I touched down in Sao Paulo after a brief flight from BA with a killer hangover, sleep deprived and delicate! I made my way to my couch surfing host’s house only to find that Junior already had plans for us! He told me to have a quick shower, fix myself something to eat, knock back a couple of his home made caprinis and I'd be fine. Seriously doubting this I followed my orders and within an hour we were off out into town. As it turns out Junior couldn't have been more right and I ended up partying right through til 6 with him and his friends in, what has got be, the most splendid gay club I've ever been to. Titled Trash 80's in did exactly what it said on the tin... and more! Within minutes of entering the place a very hot, but never the less very gay young man told me I looked fabulous and proceeded to take me under his wing for the rest of the night. He took to grinding like a dog takes to dry humping and had more stretch in him than a hubba bubba, he was my guru on the dance floor. Occasionally he would turn to me in momentary ecstasy from the latest tune being played and declare 'cheers to queers darling', embrace me, then continue to get lost in the music once more. Like any good club Trash 80's hosted a podium come stage which, let’s be honest, in the UK are usually home to a couple of skinny 18 year old lasses with belts for skirts who, despite my recognition of their flexibility, don't really do it for me. However this joint wasn't catering to the needs of heterosexual men. To my delight I found the rules had been reversed and instead the spot light shone on a selection of tightly toned buns and abs owned by only the handsomest of men, oh and an obscenely obese lady in a flowery dress, I'm not sure how she fitted in to the act but she seemed to be having a whale of a time. Best of all, they had choreographed a dance routine that would knock the socks off steps, and maybe even give old JT a run for his money. If this is your average Friday night out in Brazil can you imagine what it must be like during carnival?!
The following day I paid a visit to a salon with my new found friend Patchy, who I'd met during my tour of the salt flats in Bolivia. This, again, very much lived up to my expectations and upon entering the place I was met with wafts of all sorts of lotions and potions used for just about every beauty treatment you can think of. The place was open plan with gloriously high ceilings and white leather furniture. The economic situation in Brazil holds true to its international media representation. It is very much a place of all or nothing, and unlike the UK if you've got it you flaunt it. Let me assure you Brazilians know how to live well, and given that I was spending my last 2 weeks of my trip in their hands, I wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to be pampered. So I sat back, ordered a coffee, flicked through a magazine and did a spot of people watching while my hair was cut for the first time in 18 months! During the afternoon Patchy took me to the down town area of Sao Paulo, which incidentally is the 4th biggest city in the world, just to put it into context. We visited a fantastic food market with all sorts of weird and wonderful fruits and just as many unhealthy options to tease the taste buds. I came to the conclusion that I would undoubtedly become rather porky if I stayed in this country too long, although don't be fooled, it ain't cheap, when I went to buy a mango they tried to charge me £8 for the thing, thinking I must have been given the gringo price Patchy asked the next stall on my behalf and they told her the same, now that's just loco! In the evening we hit the dance floor once more but this time to an assortment of more authentically Brazilian music, and once again it was light before we returned home. Where they get their stamina from I just don't know, but whatever they're taking I want some!
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My final day in Sao Paulo was a quieter affair. I went for lunch with my couch surfing host and his mother to a traditional buffet, whereby when you're done filling your plate they plonk it on some scales and you pay by the kilo, and therefore much like our pick and mix where it pays to be a lover of marshmallows, if you are a big salad fan like myself you're quids in! In the afternoon we took a walk in the park which I imagine very much resembles Central Park in NY, with people roller blading, drinking fountains every hundred meters and a perfectly kept lawn on which people retire to in search of the shade of a tree. We even came across a dance off with around 50 guys all taking it in turns to wow each other with their various break dancing moves, with the occasional group holler being heard when someone pulled off something particularly smooth. So there you have it, after 3 days in the country I was clearly hooked.
From Sao Paulo I made my way down to Foz Do Azul which hosts a set of waterfalls that are both wider than Victoria falls and taller than Niagara and have the greatest average annual flow of any waterfall in the world! The falls lie between the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay and can be accessed from all three countries. It’s incredibly difficult to do a place of such colossal scale and beauty justice through words or photos, but lets just say that if I were ever to truly believe in magic these falls would be my converter. I was surrounded by dozens of rainbows as I meandered around the national park. Slightly dumbfounded by what lay out before me, and filled with happy vibes from all the negative ions in the air, it really wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest if a unicorn had wondered passed or one of those half man half goat things, I believe they're called Centaurs or something like that. In fact I found this place so captivating I returned a second day to check out the Argentinian side of the falls, which leave you a tad bit deaf and a little on the damp side, actually completely saturated if you're like me and try to get as close to the edge as possible, but such conditions only added at the wow factor of the place.
Leaving Foz Do Azul I took my last ever 24 hour bus which I've come to perceive as being like when you're a kid and you get your badges in swimming for completing certain distances, its all about endurance, and the mars bar at the other end. The only slight problem with this analogy is that rewarding yourself with chocolate for effectively sitting on your butt for 24 hours straight doesn't have quite the same effect as managing to swim 20 lengths without the aid of your arm bands. Still I imagine I must burn off a fair few calories through using my brain for such an extended period of time, as I've discovered entertaining myself can be tougher than I thought, then again there’s nothing like imagining a hostage scene to keep the brain alert, then there’s always those times when I spend at least half the journey slightly paranoid that I'm not on the right bus. Worrying must definitely have a correlation with exercise because you definitely sweat while doing both! In fact I'm sure I could argue that sitting up for that amount of time must utilise my stomach muscles too, why these bus journeys are actually like an entire work out in themselves!
Anyway so then there was Rio. I have ranted and raved about so many different countries and cities throughout this blog but Rio was my Achilles heel. I love this city. Honestly if anyone knows a hunk with a Brazilian passport who'd like to sell their hand in marriage I'd pay good money. Rio is a city of superlatives. It is a city of wild partying and those with money embrace it with a passion so ferocious it is no wonder Baz Luhrmann chose it for the setting of his Romeo and Juliet. Within 30 minutes of arriving in Rio I'd headed straight down to Copacobana beach to take a stroll amongst the beautiful people, and beautiful they were! It did trouble me slightly to see 10 year olds in thong bikinis, but it seems what we may deem outrageous seems to be perfectly normal for most Rio residents. Actually in truth the very next day I went straight out and purchased myself a new one, afraid of being laughed at for wearing what now felt like a small tent on the beach. It should also be told that in addition to the vibrant culture that pervades its streets, Rio just so happens to occupy one of the most spectacular settings on the planet, not only because of its white sand beaches, but also because of the gorgeous mountains and verdant rain-forests that in nests itself in.
Naturally I took time to pay homage to such beauty and set out with my new found friend, Cristina to explore the sights. We did this the most stylish way possible in a sparkling white VW Camper with a couple of local tour guides. I am not even going to try to be modest and say that driving in the sun with the windows down, aviators on, listening to Toots and the Maytales blasting out from the speaker in front of me, I felt like the epitome of cool! Our first stop was Pao de Acucar (Sugar loaf mountain) which provides some spectacular views over the city and a chance to buy an ice cream when you get to the top, which is only really accessible via cable car unless you rock climb! Next we took a brief lunch stop in Lapa and visited The Lapa Steps which are basically Rio's answer to Gaudi only on a slightly smaller scale! This tiled stairway has graced the pages of everything from National Geographic to Playboy and even appears in a snoop dog video, or so I'm told. The artist, Selaron fell in love with Brazil back in 1983 and a few years later, began working on the steps as a tribute to his adopted country. The slightly eccentric artist calls the stairway his "great madness" and claims he will never stop working on it until the day he dies. We even got to meet the coolio himself, who according to our tour guide is barking mad, but its kinda hard to tell when you don't speak Portuguese! From Lapa we paid a quick visit to Jesus, who it turns out is incredibly popular, I need to ask him what he thinks his secret is, turning water into wine or just being a jolly nice chap, I know which one I'd put my money on. Seeing the sun set from this iconic land mark was a pretty spectacular way to end the day and this is one time I can say I totally revelled in being a tourist.
As I said before, the night life in Rio is nothing short of insane and I got a taster of this on a night out on the streets of Lapa. On the weekends Lapa turns into absolute mayhem when locals and tourists flock to the streets to party as one. You can listen to any type of music you care to, dance just about anywhere and generally lose yourself to the night. Wanting to experience some authentic Brazilian music, we spent most of the night listening to a samba band on one of the street corners. I tried desperately hard to fit in, mainly through shaking my ass like a Polaroid picture, which seemed to do the trick as one local lady asked me if I'd been to samba school, a compliment I reminded myself of (and the others with me) several times throughout the night! Although this area still remains largely authentic, it has clearly been tapped into commercially as we saw a large group crowded around a couple of guys creating an awesome piece of graffiti only to find it had been designed by the Brazilian version of Vodafone, which although a little disappointing was an amazing marketing technique.
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The second half of my week in Rio I spent couch surfing with a lovely bloke called Gui. On my first night in his company he took me to a Japanese restaurant and introduced me to Sushi, where it dawned on me that I was an English girl, eating Japanese food in a Brazilian city, and I thought to myself, I know globalisation has done some terrible things to this world, but god damn this is fun! The following few days had a similar tone to them, I tried a variety of local cuisines including a super healthy berry based drink called Acai. I sun bathed while various vendors sold me an assortment of treats, beer, nuts, prawns, one guy even took a portable grill with him to the beach and if you gave him a wave he'd pop over to you and grill you a piece of halloumi cheese on a stick and then cover it in oregano and garlic sauce for you! As luxurious as all of this was, such services did highlight the extreme scale of rich and poor that exists within Brazil. This was only further added to when I asked Gui's maid to write something down for me in Portuguese and realised that she was illiterate. Indeed it’s easy to look at Brazil through rose tinted glasses but even the wealthiest individual can't ignore children sleeping rough with no shoes, or someone searching through bins in hope of finding something to eat.
Still while it is important to acknowledge these inequalities, I don't want to end this entry on a complete downer so I shall return once more to the bubble in which I found myself in most of the time that I was there. In my final couple of days I took a trip to the Botanical gardens where I met a very pleasant French man and the thought suddenly struck me, that I cannot possibly imagine life without meeting new people every day. Travelling opens up all sorts of different avenues, and I can't imagine following one direct path in life again. Spontaneity, while scary at times, has kept me so energised over the last year and I hate the idea of losing the exuberance I feel towards life right now. So I went out in style, I walked home alone the beach while the sun was setting, watched the silhouettes of well over a hundred balls in the air as people played at the shore line until the remainder of the light was finally stolen from them. I then spent the beginning of the evening watching a local football match (Flamengo v Fluminense) in the biggest stadium in the whole of South America with my new French friend and my Brazilian tour guide I'd met a couple of days previously. Admittedly I may have not understood a lot of what was going on but the drums and the chanting kept me on an adrenalin high all the same! This was followed by a night learning how to dance Forro in the oldest samba club in the world. Sticking with the theme of endless energy I waved goodbye to my beloved Rio the following day, met up with Patchy in Sao Paulo, had one final night of madness and officially accepted that my epic adventure had come to an end when less than 24 hours later I found myself staring out of the window of a plane and wondering where my hot towel had got to, and just like that it was over.
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