Rio

After yet another 24 hour bus ride we arrived in the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro. As I mentioned last time, Rio is one of those cities that we were really excited to see. Everyone has seen beautiful pictures of Rio in magazines and on TV, and we couldn’t wait to see those sights in person. Of course Rio also has that other reputation of being extremely dangerous. All the travel advice literature and websites we read seemed to indicate that if you went to Rio you were sure to be mugged, beaten, and shot just for walking around looking like a tourist. Well after spending almost a week here, we can tell you we never once felt the least bit unsafe. We had no problems walking around and all the people we met were extremely polite and helpful. I’d even go so far as to say that Brazilians, and the people from Rio in particular, have been overall the friendliest people of any place we’ve been to so far. Every time we had a question or met someone that spoke a little English they went the extra mile to help us out.

We were also planning on only spending a few days in Rio due to the supposed high costs. But we really enjoyed the city and there was no way we were ready to leave after only two days – so we stretched it to six days instead. The hostel was a bit more expensive than usual, but still within range of or budget. Also, if you walked a lot instead of using taxis and avoided expensive restaurants ii was actually pretty simple to keep costs down. There were some great places to eat where you could get a huge meal that was more than big enough for two for less than 10 dollars. You just have to look were all the locals are hanging out and that’s where you’ll find the good stuff for a good price. A few blocks over on the Copacabana strip the meals were more than 5 times that price.

We had some really good food here. They have small little juice shops all over the place where you can get a smoothie or a big glass of juice. Our favorite was the cup of Acai berries. In Canada, Acai berries are some popular exotic health food, but here they are very popular and you can get them almost anywhere. They usually blend them all up with some granola and serve it to you in a cup or bowl and it has the consistency of a really thick smoothie. We had one or two of these every day and we really enjoyed them. Another popular drink here is guarana juice. It’s a highly caffeinated fruit and the juice is delicious. Aside from the fruit juices, their most popular dish is something called Fejuada. It is black bean dish cooked with pork. It also was really good, and we had it with rice and meat a few times for dinner.

We visited the three must-see locations in Rio. Sugarloaf mountain, Corcovado with the Redeemer monument on the top, and of course Copocabana beach.

Sugarloaf mountain was really impressive. It dominates the view of the ocean coastline in Rio. There is a cable car that goes to the top, but it was pretty expensive so we walked around the base of the mountain on a nice hiking trail and enjoyed the scenery from that perspective.

Corcovado mountain with the Redeemer monument was also a highlight. The monument is visible from many parts of Rio (including the balcony of our hostel), and it is the unofficial symbol of Rio. The image of the Christ statue with his arms spread out over the city is quite a breathtaking site. I’m not a big fan of the idea of a graven image made of our Lord, but there is no denying that the image definitely has big impact on all who look up at it. The monument is on the top of one of the largest mountains in the city, so the view from the top is legendary. We decided that we couldn’t miss that, so we bit the bullet and spent the money to take the train to the top. We were excited to see the view, but we had some bad luck with the weather when we got up there the area was covered in clouds and we couldn’t see much. We were disappointed but it was still pretty neat to be up there and see the monument up close. We waited around at the top in hopes that the clouds would leave, but we had to give up after several hours of waiting.

The next day we spent the afternoon in Copacabana. Copacabana is probably the most famous beach in the world. It is renowned for its great sand, waves, beautiful people, fantastic weather, and fun atmosphere. The beach lived up to the hype. It was very beautiful. The waves were huge and were fun to swim in. They absolutely bowled you over if you tried to stay standing as they crashed up against you. It was also the first beach that we have been able to go to on our trip, and it was something that we have really been looking forward to so we enjoyed it a lot, and we plan to spend more time at the beach over the next few days.

Rio is also really gearing up for some big events over the next few years. The 2014 World Cup will be here as well as the Summer Olympics in 2016. You can really tell that the city is focused on sports. There are sports facilities all over the place and everywhere you look you can see sports and fitness being encouraged. There are running tracks everywhere as well as small fitness areas in all the parks and beaches. They have chinup-pushup-situp stations all over the place and there are gyms and other sports clubs all over the place and they are very busy. Everywhere you go you see people exercising. Rio is definitely the fittest city I’ve been to. Most of the people you see are in fantastic shape. Six-pack abs and muscles everywhere you look. If you ever wanted to go somewhere for a holiday and get fit while you’re there – Rio is the place to go.

We also spent one day here in Rio at the local hospital. Joh has been having some pain in her right foot lately and it wasn’t going away so we figured we should get it checked out. Turns out that it is probably tendinitis. We’re not 100% sure what it is from, although I’m sure that walking around for hours everyday wearing flip-flops has something to do with it. The doctor gave her some medication to reduce the inflammation and she now has to ice her foot three times a day to speed up the healing process. We are both really hoping that it heals quickly, as we both really enjoy walking and hiking a lot. We were also planning on walking the trail to Machu Picchu in a few weeks, so it would be great if it was healed by then. The hospital experience was also quite something. We had to wait for 8 hours in the waiting room while the hospital confirmed our insurance policy. It wasn’t the best way to spend a day in Rio, but we’re glad we know what the problem was with her foot and we now have a plan to get it resolved.

As for the upcoming weeks, we made some changes to our plans. We originally we planning to travel up the coast of Brazil up to the city of Recife where my cousin Karen and her husband Julius and their children live. Unfortunately we vastly underestimated the size of Brazil and the costs of its transportation system. Visiting them from Rio would be like visiting people in Toronto at home and then saying “Oh, while we’re here, we should go visit so and so in Edmonton”. It just doesn’t make sense for us to go at this time. After doing all the calculations we realized that the cost of going up to Recife and then backtracking back to our travel route would cost more than a month and a half of our travel budget. So instead of going north we’re headed back east to go up the east coast where the travel is much, much cheaper. We’ve booked a relatively cheap flight that leaves Sao Paulo in Brazil on Wednesday to go back to Bolivia, to the city of La Paz. When we’re there we plan on exploring the Amazon rainforest from the east side. It is much more cost effective that way, and when we were there last we saw some great options. After that we’ll head north to Peru and hopefully get a chance to go to Machu Picchu. In the meantime we have a few days to relax here before we go to Sao Paulo. We’re currently on a short bus ride to the beach town of Buzios, where we hope to take it easy and spend some time on a beach.