Rainforest City Days 5, 6 and 7 (posthumous) : Rio De Janeiro : 4th - 6th Dec

DAY 5

Metro to Centro, wander around a market that was more like In-Shops, decide not to buy a mobile phone or a watch or a fake football shirt or a bible. Kieron - just letting you know your childhood friends got together and opened a chain of burger shops in Brazil.

The architecture in the 'old town' of Rio is very reminiscent of Portugal, you can find a lot of buildings with tiles on the outside, and the grandeur is very different to the modernist style of the great public buildings you see outside this area.

Spent a while trying to decide where we will go after Rio as we were due to leave the next day (Thursday). Eventually decide to stay for an extra day. Sarah begins to lose her voice, and becomes the butt of some jokes for the next couple of days.

DAY 6 - FOOD.

A bonus day in Rio. Spend our day booking the next three weeks of our lives in hostels and buses. The itinerary looks a lot like this:

RIO DE JANEIRO -> OURO PRETO -> BELO HORIZONTE -> DIAMANTINA -> SAO PAULO

-> FOZ DO IGUACU -> CIUDAD DEL ESTE (Paraguay) -> ASUNCION

After that... well that is the subject of today's discussions. It would be easy to spend all our money jumping from town to town to try and see everything, only to come back home with mere pennies, which we determinately do not want. Restricting ourselves to longer stays in specific spots would allow us to save a little more. Yet the sense that this is a one-off journey influences our desire to not come back rueing missed opportunities. Perhaps another cup of coffee will help.

We got to the beach. We sleep in the sun and, in that glorious half-awake half-asleep state, the joy of what we are doing washes over us. Feeling rejuvenated we head to a feted burger bar just above our hotel, where I enjoy a Mega Monstro.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

DAY 7 - LAST DAY IN RIO

We awake, melancholy, to our final hours here. A few hours on Copacabana beach help, and although we plan to head up to Flamengo afterwards, by 4pm we are starving, and go wandering the back streets of Copacabana until we discover Montagu's Grill, an excellent restaurant where we get a huge mixed grill for two, plus lots of beers, for about R$100. Even Wetherspoons can't beat that.

This marvellous concoction is what I received when I asked for Molho De Picante ('Hot Sauce'). It is a genius mix of olive oil, finely chopped garlic, and topped-and-tailed various chillis. It is so simple and yet so incredible that I'm stunned I've never come across it before.

Satiated, and refreshed by delicious Antarctica Original Beer, we head home, socialise with all the pleasant folk that we have met in the Lisetonga Hostel, before indulging in our only proper night out in Rio. Lapa district is where all the old-style buildings are, and the government has encouraged pubs and nightclubs to take them over to prevent it all falling into disrepair. The streets are thronged with drinkers, jostling for space amongst the kiosks selling food and caipirinhas, and even so it is still early and the real chaos has yet to descend. We find an Irish Pub which disgusts my sensibilities, and head instead to a samba club, where, after a small amount of haggling, we all get in for free, not only that but enjoy a few free (incredibly strong) caipirinhas too. In bars and restaurants here you get a card when you enter, and every purchase goes onto it, then you pay your tab at the end. Its not a bad system, though you could easily run up a massive bill if you weren't careful.

A live band comes on at midnight and we jig about for a couple of hours amongst the carioca, before remembering we need to be up at 6am. One short R$30 taxi ride later, a quick chat with some German boys just back from Paraguay, and a glass of water later, and we are out for the count. For two hours.