I went to Rio... quite a while ago


The festivities begin in the Sambadromo

It has been a while, but I figured I might as well add some pictures from our last stop in Rio De Janeiro for Carnival at the end of February for those who haven´t seen them on Flickr.


Momo, king of carnival!

The big reason for going to Rio I suppose was to see Carnival which is one of those things they tell you´re supposed to do before you die. The centrepiece for the carnival celebrations is the samba parade in the Sambadromo during which different samba schools compete and one is named the victor.







Tickets to the samba parade are quite pricey even for average grandstand seats as we had, running into the hundreds of dollars. We had pre-ordered the tickets online and arranged for them to be delivered to the hotel. Nothing in Rio ever seemed to be all that straightforward, and true to form upon arriving the night before the parade we found the tickets were not at the hotel and the next day the company from which I had ordered them had all their phone lines and live online help service out of order which all seemed quite ominous. As the day moved on and there was no sign of the tickets, the people at reception suggested we visit the Sambadromo to see if we could pick them up there. This all seemed odd to me as I didn´t think the company had offices there at all, but that´s what they suggested and even as a longshot it seemed worth a try, so Boheme and I hopped on Rio´s very efficient metro system and made our way over.









The Sambadromo doesn´t seem to be in a particularly good part of town and there weren´t really many people around, however Boheme and I soldiered on and ended up winding our way around the place and never finding anything that even remotely resembled somewhere we would have been able to pick up the tickets. So it was back off to the hotel and, as it was getting late, we figured we´d just have to write off the $500 or so per person we´d already paid and buy scalper tickets for the next night. At literally the last minute, somewhere around 6 or 7pm, the tickets did finally show up at the hotel so we had to madly get ready and rush back to the metro and back over to the Sambadromo with great relief!



The parade itself was indeed spectacular, but I will say that it is a long evening. From memory, it started at around 9pm and was supposed to last until 6am. We, unfortunately, only lasted until about 5am when we decided our feet were sore enough and we were all tired enough to take the metro back to the hotel. Those trains were about the one thing that did seem to run smoothly in Rio and during Carnival they ran them 24 hours which was handy, even if the walk back to the hotel through the deserted streets of the Botafogo district was perhaps something we shouldn´t have been doing!


Nemo!




Planes!

We didn´t end up seeing the winning team, Salgueiro, which paraded through the Sambadromo on the second night. I am happy to say, though, that I was about the only person who bought the t-shirt for that samba school as almost everyone went for the favourites Beija Flor (Hummingbird in Portuguese), or at the very least a team that was actually parading that night. Josie and I, on the other hand, just went with the ones we thought looked the nicest without any idea of what they were all about. I was ultimately vindicated in my choice, though, while Josie, sadly, was not!


Go Salgueira and penguin beer

After spending the next day recovering, we ventured out to explore the area around Botafogo were we were staying. Botafogo is outside of the main tourist areas of Copacabana and Ipanema and we stayed in that part of town it was supposed to be a little cheaper and overall it was a pleasant area to wander around, even if it was generally necessary to take a train or taxi elsewhere to get something to eat.


Praia de Urca with Sugarloaf peeking over the mountains in the background


View from Praia de Urca

As well as the pleasant little area of Urca, Sugarloaf was within walking distance of our hotel and so we took the cable car up there for a look over Rio, which is indeed as spectacular as it appears in pictures.


Looking over toward Copacabana and Ipanema


Looking back toward Botafogo with Christ the Redeemer watching over everything

From what I can remember, the next day started off with a short walk through the jungle around the base of Sugarloaf to see if we could spot some monkeys before heading off to Giant Jesus, otherwise known as Christ the Redeemer, for sunset and then dinner at a very nice Japanese restaurant in yet another neighbourhood in Rio. One of the many things Rio seemed to have in abundance was very nice restaurants, even if we did have to almost always take a taxi to reach them!


Yes, there were quite a few of them


And He shall smite the wicked...


Cloudy view from Giant Jesus

Another day was spent wandering around the historic centre of town which was all fun, though I can´t really think of all that much to say about it!


Downtown Rio


Crowded downtown streets selling everything from Hawaiianas to piñatas


Reflection of the Rio de Janeiro cathedral

Overall, Rio was really quite a fun and interesting city and it was worth seeing it during Carnival when, apart from the parade, there was also the odd concert and banda (mobile street party) that we would stumble upon from time to time. That said, as we were getting to the end of over two months of travelling, and a whole year of being overseas for the girls, we were a little warn out by that point. Brazil also has to be the only country I´ve ever visited in which almost no ATMs would accept Australian cards regardless of whether they were Maestro, Cirrus or whatever else. Some of the big chains like HSBC and Citibank did accept our cards, but they were few and far between and other chains that I use all the time in Mexico (and elsewhere) also just wouldn´t accept any of our cards. This at least initially made things a bit difficult as we had to plan quite carefully what we´d spend and how much money we would withdraw if we found a working ATM as it may be a while before we´d come across another one. In the past few days it has also turned out that someone must have taken an imprint of Boheme´s card and her pin number at one of the many ATMs we tried as it was drained of all its funds in a series of transactions around Rio over the past week. Thankfully Josie and I have so far been ok.


Copacabana beach

The hotel was also an annoying experience. I had booked it through an online service (priceline.com) and twice, in December and January, confirmed the rate, number of people and room with the hotel via email. It was part of the Mercure chain which is in turn owned by Accor who also run hotels like Novitel and Sofitel so you would have assumed they had their act together, but from day one we had problems getting anyone who could speak English, getting repairs done in the room and sorting out the bill. Day after day I was assured that they would correct the bill as I went down with all the print outs of emails and booking info, but the inevitable happened when checking out and they ended up insisting it was over $600 more than they had confirmed and, of course, they had one guy on reception who didn´t speak English. Again, I´m surprised the follow-up response from Mercure and Accor has been so bad as all they´ve done is apologise and offer up a range of bogus excuses, with changing exchange rates as my favourite, while refusing to refund any of the money. So, not a great way to end the trip I´m afraid!


Off to the Mercure Botafogo...

While I was kind of looking forward to getting back and finishing up my work in Mexico City, I arrived at around 8am after a long flight from Rio via Santiago and Lima to find the electricity had been cut off from my apartment meaning I had no hot water for a shower and the fridge was full of mould and water. It took me the better part of the day to get an explanation from anyone here as to why that might of happened, with it ending up having to do with someone having moved out and for some reason I don´t quite know their contract also covered my apartment. So it was off to the building admin and then the electricity company the next day... only to arrive at around 1pm which was aparently too late for the Luz y Fuerza del Centro energy people as they were preparing to knock off for the day and so I had to come back the next morning! Thankfully I was able to bribe one of the people working here at the building to hook me up illegally as otherwise I would have been without electricity for a good 4 or 5 days more, but it did involve the annoying ritual of the electricity being disconnected every morning and reconnected when I came back in the evening just in case the electricians came around and caught on to our little caper.


Back to the land of protests. This time it´s centre-left head of the Mexico City government, Marcelo Ebrard, being compared to Hitler by some conservative group who are quite squarely targetting his possibilities as a presidential candidate in 2012 with their propaganda. It is quite unusual to see a protest group with signs in English and advertising that they are broadcasting their meetings live on the web.

Nothing too exciting has been going on recently as my time here winds to a close with a May 4th flight to LA for undisclosed business in Anaheim. Apart from the dead faces and bloodied bodies staring at me from the tabloids every morning, none of the violence which seems to be all people are seeing of Mexico these days outside of the country is in evidence in Mexico City as far as I can tell. As it´s Holy Week everything is closed right now and as it´s spring I´ve ended up with hay fever while sweltering through 30 degrees days as I´m sure everyone back home is preparing to head into the cold of winter. I´ll try and get something up before I leave. If not, hasta la vista and all that!


Happy birthday, Benito! Though not as grand an affair as it once was, the commemoration of the birth of Benito Juárez is one of those markers of the beginning of spring and a public holiday. While I knew it was a holiday and the date of his birth, I must admit that I was surprised when I woke up on the Monday before his birthday (which fell on a Saturday this year) to find everything closed for Juárez day.