Farewell South America!

Ola all for the last time from South America!

I had a massive day yesterday which is why there was no post. Got up in the morning and was picked up at 8.30am to go hang gliding! I was driven for about 40 minutes to a beach South west of Ipanema. Here I met my hang gliding instructor, Marcelo and we drove up the hill to hang glide! Before this though I had to fill out a form. I had to write country of residence and Marcelo told me to put the UK - how exciting, it's actually happening!! 

The hill up was full of dense forest and when we got to the top there was a ramp. We set up all our equipment and then got to the ramp. Up until this point I hadn't really been nervous at all which was weird. I've been skydiving before and I guess compared to that I didn't feel this was as scary??? Anyway, we got on the ramp and Marcelo counted to three, after which we had to run and jump off the ramp. While he was counting I was quite nervous, I'll have to show you all the video one day because my face is hilarious! But once we jumped it was absolutely stunning. Flying like a bird above the jungle, mountains and ocean. Stunning! I paid about $300 Aussie for it which included transfers, insurance, national park fees, photos and videos and the actual hang glide. It was worth every cent! I will never ever forget it. Problem being I now have about $30 Aussie to live off today but that's ok, I'll manage :D

I was dropped back about 11am and then Anne came and met me at my hostel. We went and met Kathrin at the train station and caught the metro to Maracanã station. Here we met Jared and Danton and the five of us went on a self guided tour of the Maracanã stadium! It was built for the 1950 World Cup and renovated for last year's World Cup! I watched a lot of the matches last year so it was really exciting to go to the stadium. It was huge! Not as big as the G but still very impressive. Reminded me of a huge Metricon stadium! We had fun going on a section of the pitch, sitting on the interchange and checking out various levels. Anne was very excited because she's from Germany and they won last year here! It was sweltering hot though! The coolest part was the change rooms. Usually you go into the change rooms and just see some lockers. In these ones they had hung the soccer tops of the "team of the World Cup", but they were the actual tops the players wore! I turned Messi's over to see dirt on it from the matches! Got a photo with Götze's top, he kicked the winning goal for Germany in the final against Argentina. Can remember watching in a bar in Krakow like it was last week!! 

Afterwards we had Açai in the cafeteria. Danton's wasn't frozen at all so he took it back to the counter and the guy got really angry at him and then told him he was going to repackage and resell it, even though Danton had already eaten some! Yuck!!!!

Then Anne, Kathrin and I went back to the Selaron steps to get some day time photos. I was right, the colours and everything looked much more impressive during the day. It was beautiful :) for history of these steps go back to my Rio post a few days back. 

Headed back to the hotel and had a bit of a rest. Then Anne, Daniel, Danton, Jared, Kathrin and I met at the Cinelandia station and walked to Lapa, a suburb where there is a street party on Friday nights! We enjoyed a nice dinner. I shared a steak and heaps of food with Danton as all Brazilian meals are for two people. Jared asked for a single serve of his and they tried to charge him for two, so we put down enough money to cover a single serve and bolted! It was hilarious!!!

Then we had a couple of drinks in the street (feels so weird being Australian and doing that) and enjoyed the atmosphere of the street. People everywhere, cool music, warm temperature. We saw some people drumming as well which was cool! Then I started to get a really bad stomach ache and Kathrin was tired so we headed back about 12.30. The cab driver dropped me two blocks away from the hotel. Lucky I'm good with bearings, have never run so fast in my life! Walking alone in rio at 1am - yikes! All fine though. 

Today I've just been getting organised and packing up. I'm going to the beach with Kathrin soon and then getting a cab to the airport with Danton about 6pm (8am Melbourne time) as our flights leave practically at the same time. 

I have absolutely loved South America. So many amazing new sights and experiences, not to mention all the great friends I made along the way! I'll be back one day to do the Galápagos Islands, Patagonia, the amazon and Colombia. Anyone thinking of coming here, do it! It gets a bad wrap for being really dangerous because of a lingering reputation from 20 years ago. I haven't felt any more in danger here than I do in Europe. The people overall are so friendly and the cultural experience is absolutely incredible!

This is the point normally when I would be going home. But I guess I am, as England is my home for the next 8ish months! Feels like I get to come home and see you all though, very strange! Thanks so much for reading throughout my South American adventure. I'll post Monday night in London (Tuesday morning in Melbourne) and let you all know how I'm going! Stay tuned for many more adventures to come in 2015 including life in London, St Patty's in Dublin, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Iceland, Scotland, the rest of Ireland, Wales and Oktoberfest! Plenty more to come !!!!

Lots of love to all

Claire

Xoxox

Favela and Ipanema

Hey everyone!

Last night was our final night of our tour. We went out for dinner and then to a nightclub. We got unlimited caipirinhas 11-12 but they were awful so I only had two! The music started off absolutely awful, to the point that me, the other Aussie girls and Maria danced stupidly to take the piss. But it got better throughout the night and we actually ended up having a really good night!

This morning I woke up and was pleased to see Collingwood beat Hawthorn by 44 points and escaped injury free! Due to a developing cold I opted for sleep instead but I've used my global AFL pass to download the match and am going to watch after I post this!

Said 'bye to Maria. We've promised to keep in touch and she thinks she'll be in Aus in two years, I'll be in Washington DC at some point so I don't think I've seen the last of her!!

Then me and ten of the others headed off on a favela tour. What is a favela? A slum in Rio that developed in the 1970s when poor immigrants moved to certain areas. In the city of Rio all up there are 742 favelas, only 4 of which are regulated by police. 20% of Rio's 7 million population live in favelas! Typically favelas are dangerous, violent places full of drug lords and cartel wars. So we decided to go to one! Seriously though it was fine, we went to one of the regulated ones with an organised tour. 

The one we travelled to was called Rocinha and has been police regulated since December 2011. 200,000 people live in it, and the houses can be up to five levels high, each level housing a family, some of which had up to twenty children! Our guide said he has 120 cousins. Yes, one hundred and twenty! His mum has ten siblings and his dad has 11. And to think I have six...!

So we walked through the favela. We started at a viewpoint where you could see the whole favela, it reminded me of a poor version of the Amalfi coast. Then we went to an art workshop and I bought myself a small painting. We saw a small garage band form and were treated to some drums and kids dancing! We went to a bakery and bought some Açai. Overall the favela was dirty and smelly (which I expected!) and very crowded. I suppose the people who live here have never known any different but to people as privileged as all of us it's hard to understand how they can. We ended the tour at a childcare centre and had another viewpoint. Part of our tour price goes to this centre as it is free for parents in the favela to place their children in this centre. The children were soooo cute and friendly!!

Got back to the hostel and walked to Copacabana beach from the hostel (a few blocks away) with Kathrin, Nicole and Chris. If you're anything like me you'll now have the Barry Manilow song stuck in your head for some time - apologies! We hung out there for a while as we ran into some others from the group. 

We headed back to the hostel and then Kathrin and I caught a cab together to Ipanema, the next suburb over from Copacabana. My travel agent said it was nicer so I decided to stay my extra two nights there. I checked into my hostel, I have my own room and the wifi works in here so I'm set haha! It's so strange being by myself after two months of sharing a room with someone. 

I met Kathrin at Ipanema beach and we had a quick swim. It and copacabana are so beautiful! I'm so happy Kathrin is staying 5 minutes from me though because I had been warned Rio is dangerous and within two blocks of walking alone I had been shouted out to and wolf whistled three times. I'll be fine though, I know lots of people in the city still the next few days and I'm aware of my surroundings. 

After a quick swim I went back to the hostel and got ready and then went to the beach to buy a saring I had seen earlier. It is my Brazilian souvenir! Saw the sun setting behind the mountains which looked amazing! Then I met Kathrin at the train station nearby. We got the metro and went and met Daryl, Anne, Daniel, Danton and Jared at our previous hotel for dinner. We got a bit lost but eventually made it! We all enjoyed a really nice meal by the beach together. 

I have some exciting news! Tomorrow morning I am going hang gliding over the city. I agonised all day as to whether it was worth $270 Aussie and have decided that you only get one life so you have to mak the most of it. $270 is a lot but the experience will be worth far more than that. I'm so excited! Being picked up at 8.30am. 

There may be no blog tomorrow Melbourne time because I have a very full day and night. So if no blog tomorrow I'll be posting it Saturday morning my time (night time in Melbourne) and then I leave for London Saturday night!

Love to all 
Claire

Xoxox

Rio de Janeiro

Hi all!

So this morning the power was still off everywhere - even at our hotel! I slept terribly because it was too hot and there were more mozzies. 

We had some rolls and a banana for breakfast and ran into Martin from yesterday's hike who gave Daryl the GoPro video he took, I'll upload in April once I have my laptop!

We caught our 1.5 hour boat again and then a 4 hour bus. I slept most of the way!

Then we arrived in Rio de Janeiro. I'm so excited to be here! I've always wanted to come but at the same time it always seemed so far away and inaccessible that I was never sure I would get here. Rio has 6 million inhabitants and was host for the FIFA World Cup last year, and is also hosting the Olympics next year! The Portuguese sailed here and arrived on 1 January 1502 and named it so because they believed the ocean here to be a river. Hence Rio de Janeiro - River of Janeiro. 

We got straight onto a city tour to knock out three of the biggest tourist attractions here - Sugarloaf Mountain, Christ the Redeemer and the Selaron Steps. Rio is very spread out so I've had friends who have done this tour recommend it to me. 

Our first stop was Sugarloaf Mountain. We caught two cable cars up the 396m high mountain. The view was beautiful! Quite cloudy and a little dark but apparently this is a common occurrence here. Contrary to popular belief (and TV shows, postcards etc) it's actually cloudy and rainy a lot here! Took some lovely photos, enjoyed the view and came back down. 

Our next stop was Christ the Redeemer. When I was in Lisbon, Portugal two years ago I saw the Christ there which faces the one here, so it was funny remembering that! At that time I never dreamed I would be in Brazil in two years time. On the way up we drove through the neighbourhood of Santa Teresa up the Corcovado mountain, and our guide told us Rio is one of the biggest urban forests in the world. More than 100,000 trees were planted here in the 1960s to counteract deforestation. As well, there are tram tracks in this neighbourhood but the tram was shut down in 2011 after an accident caused 5 deaths. They're hoping to have it up and running again before the Olympics, but don't hold your breath because originally it was set to reopen before the World Cup (now 7-8 months ago!). The Brazilians proclaimed independence in 1821 and in 1921 decided to create the Christ monument to commemorate 100 years. Building commenced in 1926 and was completed in 1932. The Christ has his arms wide open to embrace the city and is 38m high (30m Christ and 8m base). Our guide kept joking that when Brazil lost to Germany in last year's World Cup 7-1 the Christ put his face in his hands and cried! Haha. 

The view up the top was even better than the Sugarloaf! Absolutely stunning. I had one of those strange moments where you can't believe you're in a place. I'm hoping it'll hit me in a few days that I've been here, because up the hill it was so surreal!

We were lucky as well. It was a bit cloudy but so beautiful. There were about 10 other people apart from us (usually it's packed!) and we even were up there when the Christ lit up in pink. 

Our final stop was the Selaron Steps. Mum - you've probably seen Harry O in the Collingwood magazine sitting on these. They're steps decorated by an artist (Selaron) from 1990-2012 when he mysteriously doused himself at the bottom and died. The steps themselves have green, blue and yellow tiles for Brazil's colours, and the sides are red due to it being his favourite colour. Scattered throughout are tiles from 148 countries. It was hard to see properly because it was dark so I'm going back on Friday during the day. I found heaps of cities I have been to though!

Now we are about to go out for dinner and a night out. It's our last night on tour so I'm flying solo again as of tomorrow! Can't believe it's all beginning to draw to a close. 

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox