Before I hijack Joe's blog, I should probably introduce myself: my name is Nick, I was Joe's housemate last year and I've been studying in Canada this year. After about 6 months of intense planning over Skype, I flew out to meet him on Monday!
On our first day here together we decided to make the most of the clear skies and get the (expensive) train ride up to see the famous statue of 'Christ the Redeemer' that looks out over the Rio skyline. On the slightly turbulent ride up (we thought TFL was bad!), we were accompanied (one foot in front of us) by a samba band. But even four instruments in his face failed to compete with Joe Cohen's famous ability to nap anywhere! (I'm determined to find something to challenge this before we leave!) Up close the statue really is quite impressive but you can only really appreciate its scale from afar - from the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana.
In the evening, we took the (even more expensive) cable car up to Sugarloaf Mountain to see the sunset. The scene itself was as close to picture-postcard as you're gonna get and the ominous clouds hovering just ahead made for some great photos
Perhaps the common thread to our past few days has been a growing frustration with Brazilians. They are, it has to be said, always more than willing to give directions (always in Portugese) and wild gesticulations. Unfortunately, they are also always more than willing to give directions to places they've never heard of - including cab drivers - who are more than happy to drive in a random direction and drop you off at "aqui, aqui" whether or not it's where you asked to go to or not! Unfortunately we fell victim to this when we tried to visit the 'local' and 'famous' tourist attraction of the Escadaria de Saleron (see photos), with there even being a significant amount of disagreement among locals about which town they were in!
We've also heard stories about bus drivers taking lengthy detours to pickup lunch for themselves, pickup parcels for friends and drop them off. (It probably doesn't add too much time onto the journey though as they seem determined to take most of the road corners on two wheels!) With terrible infrastructure, almost no English/Spanish speakers and as the world's most difficult place to withdraw money as a foreigner(we couldn't get out cash from an HSBC - using an HSBC card!) it's no wonder that the Brazilians seem to be wondering how Rio is going to host the World Cup next year...never mind the Olympics in 2016!
That's all from me - off to Florianopolis tomorrow morning!
Nick Feingold
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