Not so tired.....

Firstly some catch up on the photos I haven´t been able to post due to security issues. To the left is me running up the sand dunes on Ilha de Santa Catarina last week. The dunes run pretty much down the whole middle of the island as you can see - they were a lot of fun, though that sand was the hottest sand I´ve ever experienced, and I´m still digging sand out of my camera (every nook and unexplored cranny is Full of sand).

Here´s Elena, who with her family ran the Pousada in Ilha de Santa Catarina where I stayed, with her toy poodle Petra, who was very cute.

I mean real poodle, but a Toy breed.

Below is a pic of the statue of Christ the Redeemer from our hotel. Jesus perches atop the highest point in Rio and keeps and eye on the City. (More on him later). He´s lit up at night, and up so high on dark mountains that it looks like he´s floating in the sky over the city. Very cool.

Have slightly recovered from Carnaval. Joined up with the tour group yesterday that will take me across the continent to Quito in Ecuador via (the rest of the South of) Brasil, Bolivia and Peru - travelling on my own has been a lot of fun, but being able to (slightly) relax my hypervigilance is very, very welcome! Most of the people in my group (there are 11 incl. me) I had already met at the hotel over Carnaval, and they all seem pretty cool. I´m not the oldest, and it´s not like a creche - so it should be a lot of fun.

The day after Carnaval in the Sambadrome we were all knackered.... Getting home at 7am takes it out of you. Sanguiero were announced as winners of the competition yesterday, and as they performed in round 2 on Monday night we didn´t see them. Beija Flor came second though and we saw them - they were my favourite (so, well chosen, judges based on my well-trained eye). It´s been fun watching the news and seeing what we saw.... doesn´t do it justice though!

On Tuesday Carnaval officially finished, so all the shops have now reopened and it´s back to BAU in Rio de Janiero. We managed to squeeze a bit more partying in though before all the celebrations were over....

Tuesday morning I went on a tour of the favelas (slum area). I wasn´t sure what to expect (City of God, maybe), but I´m really glad I did it. It´s not all drugs and doom and gloom - a lot of people choose to live there because it´s cheap, there´s no tax and all the utilities are free (ergo: stolen) and the gang protects the favela residents, so we were safer there than in Copacabana - the gang doesn´t want any trouble or police going in, so there´s no way they´d do anything to a tourist.... seeing a 14 year old boy on a bad arse motorcycle on every corner with a great big machine gun (long pointy barrel, big handle, magazine type thing - I dunno what it was) was a bit nervewracking. I did not want to p#ss those guys off...... the last time someone was raped in there was 20 years ago, and the gang found the guy, cut him up and put bits all over the favela. There has been no further trouble, since. The gang pay for a lot of the healthcare and education in the favela, although the money comes from questionable sources. The chick that did the tour has lived in one her whole life - and says she wouldn´t leave. Below is a favela - but not the one I went to (bought wrong memory card....). You get the idea - house upon house built up the hill.....

In the favela we weren´t allowed to photograph the sewer (why in God´s name anyone would want to is beyond me) because they are embarrassed by it. It is the worst I´ve seen - even worse than the sewage Traff and I had to wade through in Thailand (with a motorbike). Twice I vomited and the sewage didn´t even touch me, but I decided in would be bad form to vomit into the sewer if they were embarrassed for you to look at it, so I had to hold it in. Urgh. I tried Açai in the favela. On the third mouthful I thought -what on earth am I doing? There´s raw sewage in the drain next to me (they get the water illegally and then dispose of it the same way, pretty much), and I´m eating a homemade, crushed (ice!!!) frozen berry and guarana drink (like a granita) ..... It was nice though, and so far, so good. It´s week 4 in South America - an upset tummy is now part of my everyday existence. I´ll spare the details! We also werent allowed to photograph the gang.... for obvious reasons.

In the afternoon a few of us went down to the Tuesday bloco in Ipanema -one of the best. It kicked off at 4pm - there´s a big Gay-Lesbian-Bi-Try element to some of the parties, and we weren´t disappointed at this one in Ipanema. Mick wanted to take some more risks in Rio - so we caught the local bus. Mother of God. It´s trying not to go through the windscreen that is the problem, not the robbers up the back. Below is Belinda, Mick (in the Montecristo) and Matt (Tom Sawyer) and me early in the evening. I believe this was the first (damaging) drink of many.

A bit later in the night, I was thrilled that these lovely ladies agreed to have their pic taken with me. I choked on my breakfast the following morning when they were on the news coverage of the bloco in Ipanema - being interviewed. I was hailed as a talent spotter....

This was quite a bit later (below). I´m doing a thumbs up, so I believe that this was after the 5th damaging drink of many. We were sitting next to the beach in Ipanema and I looked up and we were surrounded by all these kids. I panicked, jumped up and thought, ´this is it, we´re being robbed´. One of the guys grabbed me and said ´this isn´t a robbery, we just want to talk to you´- and that they did. They asked us if we like ´rippy roppy´music - which we eventually worked out was Hip Hop. We laughed so hard we cried - they were the highlight of our evening....

After dinner in an Irish pub, and some Caiprinhas (MBenn - we may have drank a bottle of Rum that night at yours but you didn~t make them anywhere near as strong as they do here), we headed home to play some poker (given the nail was in the coffin for me with that last Caiprinha, it wasn´t successful). As we left the pub, Matt (Tom Sawyer) said - ´Look! There´s Jesus!´. I said ´When I turn around there had better be a statue´. So much mileage out of a floating Jesus.

It was a very long bus ride down the Costoa Verde (Green Coast) and boat ride to some islands, including Ilha Grande for me yesterday (Wednesday!) as you can imagine......

.....but one of the most beautiful places I~´ve been as you can see.

These guys played on the boat - it was a great day. Beautiful swimming, snorkelling and seafood lunch - white beaches, green and blue seas, and beautiful remote islands.

Here I am feeling even shorter and more insignificant than usual at the foot of a very large tree on Ihla Grande.

Here is Francesco and Adelaide, from Switzerland. I met them on the boat - they´re great and made the boat ride very enjoyable. They want to come and stay in Melbourne. I said, ´Sure! After August when I´m back, Sarah and Brett would love to have you!´. Very excited that they invited me to Milan, where they are from, and Zurich, where they live .... Great! And even after I embarrassingly ate Francesco´s lunch due to a slight misunderstanding....

Today I saw Jesus up close.....

And went to Sugarloaf on the Cable Car..... Great views of the city.....

Overlooking Copacabana beach, (the long one) where Im staying....

Centro, and Jesus on the big pointy mountain.....

Me at the summit of the first mountain, on our two part cable car ride to the top:

Tomorrow night, am heading South to trek the Atlantic Rainforest on my way to Ihla de Mel.........

Tired.

Tired. Tired. Tired.

You can have a Carnaval hangover for $25 Brazilian Real ($15 Australian dollars) that would cost $100 Aussie dollars in Australia..... but the time for the crime is just the same.

Carnaval in the Sambadrome

Just woke up after getting home at 7am - the parade in the Sambadrome went all night. I´ve never seen such costumes and so many people dancing in the parade. There were 6 samba schools and each one had literally thousands and thousands of people in the most amazing costumes and floats. Each school had 1 hour 20 min to perform, so they just kept coming! It was amazing - I don´t think the pics do it justice, but here they are!

Belinda and I had cause to really celebrate during the show - we had a near death experience on the way to the parade. We got a cab and got dropped off at one of the walkways - during the rest of the year the Sambadrome is just your basic street - with the grandstands kind of atop buildings. The street is 800m long and when the school is performing they take up the whole stretch (that´s a lot of people dancig at once, like I said!!). So, you have to kind of go up and over to get to where you need to be. And, we got caught in a crush on this footbridge. It was two people wide, had about 5000 people on it, and we couldn´t even breathe. Couldn´t go back, couldn´t go forward, were 30m off the ground (and a stenchful channel of sewerage) and the whole thing started to rock and sway and I was thinking jump or wait for it to collapse? aim for the concrete or the sewerage? People were lifting little kids up over their heads to get them out of the crush and I was worried that they´d drop them. Kids were screaming, Belinda and I were the only white people and some black dude picked a fight with some other black dude and things got nasty - we just clung to each other and tried to push our way through, and I was praying to a God that I don´t even believe exists. We were stuck there for an hour - like that. It was not an experience I want to repeat. We shotgunned a can of beer each the minute we could and held hands all the way to our seats as soon as we were down from the bridge. Mother of God. Not fun. I cannot believe I came out the experience with - my camera, my money (in full!), my ticket to the show and my own person completely intact. Neither can Belinda - it was a great opportunity for some robbery! Nice things happened though - we got separated and a nice lady behind me grabbed my hand and grabbed Belinda´s hand behind her and brought us together.... Love how underdeveloped countries stage the world´s biggest events with not much organisation....

The guys from Perth were complaining about waiting for a cab home - compared to Christmas in Melbourne (and our bridge ordeal) that part of the evening was a breeze!!

Rio de Janiero

I don´t know where to start.

Rio is insane. Yesterday we started on Copacabana beach - everything you´ve seen, read, and heard is true. About 4 million people, about 60 degrees celsius, and massive waves breaking straight on the beach. An experience!

Then in the afternoon, we went to a football (Soccer match) at Maracana stadium. Unlike any AFL match I´ve ever been to - the atmosphere was incredible and there was plenty of Brasilian passion around. I can see how South American soccer matches end in riots - but it was rally safe and there was no alcohol! It was a crappy match, but all the same amazing to see it. We sat next to this nice Brasilian guy and his kids - who gave us the hot tip about where to go for Carnaval in the evening.

The hotel is full of Australians and Belinda and I have met some great people that we´ve been hanging out with (strapping lads - which is handy!). Didn´t come here to meet Australians, really, but it is such madness here that it´s great to have some great people to hang out with. We´ve gotten really lucky. We all headed out for dinner on Friday night and after a 36 hour trip Belinda was pretty jetlagged, so we called it early. Lucky - everyone who went out to the street party got mugged and pickpocketed!

After the soccer, there was a smallish bloco about three blocks from our hotel on Copacabana beach- where a local drumming group or music group play on the street and everyone dances - everyone. Pregnant women, grandmas, hookers, kids from the favelas, tourists, businesspeople - some in costumes - some not. It was a lot of fun - but we decided to head to something bigger so we took off to Lapa to a big bloco on the Samba strip.

The taxi ride was more thrilling than any extreme sport I´ve ever done. Luciano, the taxi driver, wound down all the windows, cranked the music (Samba, of course) and drove at 120km through the streets and tunnels of Rio for the 25 minute ride - it was an experience I will never forget. He was a lot of fun - a really nice guy - and and it was a lot better than I was expecting my first Rio taxi ride to be (thinking - am I being taken to the favelas? am I being taken to the favelas?).

Amazing once we got there too - there are all these old mansions in Lapa that have been converted to Samba clubs (Cariocas I think they´re called), and during Carnaval there are parties on the streets around. There were hundreds of thousands of people dancing in costumes in the street, and hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine available. You´d buy a beer (3 for $3.50 Aussie), and get offered a whole lot more. I´ve seen a lot in my time, but nothing like that. Amsterdam to the power of about 500. I felt safe though - the absolute majority of the people there are genuinely there for the music and the dancing, and the other stuff is there if you want to find it. I´ve never been in such a crowd of people, or so hot!!! The night before the kids in the crowd worked through and mugged or cleaned up everyone in the street (I had my cash tucked safe between the girls in case) - but we had no trouble.

We ended up in the right place and the right time - there were some drummers we were dancing to in front of and they took off for their parade, so we led their way through the streets of Lapa. So Much Fun! It was just amazing - people leaning out their windows singing and dancing, and people coming out of restaurants to join in.... Unbelievable. We learnt the words eventually, and the dances, and God knows what we were singing, but there was lots of ¨Rio¨and ¨Brazil¨so I think it was fairly patriotic!!

Today is a cruisy day - we have tickets to the big Samba parade finals tonight at the Sambadrome, which goes tonight and tomorrow night, and you´ll probably see on TV around the world. It starts at 10pm and finishes at 7am, so there´ll some napping poolside on the roof of the hotel this afternoon. I´m really excited though - I´ve seen the locals sing, samba, drum and party, so I can only imagine how the professionals do it - what I saw in Montevideo was amazing, but the Brazilians do it 15 times bigger and better. Brazilians really do know how to have a good time.

So - Belinda and I are off to buy our costumes for tonight. I´ve seen some amazing ones - but I refuse to wear anything made of pipecleaners, or anything with angel wings. I think feather headdresses is the way to go.

I also need to dye my hair and urgently, so bye bye blonde, hello brunette! Being blonde and curly has attracted a lot of attention (Sarah please ask Mark what the best way to go is and email me ASAP so it doesn´t turn green or purple or something) In the meantime, my feather headdress will cover all sins. Doug last night convinced some guy that Belinda and I were both his girlfriends - the guy looked incredibly impressed before (thankfully!) disappearing (it was very funny, but maybe you had to be there). Again, not dangerous, but Latin American guys are incredibly persistent and therefore annoying. Lads - take note: it´s not going to happen.

One story that will alarm parents and grandparents but I have to tell - some guys by the pool went to buy some drugs this morning (I´m very desensitised to this behaviour now!) and came back a bit wobbly. The guy on the beach they asked said, ¨Yeah, no worries¨and led them up a laneway to the main guy. Who was sitting at a table with a big machine gun and some magazines - they couldn´t stop looking at it as they did the deal - and I don´t think they´ll ever be quite the same again. For two 18 year old lads from Brisbance, I don´t think the whole experience was as much fun as they thought it would be.......

Sorry - no pictures - for obvious reasons! The Sambadrome tonight is locked down and very secure, so I can take my (small!) camera there - so more later!

Kathryn x

Hello from Rio!

My last day in Florianopolis was a slow starter - had some poolside beers with some Aussies in the afternoon, well into the evening, and into the wee hours..... during which time I ate the best pizza of my life - well, I thought it was. From memory it had boiled egg and raw onion on it, so I must have been very drunk to enjoy it.... so there was a bit of lee-sure time in the morning on the beach to recover before I headed on the l-o-n-g journey North up the coast to Rio....

Another overnight bus - which was full of Australians - and landed in Rio this morning. Wow - what a great city. A massive statue of Christ (I´m talking huge - huge) overlooks the city from a mountatin above, and Sugarloaf Mountain overlooks the City too. There are massive sweeping beaches..... it´s pretty amazing. The hotel I´m in is three blocks from Copacabana beach, so a great spot! Now that all of my worldly belongings are safely locked in my hotel room, I´m slightly more relaxed. I have only about $20 on my person, so if anyone wants to mug me, they can have it.

Carnaval officially kicks off today - and the city is mad, crazy busy. The decorations are amazing and when Belinda arrives at 1:30pm, we´ll start our adventure about town and meet up with some other Aussies. The taxi on the way in drove past the Sambadrome - which is amazing. In two days time we´ll be there for the ¨official¨Carnaval competition, but in the meantime there´s balls, and street parties everywhere.

Shame I can´t take any pictures - I think my camera would last about 5 minutes on the street outside!

Much more to report later no doubt!

Carnaval fever.....

The quiet buzz is gradually becoming a deafening roar as the entire continent gears up for Carnaval - which officially kicks off on Friday. There are costumes in stores, and everyone, everywhere it seems is decorating things - themselves, their shops, anything that doesn´t move. Actually, now I think about it, dogs too. I´m enjoying the calm before the storm - one of the girls I´m meeting in Rio has already organised our costume shopping expedition - and she´s a makeup artist, so it sounds like we´re going the whole hog....

I went into Florianopolis Centro yesterday, and the shopping centre was decked out for Carnaval. Pretty cool:

Santo Antonio de Lisboa is a cool old Portuguese settlement that I checked out on the way back.

And today, I treated myself to some more military installations at Praia do Forte and checked out some of the Northern island beaches. Hot. Hot. Hot. 50M people in Rio (another 18 hours north by bus) is going to be almost unbearably hot... But back to the here and now... I had a lot of fun with this canon as you can see....

When I was in Montevideo (the dirty stinking hole) in Uruguay, the one other good thing (apart from Teatro Solis) was the heats for the Carnaval. This was an outdoor theatre where (as you may recall from an earlier entry) the power went off in the middle of great excitement.... I didn´t capture that exact moment, but here´s a taster.... Note that I didn~t take my fancy camera, so they´re a bit shyte, but you get the idea!

Ahoy me hearties

Example of Portuguese/English language barrier: I hear ¨boat ride. islands. forts. swimming. lunch.¨.





















What was probably said in Portuguese: ¨Come on board our pirate themed ship ¨Pirates of the Carribean (Pirato do Carribeo)¨, complete with deckhands dressed like pirates, very loud pirate songs for which your interaction is compulsory, and samba samba samba (doesn´t fit with the pirate theme, but give it a go anyway), and you must participate in our samba competitions¨.





Men should never, ever samba in speedos. My innocent eyes will never, ever be the same again.





So yes, I spent the day on a pirate ship. And, pride must come before a fall, because after bragging about the weather, it pissed down all day. So, my pics look like shyte, but, I´ve posted them anyway....

Anyone who knows me knows I love a good military installation - so I wasn´t disappointed to visit an old Portuguese fort.

It was actually a lot of fun. I hung out with a half German/half Brazilian guy and girl, and one of their friends (below). And, thank God, because they helped rescue me from a group of very persistent Brazilian lads . Their opening line was ¨you are so very beautiful¨, and it only got better from there.

One of th Brazilian lads insisted that I should go and stay with him in Porto Alegre - I resisted the urge to ask him how his parents would feel about that - they were about 17. LOL.....

On the plus side, everyone so far thinks I´m from Argentina - no one has guessed I´m a foreigner until I open my big English-speaking flapper so I´m hoping that will work as camouflage in Rio. Every traveller I meet has a Rio story, and I´m starting to get more than a little nervous. Today´s Rio story was how you shouldn´t stay in Copacabana, because when the gangs in the favelas shoot each other up on the hills, it´s in the middle of the crossfire..... Great, here´s hoping my hotel windows in Copacabana are bulletproof. Brown knickers for Rio, I think.

Four more sleeps until I hit Rio for Carnaval. Then, seven nights of dodging thieves and bullets by the sounds of it. Oh, where´s a strapping lad when you need one!

I felt like this at the end of the boat ride too. Knackered. It was a big day out.

More pictures....

The mountain that I climbed this morning (by accident)......

Back to Caminito, La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Lurking in ruins, Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

Sunset, Punta del Este, Uruguay

Big waves, and some cultural points of note at La Paloma, Uruguay. Note that the bathers here in Brazil are a whole lot smaller, and I think photographing them, even accidentally, would constitute a criminal offence.

No beach in Uruguay is complete without a statue of the blessed virgin (they all have one!).

Argentinian lasses staying at La Balconada beach, La Paloma in Uruguay - mad crazy samba dancing girls (while I was trying to sleep in my tent!).

And one for the parents - proof I´m intact. All limbs and major organs present at Punta del Diablo.

Hippyville made of fishing cabins- Punta del Diablo, Uruguay.

Surely that's enough pics for now Rob!

Ilha de Santa Catarina..... Brazil

OK, so I´m on an island in Brazil. It´s stunning....

There´s the proof! The place I´m staying is a little more expensive than I´ve been partaking in, but worth it. Pool, great breakfasts, great hosts, nice people staying here, and a kitchen where I can actually cook (which I´ve missed!). I´ve got five nights here to explore the island, it´s about 40km long, the North is quite developed, and the South is desolate (chose to stay in the North after the fishing village experience of Punta del Este). There´s boat trips and all sorts to do, and it´s 35 and sunny one day, and 35 and sunny the next. Perfect.

There´s also hiking a plenty, as I accidentally discovered on what was meant to be a short walk this morning.... In bathers and thongs with only 500ml of water, I hiked about God knows how long up a big mountain to take the pic above, and here I am in the pic below hot and bothered ..... It was worth it, though now I´m knackered and wondering how I´m ever going to do the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

There were strange rustlings in the grass in the forest all the way up the goat trail through dense dense forest up the mountain, which I chose to ignore, and very large spider webs. I was just starting to think paranoid thoughts about all the things I´ve read about bird eating spiders and wondering if it was the Amazon or Brazilian rainforests that housed them - when I saw a massive gecko dart into the undergrowth (with a great sense of relief) - I realised what the rustling was.

I checked out some of the indigenous locals at the foot of the mountain, too...

And if you weren´t feeling jealous already, here´s another pic of the gorgeous beach (this is the actual beach - Praia do Santinho where I´m staying) and view!

I miss work so much (not).

And as promised, here are some pics from earlier in the trip....

School kids that insisted I take their photo with their teacher, out the front of Teatro Solis in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Inside the Teatro Solis in Montevideo - the one stunning thing in that dirty stinking hole.

The picture that will be one day published in a magazine (Punta del Este) - and to that cranky dude that yelled at me, everyone please note its called ´La Mona´by Marrio Irrarazabal, of Chile.

Punta del Este by day...