Ok, so a little out of synch chronologically speaking, but hey, you get what you pay for right? And you're not paying for it, so there you go.
After Ilha Grande, we spent 4 days in Rio. Now, Rio is a must-see place, you can't go to that part of Brasil and not go to Rio, right? I must say, for reasons already mentioned in my earlier Brasil post, I wasn't that excited about going there. I was enjoying the more rural places in Brasil more than the cities and I was convinced I was going to get mugged or killed or something. But neither happened thankfully. Although my camera died, a freak wave came up over the 5 meter wall i was standing on and drenched me and the aforementioned camera. So, that was the end of that.
I did enjoy Rio in the end. It's one of those places you feel like you already know, having seen all the pictures. And let's face it, it is beautiful. As in stunning. On the first day we caught sunset from Sugarloaf mountain and the next day went up to Cristo Redentor and had a tour of the city.
Laura left on Saturday morning to go back to Buenos Aires and I stayed another day, most of it spent wandering up and down Copacabana watching the waves (and getting soaked by them) and in the evening had a very interesting night at a Brasilian Burlesque cabaret complete with strippers (male and female) and an oversexed Belgian couple. I can't go into details, but it certainly was memorable. The next day, feeling like death (one too many caipirinhas the night before) I headed off to Petropolis where I bought a new camera and then onto Ouro Preto, the jewel in Brasil's colonian crown.
Like all old, beautiful places I've been in South America, these places are not the sterile tourist traps you find in Europe. They are real, lively towns that people actually live in. There are tourists of course, lots, but you meet a lot of people who live there, and have lived there all their lives, and it adds an extra element to the place. I liked it. The buildings were incredibly beautiful, the roads ridiculously steep and history was all around.
