A Cidade Maravilhosa

I think one of my New Year's resolutions is to try and be more concise in my writing, so let's try and make this a short post!

Today is my last day in Rio as I head off to Ilheus for Capoeirando, a major capoeira event which is going to be loads of fun! Rio has been amazing, and it totally deserves its name of "a cidade maravilhosa". It is so stunning and has so much to offer that I think one would never tire of it. After the fantastic New Year's Eve on Copacabana, not much really happened. We took things easy and just did what we had to do in an easy manner. We met up with the Aussies again on the 2nd for their last night in Rio and had dinner all together. It was nice to have been able to met up with them again here in Rio and sad to leave them again. Definitely a great encounter, and this is what I love about travelling, is how many great people you meet and the friendships you create. The day after that we met up with Bea and Stefi and their friend Joao again and decided to test the nightlife of Rio by going out in Lapa. A Carioca friend of mine had recommended Lapa as THE place to go out, and many other people say the same. Lapa is fun! During the day it is a bit of a dodgy area, with quite a few homeless people and what I assume are druggies hanging around. But at night it becomes SO lively, the streets are crowded and all the bars have people spilling out into the streets in one big happy mess of party.

We went to a club called the Democratica, a very old fashioned dance hall, with tables and a wooden dancefloor in the middle of the room with a stage. There was also a balcony looking out down onto the street, to watch the people go by. There was a live band playing and lots of people dancing gafieira. The place got crowded pretty quickly and soon we were boiling hot. Because the place was such an old structure it had no aircon, just fans, which weren't actually making much of a difference. Everyone was sweating like pigs, and when you went outside you felt like it was an airconditioned room! Anyway, we were about to leave with fatigue but suddenly the band just got amazing and we stayed on and were glad we had. The band was playing a mix of samba, choro, gafieira and a sort of instrumental funk. It was an awesome mix of samba and funk done instrumentally and the guy playing the pandeiro (tambourine) was just amazing! They also had a violinist which gave the music an interesting and original touch. They played incredibly well and just transported the crowd, and so we were really glad we stayed to see that!

The next day I decided to go up the Pao de Açucar as it was my penultimate day in Rio and I felt that leaving without having done at least one major tourist attraction would be a crime. The queue at the bottom of it was huge and I was worried that by the time I got up there it would have crowded over. I was lucky though, as the weather held out, and in fact it was just another steaming hot day with everyone sweating away like mad! The entry was R$44 but as I reached the top I realised that it was worth every penny. The view is so amazing, and you can see for miles and miles. It is just breathtaking to reach the top and see Rio like that, stretching for miles. And that was only the view from the Morro da Urca. Once you reach the top of the Sugarloaf mountain, the view gets even better and you can see Copacabana beach and beyond. The pictures at the beginning of the post were taking from the top of the Pao de Açucar. It was so fantastic I spent hours up there just walking around taking loads of pictures and gazing at the view. From this height, you truly take in the beauty of Rio and realise how amazing it is. And I was so lucky with the weather too! I didn't make it to the Corcovado in the end but I figured that the view from the Pao de Açucar was amazing enough for me, and I have been told that the Corcovado is overrated and a bit of pain to get up, and then it is just too crowded. So I didn't regret my choice of attraction.

Finally, last night we decided to go back to Lapa for some more night action in Rio before we left. We went to club situated right by the Arcos de Lapa, which had balconies and windows looking right onto the arches and the square down below, where you could watch all the people go by. The view was just amazing! The club played mainly funk and we were confused because we had expected it to be samba but we just danced along nonetheless. It was funny for me because, having experienced the funk at the baile, the funk in the nightclub seemed really commercial, but it was nice to go anyway. We left to go home and stopped off at a sort of "street party", a band of people playing samba, right under the arches and people dancing. There were some tourists there, who looked english or in any case foreign, and were just making total fools of themselves. They were so obviously foreign and also drunk it was just embarassing. But also, Lapa is not necessarily a safe neighbourhood even when really busy at night, and it seemed like they were just asking to be robbed...Anyway, we moved on from the little samba band to a small salsa club on the next door street to see what was going on in there, but didn't stay for very long as it wasn't very busy. All in all though, we managed to go to three different parties in one night!! When we got home, we realised that actually we had gone to the wrong club, so that explained why there was all funk and no samba! Ha ha! And so my time in Rio comes to an end, though I think I might try and come back since it is such an amazing place and I feel like there is yet much more to be discovered! Hope I managed to make it short this time :-)