Sydney Vicious does Rio de Janeiro
After a good tour of Christ, we headed down to the beautiful beach of Ipanema, which just looks like a regular beach, though it is kept pretty clean; the views of these rock formations jutting out in the distance aren´t too bad, either. There are about 5 venders for every beachgoer, and they stroll the beach, offering you all of their goods quite insistently. If you don´t want one thing (agua), perhaps you´ll want another (cerveja – beer). No? Then, it must be a refrigerante (soda). No. As soon as the refreshment guy leaves, then the ice cream man comes, and then you get the sarong dude, and then the jewelry chick. And, how about a bikini? Because everyone really needs a bikini once they´re already at the beach. To eat, various people offer sanduiches natural (cold sandwiches), camarão (a very suspect shish kabob of shrimp, that’s been carried up and down the beach), or my favorite, grilled cheese on a stick. This man walks around with some sort of salty cheese on a stick and a hot oven contraption, which he uses to grill the cheese. I might have seen him adding some sort of spices to the cheese, but I can´t be too sure…it just isn´t what I would call beach food.
Lapa was recommended as the part of town to go for a good party. We hooked up with a fairly huge group from the hostel and headed down on the bus. Of course, our group of 11 only remained so for about 3 minutes after arriving…the place was nuts. Everyone was outside, drinking, partying on the streets and in the clubs. The clubs we went to were fairly small, with the bar in the front, serving people both inside and outside. We started out at a hip-hop club, where we met some local girls and some dude from Brooklyn who I guess everyone in Brazil thought was 50Cent. I went to a samba club with another girl, only to later discover that it was a salsa club (later being the next day when trying to figure out why I never met up with other people). The music started out great, though, and everyone was dancing a mean salsa. This included me, who was asked by nearly half the male contingency in the place for a dance. For anyone who knows me, you know that although I do like to dance, I´m an awful partner dancer with no concept of how to follow a lead. So, this was all pretty comical. Trust me.
Inevitably, the next day I awoke with a good hangover and went to cure it at the beach. It was quite hot and humid, but the water was refreshing and there was some sort of drunk Santa Claus hitting on hot women in bikinis for a photo shoot, which was entertaining. After a little nap it was close to getting dark out, and well, that was the end of that day, although I managed to still stay up until a good 3:30 in the morning just hanging out at the hostel.
One of my original thoughts for this trip was to take my roller skates with and sort of skate around the world, or at least skate in every destination I made it to. After thinking about it a bit, this seemed rather impracticle, as those things are heavy and bulky, exactly what you don’t want to be carrying around with you. So, I decided that I would just look for skating rinks wherever I went. Well, I finally found one in Rio, and Sydney Vicious worked her magic on the rink…for about 15 minutes. With a crappy pair of rental figure skates, I skated circles around the rest of the lot, the few there were. With the temperature in the 90’s, the sun beating down on the outdoor rink, and blisters quickly developing on the toes, I grew tired embarrassingly quickly. But, it did feel great to get out there and give it a whirl around.
That night, we ended up at some gay bar called BoyBar, where they had karaoke night, or as they called it karaogay. The singers weren’t half bad, though they really liked singing slow ballads in Portuguese, which is never interesting. Vanessa and Emma (from England, who, by the end of the night was dubbed Brazilian Lesbian icon 2005…she broke many a heart that night with news of her boyfriend) brought down the house with a great rendition of Lionel Richie’s All Night Long, with Vanessa screaming at the crowd in English to get up and clap their hands. Later, our group of 4 took our turn with the gay classic YMCA, which apparently isn’t as much of a hit with the gay community when 4 girls are singing it…
The night went later than expected, but it wasn’t as exciting as the karaogay…all that need to be mentioned is that asking a cab driver to take you to another club may land you drinking beers in a gas station while he washes his car.
After another day in Rio of doing pretty much nothing, we headed out to our next desitnation…Barra Grande, a little beach town that as recommended to us by some other travelers. At the bus station, it seemed like our bus was departing from the most insane area in the place. People were smashed in this little area, all waiting to get their bags weighed (there’s a weight limit for baggage per person). People were pushing in front of others, throwing huge boxes in front of people…there was no rhyme of reason to the madness. With the help of an older man, we made it to the front of the line, throwing our bags onto the scale in front of others trying to do the same. After the mad rush, though, it became clear that it was totally unnecessary, as our bus was delayed due to a very upset couple being denied passage on the bus. It all became very exciting, with the whole bus getting involved (from a distance, of course, but everyone had their opinions). We had several people come on and make announcements, including the bus driver and a policeman. We couldn’f figure out what was going on, but we just decided that the man who was denied passage was drunk, and now was getting pretty ticked off. As the bus finally pulled away, the whole bus waved, screaming Tchao to the man, who was now getting closer to fists with the cops. Vanessa and I were particularly glad to leave him behind, because he would have been sitting right behind us, and the last thing you want behind you on a 24 hour bus ride is a drunk, belligerent man.
Tags: Brazil, Tag Index
Tania