Paris of the South

We had to fly the ridiculous route of Rio - Santiago - Buenos Aires for some reason, which is like flying London - Prague - Madrid but it was hassle free and we reminisced about arriving in South America 5 months ago, as we started in Santiago last September.

So, Buenos Aires where they dance Tango on the streets, dinner starts at midnight and clubs "get going" after 3AM.

We`ll be in Buenos Aires twice more so we had a relaxing couple of days in San Telmo district, the city centre and an afternoon looking around Boca (pics 1,3 & 5), the poor district of BA that is also home to Madonna`s former team Boca Juniors. He is everywhere, as you`d expect, here`s me with my 80`s style hairdo (that´s me in the white T-shirt).

I`m sure Bec took photo no.2 deliberately to highlight Argentina`s upturn since the 2001 economic crisis; the old and the new BA with the 19th Century architecture overshadowing the HSBC office(!) The 2nd to last pic shows the view from the roof terrace in the hostel. If you look closely you can see that they serve decent beer unlike the Brazilian water we had to drink in Rio. I did not agree with Bec to bring back Skol.

Our final few weeks` itinerary is;

-Uruguay now until Saturday - we took the ferry this morning to a small town called Colonia, the process was unbelievably slick including passport control and customs, we even checked in our rucksacks like you do on a plane.
-A few more days in BA, maybe a Boca match on Sunday (went to River Plate on sunday - fanatical support)
-Visit Mendoza, Argentina`s main wine region
-Bariloche in the heart of the Argentinian lake district
-Back to BA for more Tango, steak, wine and footie
-Home 24th March
-Work 26th March!!!

PS Before Ste starts another haircut debate I am going to a hairdressers right now...

Skol, Skol,Skol, Skol

It´s Ash wednesday, so Carnaval is over, Rio is getting back to normal. Although normal for Rio is people walking around in swimwear.

We´ve been busy since the Sambadrome. Yesterday I went on a tour of a favella, the biggest in south America, with around 150 000 people living there. Gav didn´t want to go as he thought it was voyeuristic, and it was a bit, but I remember learning about them in geography at school so I was really interested to see them.

It was actually really positive, to see that these temporary shanty towns I´d learned about 20 years ago, were now thriving permenant communities with all the normal services we enjoy. There were intertnet cafes, shops, schools, people have water and electricity and even cable TV, some of the houses had air conditioning. There is a darker side, outsiders can only go in with a guide and there are men on the streets carrying machine guns.

On a lighter note we went on a sunset cruise last night which was lovely, Gav went in for a dip, but I fogot to bring my toggs. Rio is even more stunning when you see it from the sea. In the sunset picture you can just about make out the statue of Christ the redeemer and sugar loaf.

The finale of the carnaval is the Gay ball, it´s televised accross Brazil, some of our group went but Gav and I just went to watch everyone go in. I´ve never seen so many men with boobs (Ed: look at the bottom pic of me for starters, sorry everyone I begged Bec to take it off). Brazil is the boob job capital of the world, I can see why.

Today we eventually made it to Copacabana beach. It was packed, but the bikinnis weren´t as revealing as the pictures you see of it at home.

Everying about Rio and Brazil has been brilliant, but for me (and I think I´m on my own here) one of the best things is that the national beer is Skol. I love it, I´ve always loved it, sadly you don´t see it much at home now, but it´s everywhere here. It´s the perfect beer, served ice cold, it´s quite wattery so it´s really refreshing and it doesn´t give you hangovers, well it doesn´t really get you drunk either. Bring back skol!

Samba-ing the night away

This is our 100th entry on the blog.

Well the big news from Rio is that I actually managed to stay up all night to watch the Sambadrome. In fact we were the last of the Dragoman people to leave. We were there til the bitter end. The last pic is of us staggering into the hotel for breakfast.

I thought the Sambadrome would be like a big stadium or be like an openair G-mex type thing. But it´s actually just a piece of road, 1km long with concrete stands along it, and they just shut the road off for Carnaval.

The Sambadrome is a REALLY big deal for people from Rio. Each favella has a Samba school, which isn´t actually a dance school it´s more of a social club/comunity centre / co-operative type thing. Each Samba School puts on a parade, the top 13 schools compete at the Sambadrome on the Sun and monday of carnaval. Each school has an hour and 15 mins to samba down the Sambadrome.

Each parade has about 3000 people in it, 5 massive floats. They all follow the same format, with a mixture of individual dancers, drummers and marching groups. Each school chooses a theme and has a song, which they all sing as they samba along. Some of the themes last night were a bit tenuous: Metamorphasis, the future in the past but others were a bit easier to work our, like games and the portugese language around the world. Anyway, the result is a magnificent show. There must be a lot of naked ostriches in the world at the moment.

The games one was really good, they even had a football pitch made up of people in green costumes sambering down the strip, 22 of them had lifesized footballers strapped to their heads, and one person had a ball on their head, so the players and the ball all ran about above the field of green bodies having a game, it looked amazing. The ball ran into the net just as it passed us. It was like gigantic subuteo.

We were in a stand right by the finishing line. When the dancers finish, they strip off their costumes and just throw them away! If you were persistant you could beg a costume off a dancer. Someone in our group snagged an outfit, here´s me modeling it in the first pic.

It was a night we´ll never forget.

8 Goal Thriller at the Maracana

There were under 20,000 people in a stadium that holds 95,000, neither side meant anything to me, the atmosphere was patchy but what a match!

Fluminense were on top for the whole game but somehow managed to concede 2 in the last 10 minutes to throw away a 4-2 lead and draw 4-4 with Vasco de Gama. The standard was high and passing slick with the game totally spread.

Neither back 4 pushed up when they broke up an attack so this meant the whole pitch was available to pass or run with the ball instead of everyone crammed in the middle third like the Premiership. The other thing I noticed was standard of the final pass, it seemed like there were 6 or 7 people with the ability to thread through balls like Kaka of Milan.

We were with everyone from our truck and of the 8 goals scored the average seen by everyone but me seemed to be 5. I even heard Bec discussing the colour of the sky at one point while I marvelled at the off the ball movement and how Flu´s number 10 dictated the tempo of the game. Bec took the pic of the woman in her bra to show how people watch footie in Brazil; with lots of skin showing while ordering a beer from a man with an ice box.

We even had a dodgy last minute penalty equaliser and a substitue appearance from Romario, yes THE Romario. I loved watching him, he is the only person I´ve ever seen on a football pitch who runs less than me!!

Crazy Carnaval

The night we arrived in Rio we went to the Red and Black ball in honour of the football team Flamengo. The outfits were outrageous, women in body paint only, topless 7ft transexuals and lots of lots of figure hugging (regardless of the size of figure) dresses. Some women do actually wear just nipple tassles and a G-string. We didn´t take our camera but others did so we may put some pics on at a later date but you will have to use your imagination and maybe footage from Sky News for the time being.

The music from the live bands just made you want to dance, you couldn´t stand still and there was more booty shaking than the Renault TV advert. After we left (v early at just after 1am) and the party got roudier all the ladies from our group were approached by amorous Latinos and when they rebuffed their advances and informed them that they were married were asked "Yes, but is he here?"

We visited Sugar Loaf Mountain (via a cable car), from where you see all of Rio´s impressively curvy coastline, that gives you fantastic views of just about all of Rio. We also took the tram to see "Christ the Redeemer" up close, one of the world´s iconic landmarks that overlooks and protects the city of Rio de Janiero. From Sugar Loaf you can see him; to the left of the helicopter in the last pic. The beach in the background of the photo of Bec and I is the famous Copacabana where we may have a quick swim and sunbathe this afternoon.

For those of you worried about our safety -we are being v careful and travelling in at least a group of 4 all the time.

Chopper´s Eye View

Hopefully this is 3rd time lucky.

Here are the pics from the Brazilian side of the Iguazu falls. The ride in the helicopter was fantastic as we rode above the falls and then swooped down for spectacular views. I was wrong the other day,there are over 200 individual falls and you can see how vast they are from the air. If you look in the first pic then you can see how small the people seem at Devil´s throat (there is a walkway running from top right of pic) and then pic 3 shows you Devil´s throat in context to the rest.

We had chance to visit a beach yesterday on Brazil´s Emerald coast. The Atlantic on this side is a bit warmer than in Galway, you can swim without your hat, gloves and coat!

So, it´s Rio Carnaval tomorrow. We are off to a ball tomorrow night where the theme is red and black in honour of the football team Flamengo. Then on Saturday we are watching a match at the MARACANA. Yes, that´s right the M-A-R-A-C-A-N-A to see Fluminese play Vasco de Gama. As UTD v Reading ends I will be in a stadium where 200,000 people once stood to watch the 1950 World Cup final between Brazil and Uruguay (I didn´t even need to look that up!). The capacity now is around 100,000.

The Carnaval has the top 13 Tango schools competing for the prize of best school with categories such as costumes, dance and music. Each school has around 5000 - 6000 dancers and they represent a specific area of Rio. The 13 schools are split and 6 compete on Sun night and 7 on Sunday. We visit the Sambadrome on Sunday to see the first 6 in all their glory.

That´s not a waterfall...

We´ve posted some pics of a few waterfalls on the blog but yesterday we saw the Daddy of all waterfalls. Iguazu falls is made up of 127 individual waterfalls. The biggest is called the devil´s throat and it´s almost a complete circle (270 degrees). They´re a similar size to Victoria falls although that wins the prize as the world´s biggest as it´s one indidvidual waterfall. A couple on our trip had seen Vic falls but they said Iguazu was much more impressive (so we´ve saved our selves a trip to Africa).

The falls are amazing, they straddle the border between Brazil and Argentina (and Pàraguy sort of). In Argentina you get up close to all the falls, but from the Brazillian side you get to see them all together, the panoramic view.

They are a massive tourist attraction and for most of the day we were trying to get ahead of the tour groups of elderly Americans who shuffled along at a snail´s pace blocking all the path ways, all in matching sun visors.

It was sweltering, 40 degree heat (a far cry from the weather at home at the moment), and we´d read in the Lonley Planet that the Sheraton did a brilliant lunch buffet, overlooking the falls for just $10US - Air conditioned, so that was our lunch plans sorted. Anyway we got to the Sheraton and found the price was actually $30US, the rest of the group all turned round to find somewhere else, but Gav and I walked in and pulled up a couple of chairs at the buffet. Well he´s got a job now. It was a great lunch. I think they put the price up to keep the back packers out.

Phew, we´re up to date now. We crossed the border into Brazil today and will see the falls from a helicopter tomorrow on the Brazilian side.

¨Lean back, Gav¨

Carlos Pelligrini has a nature reserve on and around a piranha and caymen (alligators) infested lake.

We camped 10 meters from the water´s edge but were only bitten by the mozzies as per bloomin´ usual. The mozzies and insects were so bad on the 2nd night I was virtually smacking myself in the face to swat them off one after another, eventually going to bed early to escape them but missing out on a spit roast lamb.

We took a boat trip onto the lake and saw the caymen close up. The big fella with his mouth open was 2,5m long and growling at me from a metre away. Bec was determined to get a picture of us both together and gave me the instruction to lean back. My reply is unprintable.

The cappibarra, 4th pic, is the biggest rodent in the world as in the size of a small sheep. They were wandering around amongst the tents and seemed to enjoy going to the toilet and then rubbing themselves in it. Some of the campers went fishing for piranhas and were v successful using steak or other piranhas as bait.