I´ve been for a wander along the beach here at Copacabana. Or rather, I´ve been along the section of the promenade next to it, as I didn´t feel like braving the crossing of the futebol and volleyball courts to get to the area where people were clustered in their deckchairs and the like in masses. It´s really busy, so much so that they close off the seaward side of the Avenida Atlantica, the main road by the beach, on a Sunday for people to walk, skate, or cycle along. And everyone is at the beach. I mean everyone. This is where the Brasilian beach stereotypes start to break down as, whilst those on the sports courts are in pretty good shape, many of those along the promenade are not the kind of people you want to see in their swimwear (especially given the Brasilian fashion trends when it comes to these things - yes, the budgie-smugglers are alive and well in Rio). I´m no artwork myself, but then again I´m not wandering along in my speedos...
Think I may head off and try and make my way over to Sugarloaf Mtn as it´s a gorgeous day and hopefully would be a good view.
Take care and have fun,
Pat
posted by Pat at 12:00 pm
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