The guys on the tour are pretty much all from Australia. Some from Sydney and some from Melbourne. To be honest, Lima was a bit of a blur. I was exhausted from my flights and still feeling it. We had the funniest tour guide of the catacombs though. It was more of a sprint than a tour... the conversation kind of went like this...
Guide "And this is where the catacombs were discovered...."
Us "So what about the....."
Tour guide disappears around corner....
Us "How old is the ....."
Tour guide shimmys down some steps...
Us "When was the first....."
Tour guide exits stage right...
Very entertaining.... We then got a mad woman taxi driver back from the centre of town to Miraflores (which is the area we´re staying in and a very nice area too). She kept banging on the side of her taxi everytime she wanted to merge into another lane. The Peruvians have the same driving etiquette as the rest of South America. Why stick to two official lanes when you can easily squeeze four lanes of traffic in there... After about 40 mins of a 20min journey, I turned to the taxi driver and asked in spanish, "Do you like the traffic in Lima then?" I thought she was going to kill me... ha ha.
We had a quiet evening, went for dinner and then slept. Up at 4.30am this morning to get to the airport for our flight to Cusco (sometimes spelt Cuzco).
I´m kind of in a bit of a daze at the moment. We met our new guide for Cusco called Bobby. He´s great. Very keen... We went to the main square. Did the classic tourist stuff, this is a church, this is the traditional dress of the Andes etc.
Really interesting though. He then took us to an indoor market which has everything for sale.... Including pigs heads and cows snouts... Lovely. It´s really interesting trying to acclimatise to Cusco.
We´re about 3,300m high. Breathing can be a little challenging but Bobby helped to sort that out by taking us for some Coca tea... and coca chocolates.
They don´t remove the cocaine element from the coca plant when they make the tea here.... I think I floated back to the hostel... It was kind of weird but you need to have this stuff to survive the trek. So I bought 100g of dark and 100g of green Coca chocolates.... bring on the mountains I say...
Tomorrow, we start trekking and on Friday, I climb to 4,600m.... Oh man... Should be interesting.. It takes 4 hours going up the same distance it takes 45mins to come down that day.
I left Rio early this morning a little jaded after no sleep and feeling sorry to leave the place.... I will definitely be back.
My flight was at 4.10am so I arranged a taxi from the Walk on the beach hostel at 1.30am. The hostel, btw, is excellent. I would highly recommend it.
The taxi driver turned up at 1.20am and proceeded to give Jenson Button a run for his money on the way to the airport. We did the 30min journey in 17mins. I think we were on two wheels at one point.
Funny story, I went out with Tharcia to the movies and for dinner. We watched Man on Wire which is an excellent film.... even if part of it was in French and I was reading Portuguese subtitles. Anyway, I got the bus back from Botafogo to Copacabana, about a 15 to 20min journey (or 5 mins if you got the taxi driver who took me to the airport, actually, I think I got his brother.... traffic light... what traffic light). I decided to get the bus as I had no money left... The bus was errr... entertaining... this guy drove the bus as fast as the taxi driver.. it was crazy...
He went so quickly that by the time I asked errr.... are we at Copacabana, we pulled up at Leblon, two suburbs away...
It was 1am and I had 30mins to get back for my cab.... The bus driver and his colleague told me to hang around at the bus stop. It was pitch black, I was in Rio with my last 50reals on me for the taxi to the airport and I was miles away from my hostel.... great news....
The next thing I know, the two guys had a chat to their boss, jumped in one of the vacant buses and beckoned me over.... I try to muster up as much goodwill about the human spirit as I could and went for it.... I got on the bus and they drove me to my hostel like a taxi.... it was amazing, in 15mins also. I owe those guys a lot.. Just made it for my cab.... Perfecto...
Anyway... the flights from Rio to Sao Paulo and Sao Paulo to Lima were fortunately uneventful. Got to my hostel in Lima and had a snooze. The best thing in the world happened to me also today.... I had a hot shower... you may not realise this but that is like finding a pot of gold to a traveller.... hot shower. Like the nectar of the heavens... amazing.
Anyway, will get some dinner and go to bed early tonight. Big day tomorrow. Can´t wait.
So we went to the club Mariuzinn or something like that and they did the same thing with payment, you get a card and then pay at the end. Slightly dangerous but still..... Funny thing was the computer system broke so they had to come round to everyone in the club and swap the credit card for a paper one. We didn´t have to pay drinks up to that point because he system went down and lost all track of them... Nice one.
They were playing some of my favourite music, R´n´B, Brazilian Funk... just the sort of stuff I like to get down to and feel comfortable dancing to..... Yeah right. I have to admit, I´ve not seen as much arse shaking in all my life. The good thing about this club is that it is mainly locals who go... It was certainly an experience.... The girls do this kind or arse shaking dance getting lower to the floor with each bump and grind.... Quite entertaining actually. I have to admit I did try to give it a go.
I couldn´t have looked more out of place. I must have looked like a sweetcorn in a pod of peas.... Still a good night was had by all.. Got back about 6am.
Friday started pretty early. I woke up at 10.30am and am getting used to surviving on 4hours or so of sleep. I went to the beach for an hour and then Jay and I took the tour of the Favela. It was incredible. We went to a Favela called Rocinha which houses 200,000 people. Madness.
We took the minibus there and then jumped on the back of motorbikes to get to the top of the favela.
They are called motor taxis and they are used to get up and down the only street in the Favela. The next thing I knew we were shooting up the hill at about 70miles an hour screaming past buses and in between vans as well as other motorbikes taking gaps that should never have let us through. I could actually feel my knuckles turning white as I clung on for dear life.... It was slightly disconcerting when on approach to a hairpin corner my driver turns to me and says "Ok gringo"....... to which I replied ..... "road, road" pointing ahead of us...
I made it, looking about ten years older and white as a sheet (even more so than normal). When we got to the top, our guide told us that the Favela is illegal and the police can actually close it down at any time but with 200,000 people living there it´s a little tricky.
It´s run by drug barons and there is virtually no crime unless rival gangs come in for a gun battle.... We were told it was safe to take video cameras and digital cameras on the tour... the only place in Rio where we have been told it is ok to do this.
Crazy... Although there were certain places we can´t do this because of the drug barons privacy.... I decide to abide by these rules.. Safer, I thought.
I have to admit, throughout the tour, which was amazing by the way, I felt so safe.. Everyone was so friendly and I played football with some little kids around 10 or 12 years old. It was going so well until I decided to show them some true British grit and took one of them out with a horror two footed lunge just below the kneecap.. teach you to nutmeg me Ronaldo!!!! Just kidding, I didn´t really. I was playing head tennis with one of them.... Good fun..
We then went to an artist studio and looked at some amazing paintings...
so I bought one of them... Some local kids gave us a samba drumming show... they must have been about 5 or 6 years old.
The tour was an incredible experience and I would recommend it to anyone who visits Rio. PS the last gun battle happened four weeks ago.... phew...
Last night, we went out to Lapa. It was madness. There must have been about ten thousand people out on the streets. It´s incredible. I went there with Loreta and Ita (Ireland), Jay and Rich (UK), Jairu (Costa Rica) and my new roomies Emma, Nikki and Caz from Hampshire. We were joined by Tharcia and her friends (Brazil). Jairu and I decided to go with the Brazilian crew to experience a proper local night and arranged to meet the rest of the guys a bit later.
It was such a laugh. I was introduced to all of Tharcia´s friends and got a litre bottle of beer for one pound. Very dangerous. After downing a tequila courtesy of Jairu, we hit a Brazilian funk club. Tharcia taught me how to dance Brazilian Funk. I´m thinking of renaming this blog.... around the world in a thousand dances.... it seems to be a common theme for me. All in all, I had an amazing night.
I met the others and we headed back to the hostel where we feasted on Domino´s pizza at 5am.... Yes, I do feel guilty...
Today I´ve spent most of my time trying to get my ticket to fly from Rio to Sao Paulo at 4am tomorrow morning. Nightmare. No travel agents were open.... grrrr.
Got it sorted so roll on Lima and all that Peru has to offer. Can´t wait.
I caught a bus in Rio and didn´t make a complete idiot of myself. That´s one up for me. Get in.
We stayed in last night. Probably a wise move as I´ve been out so many times in a row. Needed a quiet one. Had a couple of drinks and Mark (UK) prepared a culinary masterpiece for the starving masses to feast on. Result. I also managed to make use of the kind gift from Michael at work of iTunes vouchers. Enjoyed listening to van Morrison - And it stoned me... love that song. Thanks Michael.
Today, I got up at a sprightly 10.00am.... delighted with that one.
Jay (UK), Mark (UK)and I decided to go and rent some bikes to ride to Lago Rodriguez de Freitas. We finally got ourselves organised at about 11.30ish and went out to check out the prices. First place we got to wanted a credit card as security and Rio being obviously a very safe place with no corruption or crime whatsoever, we decided to seek rentals elsewhere. Essentially, none of us wanted to risk our plastic discovering it has a twin in Rio after we leave....
We headed down to Copacabana Beach to find an alternative option and met this really nice man dressed in a black suit a´la Miami Vice with lots of bling jewellery everywhere. He informed us that he knew of a bike shop and if we would follow him to a dark alley somewhere, he and his friends would help us rent bikes out of the kindness of their hearts. We said "Ok great, thanks kind man... perhaps you can look after our cameras and money while we go on our ride...". Actually, we waited for him to turn around and scarpered..... quick sharp.
We eventually found a place that rented us bikes for R20 for 3 hours. About 6 pounds. It was great to do a bit of exercise and the ride to the lake took about 30mins or so.
We headed to the Botanical Gardens and had some lunch. After looking at various species of plants and flowers we realised we had to get the bikes back to the shops.
Fortunately we didn´t meet our black suited blinged up friend Carlos again as we strolled along Copacabana back to our hostel. Had a Caipirinha overlooking the beach and i´ve spent the last couple of hours uploading photos.
Out tonight to a bar/club in Copacabana where the guys stay downstairs and the girls upstairs until midnight. The girls get free drinks and the club opens up at midnight for mingling. Could be entertaining.... Will see.
Last night was a laugh. It took a while to make a decision where to go but we finally got ourselves sorted and went to a place called The House. So called because it is in a house. They´re very clever these club owners...
We almost didn´t make it. The taxi driver was hell bent on veering into a car en route. He was a little surprised to see the car, a very obvious large white one, on a road in a city as busy as Rio... I can understand where he went wrong...
Anyway, we got in the club and it was an interesting place. You don´t actually pay until you leave so what happens is you have a card you take around... it´s more of a piece of paper.... you have to keep the card and the bar staff mark the card next to the drink you had. You then pay at the end. It´s dangerous because if you lose the card you have to pay a set fee... sketchy huh.
A swedish girl came up to me and was very drunk... she was convinced I was Swedish... I told her I knew one word of Swedish which was the number 7 but she didn´t believe me... A little bit weird actually. Other than that, it was a good night and all the guys enjoyed themselves. It was a bit weird dancing on the dance floor later in the night... the floor was so sticky it was almost like I was dancing in slow motion.....
Today we went to check out Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. There were a lot of arse cheeks on show. G-strings are pretty popular over this way i´ve noticed....
Tonight, we check out a sports bar down the road from here. Looking forward to that.
