The three-hour bus ride to Rio de Janeiro was (again) mostly along the glorious coastline. Things in Brazil are generally more expensive than we’d expected and bus trips certainly cost more than in Argentina or Uruguay. The plus side is that you stand a chance of getting a super plush bus with seats that nearly stretch out flat, but it is a bit hit and miss.
We had mixed feelings about visiting Rio to be honest. We were really looking forward to seeing the city but had also heard quite a few horror stories about the crime. Some people say it’s stupid to think like this and they’re probably right but when you’ve heard 1st hand experiences, you need to work hard to get the stories out of your mind. We were renting a studio apartment in Ipanema, one of the nicer parts of the city, off a chap we met in Trindade. It turned out to be a brilliant location; only one block from the beach and surrounded by restaurants, cafes, bars and patisseries…. all that were unfortunately too expensive for us and we didn’t eat out once. So, while people across the road ate in the glitzy restaurant, we contented ourselves with a homecooked meal that cost about 1/4 of the price.
Ipanema beach was at the bottom of our road, about 200m from the apartment
and, because it was Easter, the place was crawling with people. All along the beach there were men out to impress and I can safely say that the number of beautiful men far outweighed the number of beautiful women (love the white togs…!).
The one time we did frequent one of the cafes for a coffee we sat at the table with a chap who seemed normal and the only thing that might have given something away were the huge jagged scars on his arms, the constant fidgeting and the fact that he broke into loud song once in a while. He was a very distracting table companion but Euan struck up a conversation with him and asked his name, to which this chap replied “see you later, alligator”. Euan asked again and the guy said “I HATE alligators”. Ahh… yup. Euan persevered until the guy answered with a name, no idea if it was his real name or not but mission accomplished. Three hours later we passed by the cafe again on our way home and this chap was still sitting there necking down espressos.
The sweeping 4km of sand that is Copacabana beach was just around the corner from Ipanema. The area is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and definitely seems one of the more trendy parts of Rio with flash hotels and fancy stores. Even Havaianas (flip-flops/jandals) were double the price they were in Ipanema (probably something to do with the shop being right beside the Sofitel Hotel). On the beach there was an impressive display being put on by the sea with massive waves rolling in and, at times, shooting right up onto the beach and sweeping away people sitting in beach chairs, gazebos and drink stands.
More than once waves caught us out and made us wish we were wearing togs,
and we did look a bit out of place though next to all the tanned scantily clad bodies around.
The waves were so impressive (and unusual?) that they drew quite a crowd, including some surfers and body boarders who weren’t braving the waves.
We estimated that some of the waves were well over 20ft high and swimming was banned on all but the safer beaches for the time we were there.
A helicopter patrolled the beach, sweeping low along the water but the only people in there were those with boards.
Back on Ipanema the waves were pretty much the same
and the volleyball players kept losing their courts to the waves. We were impressed with the number of older folk playing volleyball just as hard out as their younger partners/rivals and those we saw were in fantastic shape.
We spent a lot of time on the beaches – couldn’t help it really and we are amazed that such a large city could have easy access to such incredible beaches. Absolutely spoilt for choice. We were quite happy spending evenings on the beach people watching and supporting the volleyball players. We made our own bottle of caipirinha and sat on the edge of the beach attracting all sorts of people who came over to say hello, ask for money, have a chat and God knows what else (we SO don’t understand Portuguese!)
We had mixed feelings about visiting Rio to be honest. We were really looking forward to seeing the city but had also heard quite a few horror stories about the crime. Some people say it’s stupid to think like this and they’re probably right but when you’ve heard 1st hand experiences, you need to work hard to get the stories out of your mind. We were renting a studio apartment in Ipanema, one of the nicer parts of the city, off a chap we met in Trindade. It turned out to be a brilliant location; only one block from the beach and surrounded by restaurants, cafes, bars and patisseries…. all that were unfortunately too expensive for us and we didn’t eat out once. So, while people across the road ate in the glitzy restaurant, we contented ourselves with a homecooked meal that cost about 1/4 of the price.
Ipanema beach was at the bottom of our road, about 200m from the apartment
and, because it was Easter, the place was crawling with people. All along the beach there were men out to impress and I can safely say that the number of beautiful men far outweighed the number of beautiful women (love the white togs…!).
The one time we did frequent one of the cafes for a coffee we sat at the table with a chap who seemed normal and the only thing that might have given something away were the huge jagged scars on his arms, the constant fidgeting and the fact that he broke into loud song once in a while. He was a very distracting table companion but Euan struck up a conversation with him and asked his name, to which this chap replied “see you later, alligator”. Euan asked again and the guy said “I HATE alligators”. Ahh… yup. Euan persevered until the guy answered with a name, no idea if it was his real name or not but mission accomplished. Three hours later we passed by the cafe again on our way home and this chap was still sitting there necking down espressos.
The sweeping 4km of sand that is Copacabana beach was just around the corner from Ipanema. The area is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and definitely seems one of the more trendy parts of Rio with flash hotels and fancy stores. Even Havaianas (flip-flops/jandals) were double the price they were in Ipanema (probably something to do with the shop being right beside the Sofitel Hotel). On the beach there was an impressive display being put on by the sea with massive waves rolling in and, at times, shooting right up onto the beach and sweeping away people sitting in beach chairs, gazebos and drink stands.
More than once waves caught us out and made us wish we were wearing togs,
and we did look a bit out of place though next to all the tanned scantily clad bodies around.
The waves were so impressive (and unusual?) that they drew quite a crowd, including some surfers and body boarders who weren’t braving the waves.
We estimated that some of the waves were well over 20ft high and swimming was banned on all but the safer beaches for the time we were there.
A helicopter patrolled the beach, sweeping low along the water but the only people in there were those with boards.
Back on Ipanema the waves were pretty much the same
and the volleyball players kept losing their courts to the waves. We were impressed with the number of older folk playing volleyball just as hard out as their younger partners/rivals and those we saw were in fantastic shape.
We spent a lot of time on the beaches – couldn’t help it really and we are amazed that such a large city could have easy access to such incredible beaches. Absolutely spoilt for choice. We were quite happy spending evenings on the beach people watching and supporting the volleyball players. We made our own bottle of caipirinha and sat on the edge of the beach attracting all sorts of people who came over to say hello, ask for money, have a chat and God knows what else (we SO don’t understand Portuguese!)
At dusk, the magnificent, bustling beach completely emptied of people but this photo was taken after an altercation between two (or so we thought) men, one of whom was chased down the street behind us as we sat drinking on the beach edge. Coconuts were thrown (seriously!) and we thought nothing of it until a van load of police turned up, then another, and another and another until there were five (that’s a lot of police!). We stayed there, wondering what was going on and when we did venture down the beach a wee way we stopped in a hurry as everyone was running back towards us and police were chasing a couple of men, their batons flying everywhere and connecting where possible. People were hiding behind stairs, vans… anything. One chap, obviously being hunted, stupidly ran into the sea and was followed by two guys holding long sticks. They in turn were followed by two police with batons and eventually the chap was caught and dragged out of the sea by the four others. We still have no idea what was going down but we figured it was better to be on the very edge of it so quietly went back to our caipirinhas.
We ventured into the central city to catch an old rattling tram that took us over an old viaduct (believe it or not but the cone-shaped building is Rio's new cathedral) high above the Lapa district
and up the hill into Santa Teresa, an arty, dishevelled part of Rio that has some lovely old homes perched on the hill sides.
There was a lot of graffiti in the area; well, graffiti seems to be across the whole of Rio really but in Santa Teresa it looked like it belonged for some strange reason. Graffiti was particularly bad in the city centre and it was very different to the 'art' in Santa Teresa that, I thought, was quite beautiful.
Waiting for the tram back down we watched this guy for quite a while, wondering what he was doing. We gathered that he had a make-shift ‘restaurant’, using things that he pulled out of the back of his VW combi van, cooking over an open fire using a can as a pot. He had quite a few customers and was dishing up bowls of steaming something.
Some of the old houses were lovely and this was one of the few that weren’t coated in security bars. The security on many of the houses here reminded us of that in South Africa. Bars on all windows and doors and you can’t even enter many properties without going through a bar gate and that’s before you get to the gated entrance way. Most of the basement flats were totally caged in so no one could jump down to the lower windows from the pavement.
Central Rio is not the most pleasant place and the State Parliament building was one of the few large buildings that wasn’t defaced. We spent a few hours in and around the city centre but, as the day had cleared up, opted to go up the Corcovado on the surprisingly fast cog train that climbs a steep track to the top.
This is a must-do if you’re in Rio. Sure, it’s very touristy, very expensive but so worth it on a clear day and offers a 360-degree view of Rio from a height of just short of 800m. The fact that one side of the Corcovado is vertical granite rockface makes you feel that you're on top of the world. The day wasn’t as clear as it could be but it was the best we were going to get. In the below, the Jockey Club is in the foreground and the beach shown is Leblon, right next to Ipanema.
The long beach on the right is Copacabana and Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf Mountain) is just left of the centre.
We visited a gem museum and we came across these birds a lot in Brazil – particularly in the touristy places such as Iguazu. These things are made entirely of stone sourced from Brazil and while our initial reaction is ‘ugh, how awful’, when take a closer look they’re very cleverly made. This was the largest we saw and, judging from the prices of the other smaller birds, would have cost around US$100K. The body of the parrot is one solid piece of stone and the eyes, beak and patterns around the beak made from tigers eye, and set on a solid chunk of amethyst. No, we did not buy one. Not even a small one.
The chap who started the company, Jules Sauer, a Frenchman who studied gemology in Amsterdam then moved to Brazil, has it sown up. Interestingly enough, they won’t let you visit the factory where these birds are made but they claim that they’re all hand carved and the larger pieces take weeks or months to make….
We had five nights in Rio and don’t know where the time went. We spent a lot of time on buses (sometimes the wrong ones) and got to see a lot of the city as a result. While we carried nothing with us and, at times, felt that we really had to watch our back, I can honestly say that everyone was friendly to us. We almost ran out of time to head up Sugar Loaf mountain as we left it to the last day in the vain hope that the afternoon would be stunning and sunny. It wasn’t and in fact it was the worst day we’d had since we arrived and it was raining. The beaches still had die-hard beach fans sitting under sun umbrellas while the volleyball coaches had their teams out training. I’m ashamed to admit that we nearly didn’t go up the Sugar Loaf because the weather was so foul but by the time we’d bussed there and got to halfway, it was still grey but no longer raining. Interestingly enough, the bungy jump that we did in South Africa was over half the height of the mountain (never again we've decided).
Copacabana Beach is the long beach in this photo, with Ipanema just around the point. Rio is full of mountains and tunnels and this photo shows the landscape and how the city nestles into it.
The beach below is Botafogo and you can just the Corcovado high above Rio in the centre of the photo.
We were waiting for the sun to go down and the evening was thus far unimpressive but we wanted to see the Rio lights from up high.
This was the first hint that something was coming
but we never ever expected this
and it just got better
and better!
Now we have 100s of photos of sunset over Rio (and it would be wrong not to share them with you!).
We waited until the lights came on before heading down, getting on the wrong bus and having a night touring Rio for over an hour (we couldn’t get off because we didn’t know where we were or which bus to get back on to).
We were leaving Rio the next morning, bound for Sao Paulo where we were catching a flight to Costa Rica. The evening was a perfect end to our stay.
We ventured into the central city to catch an old rattling tram that took us over an old viaduct (believe it or not but the cone-shaped building is Rio's new cathedral) high above the Lapa district
and up the hill into Santa Teresa, an arty, dishevelled part of Rio that has some lovely old homes perched on the hill sides.
There was a lot of graffiti in the area; well, graffiti seems to be across the whole of Rio really but in Santa Teresa it looked like it belonged for some strange reason. Graffiti was particularly bad in the city centre and it was very different to the 'art' in Santa Teresa that, I thought, was quite beautiful.
Waiting for the tram back down we watched this guy for quite a while, wondering what he was doing. We gathered that he had a make-shift ‘restaurant’, using things that he pulled out of the back of his VW combi van, cooking over an open fire using a can as a pot. He had quite a few customers and was dishing up bowls of steaming something.
Some of the old houses were lovely and this was one of the few that weren’t coated in security bars. The security on many of the houses here reminded us of that in South Africa. Bars on all windows and doors and you can’t even enter many properties without going through a bar gate and that’s before you get to the gated entrance way. Most of the basement flats were totally caged in so no one could jump down to the lower windows from the pavement.
Central Rio is not the most pleasant place and the State Parliament building was one of the few large buildings that wasn’t defaced. We spent a few hours in and around the city centre but, as the day had cleared up, opted to go up the Corcovado on the surprisingly fast cog train that climbs a steep track to the top.
This is a must-do if you’re in Rio. Sure, it’s very touristy, very expensive but so worth it on a clear day and offers a 360-degree view of Rio from a height of just short of 800m. The fact that one side of the Corcovado is vertical granite rockface makes you feel that you're on top of the world. The day wasn’t as clear as it could be but it was the best we were going to get. In the below, the Jockey Club is in the foreground and the beach shown is Leblon, right next to Ipanema.
The long beach on the right is Copacabana and Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf Mountain) is just left of the centre.
We visited a gem museum and we came across these birds a lot in Brazil – particularly in the touristy places such as Iguazu. These things are made entirely of stone sourced from Brazil and while our initial reaction is ‘ugh, how awful’, when take a closer look they’re very cleverly made. This was the largest we saw and, judging from the prices of the other smaller birds, would have cost around US$100K. The body of the parrot is one solid piece of stone and the eyes, beak and patterns around the beak made from tigers eye, and set on a solid chunk of amethyst. No, we did not buy one. Not even a small one.
The chap who started the company, Jules Sauer, a Frenchman who studied gemology in Amsterdam then moved to Brazil, has it sown up. Interestingly enough, they won’t let you visit the factory where these birds are made but they claim that they’re all hand carved and the larger pieces take weeks or months to make….
We had five nights in Rio and don’t know where the time went. We spent a lot of time on buses (sometimes the wrong ones) and got to see a lot of the city as a result. While we carried nothing with us and, at times, felt that we really had to watch our back, I can honestly say that everyone was friendly to us. We almost ran out of time to head up Sugar Loaf mountain as we left it to the last day in the vain hope that the afternoon would be stunning and sunny. It wasn’t and in fact it was the worst day we’d had since we arrived and it was raining. The beaches still had die-hard beach fans sitting under sun umbrellas while the volleyball coaches had their teams out training. I’m ashamed to admit that we nearly didn’t go up the Sugar Loaf because the weather was so foul but by the time we’d bussed there and got to halfway, it was still grey but no longer raining. Interestingly enough, the bungy jump that we did in South Africa was over half the height of the mountain (never again we've decided).
Copacabana Beach is the long beach in this photo, with Ipanema just around the point. Rio is full of mountains and tunnels and this photo shows the landscape and how the city nestles into it.
The beach below is Botafogo and you can just the Corcovado high above Rio in the centre of the photo.
We were waiting for the sun to go down and the evening was thus far unimpressive but we wanted to see the Rio lights from up high.
This was the first hint that something was coming
but we never ever expected this
and it just got better
and better!
Now we have 100s of photos of sunset over Rio (and it would be wrong not to share them with you!).
We waited until the lights came on before heading down, getting on the wrong bus and having a night touring Rio for over an hour (we couldn’t get off because we didn’t know where we were or which bus to get back on to).
We were leaving Rio the next morning, bound for Sao Paulo where we were catching a flight to Costa Rica. The evening was a perfect end to our stay.
