Dear All,
I’ve left the blog for a few days because our daily activities have slowed down considerably…our days in Rio De Janeiro have consisted mostly of eating, sleeping and wandering the beach or shops..its been lovely!
Were staying at the Lemon Spirit Hostel in Leblon. Leblon is kinda equivalent to Toorak, it’s the fancy/expensive side of the neighbourhood, however in terms of Rio it means that there is a lot less chance of us being mugged. Rio dosnt have a great name for itself, a few people we met along the way told us to watch our things carefully in Rio. Once here, we met a few locals who explained to us that if we had been to Rio 8 years ago, we probably would have found a very different city. Anyone brave enough to go outside in the dark would most likely be mugged, pickpockets were everywhere and it generally wasn’t a very safe city. However since Rio is hosting the world cup in 2 years and the Olympics in 4 years it has significantly cleaned up its act. There are police on almost every corner and they’re easily spotted on the roads day or night. There are still area’s that aren’t as safe as others, but the beaches and surrounding neighbourhoods are a lot more tourist friendly these days. We were at a big market today and watched the police pull aside a guy looking pretty dodgy and kick him out of the market.
Hostel has a great bar serving capirinhas, a cocktail with lots of lime juice, ice, sugar and a sugar cane alcohol, it’s cold, sweet and very tasty. Were staying in a four bed dorm and have been sharing with an American that says he is doing volunteer work however he’s only been once for 2 hours and the rest of the time has been out partying..We also have a guy we’ve called ‘South American Fabio’, we think he’s from Argentina and looks like a version of Fabio. Our 4 bunks are along the wall and each persons feet meet in the middle, it was very awkward today when I woke up with my feet touching Fabio’s feet..felt very strange for my honeymoon. Luckily, were about to go to Paraty for 3 nights and we’ve booked a really nice room at a B&B for the 3 nights and don’t have to share with anyone else!
We’ve been spending most of our afternoons at the beach. The city is surrounded by 3 main beaches, Copacobana, Ipanema and Leblon. We’ve wandered along them all and they are all packed! Everyone has a little space with their umbrellas and chairs set up and then they bake for the rest of the day. They take their baking very serious and are all marvellous shades of bronze. Dan and I must stick out like white tourists! Particularly even more that Dan has turned himself splotchy red as he can’t put suncream on properly, I’m slightly more tanned than I was in Antartica but I don’t think my skin would ever make it to the shade of bronze they achieve. Not only do we stick out because of our tans, we also stand out because our bathers have significantly more material than everyone else’s….dan’s in boardshorts when most men are wearing boyleg type speedos and the girls wear g-string inspired bather bottoms. Again, something else I didn’t imagine doing on my honeymoon was looking at a lot of other women’s very tanned bottoms..
Food wise, we’ve been having a bit of everything…sometimes it’s what we can work out and actually order, especially as we don’t speak any portugese. Today we went to Galitos, a grilled chicken place that was pumping at lunchtime with locals, we sat and stared at the menu for a while and then finally when the waiter arrived we pointed at the food the people next to us were having and said ‘please’. Lol, luckily they laughed and the waiter laughed and we ended up with delicious chicken, chips and a rice-type salad dish, all very tasty. In Rio, they have ‘by the kilo’ restaurants, kinda like a buffet but they weigh it all and you pay by the kilo. We havnt tested it out yet. We had pizza one night, which included ‘hearts of palm’ pizza which is palm tree shoots on a pizza, not very tasty. There’s lots of fresh juice places with all types of sandwiches with huge slabs of cheese in them and even an eggburger..which I’m still not sure about. Although not as good as Argentina, we’ve had some good steak as well.
We did feel that we needed to spend one day seeing the touristy sights of Rio. So we joined a tour bus and visited what I like to call ‘the big jesus’ on the huge hill overlooking Rio. Now in hindsight I wish I hadn’t, it was a lot more peaceful looking at him from a distance rather than going up there with the rest of Rio. There’s a concrete platform underneath the big jesus and it was packed like sardines with people. What made it worse was that because jesus is towering above you people were on the ground looking up with their cameras trying to get their friends in the photos and causing everyone else to fall over them, it was madness. From the big jesus we drove down past the Favela’s (slum like districts that still cause a lot of problems for the police) and old colonial style houses from the portugese. Stopped at the Lapa steps where a crazy Chilean man decorated then with tiles from all over the world. Then we finished at the Sugarloaf mountains which have two huge cable cars that take you to the top of the mountains for a stunning view over the city.
It’s the end of our Sunday here and I think I can hear the bartender calling out that he’s making more capirinhas..perfect!
Lots of love, Jess and Dan xox
Quick thankyou and hug to everyone who visits and leaves a note xoxox
