Brazil – partay time!

We were a little apprehensive about going to South America´s biggest and badest country. For one, we had sort of picked up a little Español and didn’t like the idea of going to Brazil, where they speak Portuguese, and forgetting it all. And two, we were scared! If Argentina could be so unkind to us, what would Brazil do? Luckily we had our strapping solider Ty with us so no Brazilian robbers could touch us!

Florianopolis – CARNAVAL!!!

When we tell people we were in Brazil for Carnaval, everyone assumes we were in Rio. Unfortunately we’re not made of money and therefore chose Florianopolis to celebrate (although this turned out to be just as expensive!) We had a few dramas on arrival… our bus was three hours late, causing us to wait in the middle of a road until 11pm, with all the lights going out and hooded-up cars cutting laps around us. Then, once we arrived in Florianopolis, Ty, Hayley and I got into a taxi that dropped us off 30 minutes away from our actual hostel, forcing us to catch a local bus with two surfboards, our 20kg backpacks and all our prized possessions. We finally got to our hostel and found Nikola hyperventilating, imaging that we had been gang raped by our driver. We were shown to our room, which was at the bottom of 150 steps (by rough count) and was unfortunately located right outside the sewage tank. The room smelt (as Ty put it) “like someone did a shit in a wet sock and the reason that sock was wet was someone pissed on it first”. It was so unfair, the rest of the hostel was absolutely beautiful – sweeping views of the lagoon, verandas, hammocks, fire places… ours was the most cramped little box that we had to share with two 30-year-old Australians (one of whom may have had a bed-wetting problem… this would also explain the piss-smell), a Dutch man who just sat and stared at everyone and never said a word, and a creepy Frenchman who, when asked what his favourite sport was, replied “love making, of course”.

Carnaval wasn´t quite the ‘large-bottomed woman wearing a dental floss bikini makes out with 7ft drag queen on a pink frothy float surrounded by bubbles’ affair we’d all expected (or perhaps we were imagining Mardi Gras?) It was a fun, alcohol-filled week, but a week we could’ve had any other time of the year for half the price.

Paraty

Paraty is a quaint, cobblestoned little village on the coast of Brazil where we discovered one of the best meals, the nicest hostel owners and the cutest little girl in South America. It was absolutely POURING when we got to Paraty and Ty had to run around looking for a hostel because Hayley, Nik and I were all too afraid to ruin our hair. Just joking… we had long given up on attempting to look presentable. We found one, run by the friendliest couple in the world. The man was an eager little soul, scrambling around recommending us restaurants and scrawling frantic maps. The woman sang ‘my name is Luka!’ and giggled like a hyena at her poor English skills. They were delightful. We had a magnificent seafood dinner, but we were less than impressed when we were charged 20 Real ($12!!!) for the shitty musician warbling away in the corner who we weren’t even listening to. The next day we went for a walk to the beach and were thrilled to stumble upon Hannah and Helen! We agreed to meet them later at the beach, but on arrival found the poo-brown water (remnants of last night’s storm) less than inviting so we settled on an outdoor shower instead. There we met an extremely over-confident 8-year-old who wore the typical Brazilian bikini and shook her ass underneath the shower like she was Beyonce! So funny!

Trindade

Or should it be called Sweatsville? This tiny little coastal town sent our glands into such an overdrive, we were forced to forget our sense of modesty and propriety and sleep nakey covered in wet sarongs. It might have simply been our crack den of an apartment that caused such sweltering (and my god, was it a crack den!). On our first night, we spotted a rat scurrying across our bedroom, dodging all of Nikola´s stuff that managed to cover the floor within minutes of our arrival, before disappearing underneath the stove. We thought that was the last of him until our second night when we woke up to Nikola’s 100 decibel shriek and her flying leap on top of Hayley (who was on the top bunk… really quite an impressive feat). Apparently, Ratus the Rat had decided to take a night trip on top of Nik and Ty´s bed head! We were all pretty freaked out after that, especially Nik who was sobbing hysterically and organising rosters for guard duty.

The next night, we were enjoying our typical Brazilian dinner of beans, fish and rice when a dog came up to us. Now, Ty simply cannot leave South American dogs alone, no matter how tatty they are. He calls them all `Chico´ followed by a description of the dog in question. For example, if a dog has quite a lot of hair, Ty will say, “awww Chico…. fluffy Chico.” Anyway, this night was no different. Ty noted the dog´s appearance, commented on it and then fed her his leftovers. Within minutes, we were surrounded by strays. ‘Oh dear,’ we thought. ‘The dogs must have heard we were giving out scraps.’ But no, these dogs had other things on their mind. Apparently Ty´s Chico was quite the desirable creature and she was soon surrounded by dogs trying to mount her.
“Awww Chicos!” Ty said. “Toey Chicos!”

Illha Grande

Illha Grande, literally means `Big Island´ and therefore we had to get a boat to reach it. We´d heard that we would have to catch a ferry so imagine our surprise when a glorious yacht turns up and toots for us to get on! We spread out like kings in the middle of the boat, ignoring the grumblings of all the other passengers who had to sit on the boat´s edge, and had a lovely couple of hours reading and relaxing. When we got to the island it was getting dark, but you could still make out the absolute BEAUTY of it. It was also boiling hot so we thought we’d take a midnight swim amongst the boats. Ty (who has worked on boats in the past) told us how boats often dump their waste when they dock so we were a bit worried we were swimming amongst feces and oil, but the water was so nice and cool we chanced it. After a delicious pay-by-the-kilo dinner (very dangerous for big boys like us) we purchased liquor from a small bottle shop and had a sing-a-long with at our hostel. This turned into quite a party, leading to Nik and I getting rather rowdy and knocking off the curtain rod, waking an entire roomful of people. Whoops. We were sooo hung-over the next day. Like white-face, vomit-burp, mascara-down-to-the-chin hung-over yet Ty still forced us to get out of bed and go to the beach. This would’ve been fine except to get to said beach required a 20 minute climb through the sweltering Brazilian jungle. Not cool.

Rio!!!!

We were getting settled in our dorm, on our first day in Rio, when a New Zealand couple named Emma and Ash walked in and immediately pointed to a bed in the corner.
“Which one of you is sleeping there?”
Of course, it was me. “Why?” I asked nervously.
“Oh, the guy in the bunk underneath you just has rampant sex with one of the hostel workers every night,” they said. EFFING TYPICAL!!! The next morning, true to form, I was awoken with sea-sickness as my bed swayed back and forth repeatedly for three hours. I swapped bunks immediately.

Anyway, on our first night we had a dorm party as this was the only place with air-con and we were all dying! It ended up getting quite rowdy. Ty, who is normally quite composed, even when drunk, was an absolute mess! He kicked Emma in the head, then spilt his beer on her, then knocked the communal alcohol over and then ended up at the bar in his trunks and a shower cap.

The following day we signed up to attend a real live football game at the famous Maracana Stadium… oh dear. It seems we missed out on football season and instead paid full price to see a bunch of teenagers kick around a ball in an absolutely dead stadium. We were so disappointed. No dead chickens being thrown? No bottles of piss? No gun shots or brawls?
The next day we went to Copacabana Beach (que Barry Manilow) which was cool but so ridiculously hot (have I stressed enough people, just how HOT Brazil was?) They had to have sprinklers on the beach so people could walk to the water. Even in thongs, your feet still burned. We could only last an hour which was fine because to be honest the sellers were a nightmare. “AGUA!COCACOLA!CERVEJA!” “AGUA!COCACOLA!CERVEJA!” (Water! Coke! Beer!) over and over again. Some turned it into a song and danced up and down the beach while others shouted it angrily at us as they stormed past. That afternoon we did a city tour of Rio, visiting Christ the Redeemer (the giant statue of Jesus), the Maracana, the Catedral, a beautiful stain-glassed cathedral and finally the Lapa Steps, made famous by Snoop Dog.
That night we had a BBQ at the hostel and were entered in a raffle for a free boat trip! Ty, throwing his ticket on the table, said “I never win these things” and left. Surprise, surprise, he won! Nikola had to accept his prize and was also forced to do a local dance, the Capawara. It was HILARIOUS!! Luckily she’d had two glasses of wine. She was cart-wheeling all over the place, kicking her legs over a man´s head, rolling on the ground like a worm. It was outstanding. We went out in Lapa that night, a notoriously dangerous but awesome place where all the Rio-ians go out. However, after one of our group was busted by the police with naughties in his pocket, then robbed by the same police of $150, we thought it was time to bail.

SIDE NOTE – Nikola had an interesting insight during our time in Rio which I thought I´d share with you all. When you go travelling as a young lad, all you basically do is get drunk, party, sleep around, lay on a beach all day and spend a shitload of money yet everyone thinks travelling is such a commendable thing. Parents proudly tell everyone in ear shot, “oh yes, my child is currently travelling in Brazil”, but if you acted at home the way you do overseas your parents would disown you!

Finally, on our last day in Rio, we went on a boat trip with pretty much everyone from our hostel. It was so much fun! The caprihinas (the national Brazilian beverage) were FREE, FREE, FREE so therefore everyone was PISSED, PISSED, PISSED! That, combined with a slippery deck, plus extremely rocky waves meant that by the end of the trip we had one girl with a broken hand, a boy who required stitches in his shin and everyone else covered head to toe in Caprihina. I myself sloshed my entire drink in both my eyes after a particularly rough wave.