Rio de Janiero, Brazil

We arrived in Rio de Janiero at 8am after a long overnight flight from Santa Cruz, Bolivia with multiple stops and a layover. While in the air from Santa Cruz, Marcela reminded me that I had a gas tank for my camping stove (fuel under pressure...big no no on planes obviously) in my checked backpack that I had forgotten to remove. When we landed for our layover in São Paulo, we were worried the airline may have noticed, flagged our bag, and held it in Bolivia. Fortunately (?) nobody noticed and we removed the gas after retrieving our bags from the conveyor belt. 

Our layover in São Paulo was from 11pm until 6am, so we prepared by packing our sleeping bags in an easily accessible place in our backpacks. Before finding a place to pass out for a few hours we wanted to grab our sleeping bags and re-check our bags, so we wouldn't need to worry about theft. As we waited in line to re-check our bags, we watched as an angry passenger yelled and waved his arms at airline employees who had apparently not solved any of his problems. Simultaneously, the inexperienced looking girl who was helping the people in front of us in line kept dialing phone numbers without success, texting, and generally chatting with the other similar looking girl employee. The line was moving nowhere. We patiently waited, tired, entertained by the absurd behavior of the angry passenger, and not expecting much. After about 30 minutes the people in front of us were given a bunch of receipts and left. 

To our surprise, the inexperienced girl actually spoke some English, and managed to convey to us that instead of sleeping on the airport floor, the airline would be providing us with a complimentary hotel, taxi both ways, dinner, and breakfast. What a delight! We received our stack of coupons, got in a nice air conditioned cab, and began our trip to the hotel.

We expected to be taken to some lower end hotel near the airport, and as we passed those hotels and merged onto a new freeway, we began wondering where we were going. We ended up in a downtown hotel with a shiney granite lobby in a room that was over $200/night. After staying in a hostel for the past 3 nights for just over $14/night total, this was a welcomed and very unexpected surprise. The shower had great temperature and water pressure. There was a buffet with anything we could want. We slept for a few hours, woke up, and caught the free cab back to the airport. It was a great layover. 

Anyway, we flew the 1 hour to Rio, and arrived on time. We caught a bus from the airport which dropped us off downtown, and walked a few blocks to Lapa where we thought the airbnb apartment was. We realized we didn't actually have the building number, and struggled to communicate our problem to the doormen of potentially correct buildings where we attempted to ask for help. Even dialing the phone number of our host Bruno was complicated, or just different from what we are used to, and wouldn´t go through. Finally a stranger helped us find an Internet cafe, we made contact with Bruno, and settled into the apartment.

Rio is a wonderful place, and we instantly fell in love with it on our first walk around. It has very diverse areas; heavily populated beaches, more deserted beaches, busy city dwellers, forests, and great nightlife. The lush mountains meet the ocean, making great photos easy to take. There are a plethora of buses and a subway, so navigating the 6 million person city is fairly effortless. 

Each day we tried to visit a different area of Rio. The first day, we walked around the downtown area and south to the marina area and Flamengo beach. I bought an umbrella and a beer, and we looked out over the bay as we sipped the cold brew. On our way back we stopped at a little restaurant that had salgados (savory foods), one of which is a delicious spiced meat pie called kibe. Since then I have ordered almost nothing else.

KIBE!!

That night we went out with our awesome host Bruno and his roommate Sylvia to a jazz show. It was an amazing performance by a very talented violinist, his percussionists, guitarist, and a beautiful female lead vocal. Afterward we went back to apartment and jammed out because we were so stoked. Check them out:

http://www.nicolaskrassik.com/videos.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhzEVauGoe <-- it was similar to this but much smaller in scale

The following day we went to Urca area, which we saw from Flamengo beach across the bay. It had a more laid back vibe than downtown, and is located at the foot of the "Sugarloaf", one of the famous steep peaks that you see in all the Hollywood images of Rio. We relaxed in the shade, had melted cheese and ham sandwiches with beer so cold it was slushy, and enjoyed the view looking back at downtown.

The next day we laid low and napped, and in the evening we went to a pre-carnival block party in Santa Teresa. It was our first taste of carnival, and it was insane. We tried to meet up with Bruno and Sylvia but it was too difficult to find them in the crowds and too noisy to hear anything over the phone. So, we danced and drank cold beer until my ear couldn't take it anymore, and then we walked back to Lapa. Marcela was covered in glitter for about 10 days after.

Next, we navigated the subway and visited Copacabana, the botanical gardens, and Ipanema. Of all, Ipanema was the most beautiful, and after swimming and having a beer on the beach, we found ourselved in the middle of another pre-carnival street party where everyone was dressed up in absurd costumes. Many of the extremely buff beach dudes were dressed up like women. Finally, we we ate at the restaurant where Antonio Carlos Jobim (whom the airport in Rio is named after) wrote his song "Girl of Ipanema". We wanted so badly to stay and hear some bossa nova or jazz, but we didn't want to wait around for another 4 hours in Ipanema so we took the train home.

 

 

 

On our last day, we finally managed to wake up and mobilize early enough to go see the famous Jesus the Redeemer statue atop Corcovado. After running all over Rio for the previous 5 days, it was interesting to have a view of everywhere we had been. And boy was it beautiful. 

Fun fact: Jesus was struck by lightning in mid-january 2014, and
parts of the fingers on his right hand were still blown off during our visit!
You can´t really see in this picture though...
We didn´t include the base of the statue because they had scaffolding going up.

View from Corcovado. Ipanema/Lisbon in the background

Later that evening we grabbed a last beer with Bruno, packed, and took a short cab ride to the other airport in Rio which is conveniently located downtown. If we hadn't been tired, we could have walked.