Rio de Janeiro - New Years Réveillon 2012

Rio de Janeiro (Brasil)
30 Dec 2011 - 01 Jan 2012

It's amusing how on occassion the smallest things can get stuck in your head, sometimes it's in that kind of innocuous but still irritating manner, like an itch that you can't quite scratch and yet you still know in yourself what the antidote needs to be. For example, my visit to [Helsinki] a couple of years ago was based solely on the misconception of an ex husband of my aunts' who thought that Helsinki was a superstar Russian athlete. His line, mentioned at some point during those 1952 Olympics went something like 'Wow, that Helsinki must be a great athlete, all I'see in the paper each day is Helsinki, Helsinki, Helsinki'. This line of gross ignorance and stupidity somehow filtered down through the years as an internal family joke that in turn manifested in me wanting to actually go and visit the place. In somewhat of the same manner, our visit to Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro was based solely upon fact that I had in my head crystal clear images that were imprinted via the visual outlet of the Snoop Dogg & Pharrel Williams song, [Beautiful - (Parque Lage)]. You can check out the venue at 2:42-2:45 and then anywhere after 3:53. I mean the whole clip is like a glorious advertisement for Rio but for some reason the Parque stuck in my mind as a party venue (it's not by the way, it's located in the Botanical Gardens, but is a nice enough place).

Parque Lage - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Parque Lage - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

What I also noticed prior to leaving Sydney was the proliferation of video clips that 'all of a sudden' started utilising Rio as it's backdrop, for example,[Pete Murray - Free], [David Guetta ft Usher - Without You], [Flo Rida - Turn Around (5,4,3,2,1)]. It felt to me as though they were everywhere and I don't know whether it was just the fact that I had now become consciously aware of Rio appearing everywhere and the simple fact of the matter was that the frequency was no different than that of previous times, or, whether Rio had simply gone gangbusters as a location backdrop and it was hitting everyone artists radar as an IT zone, once again?

Whatever the case was, Parque Lage was unfortunately a little bit of a let down. Of course it had stern competition from that imposing and almighty Cristo Redentor guy that we had just returned from, and in addition, perhaps it was that all three of us were by now well into the hunger zone but the botanical gardens struggled a little for our respect and appreciation, although I really do like some of the black and white shots I managed to capture.


Defeated in our quest to acquire any food of substance we made the absurd decision to walk to Lagoa de Rodrigo de Freitas, and then when nothing but coconut water and slices of pineapple eventuated, we walked to Leblon, and then for some reason down Ipanema... and then onwards, most of the way to Copacobana. It was yet another ludicrous walk, by the end of which tempers had been frayed, nerves had been trodden on and cheap shots were flying around within a thinly veiled disguise of good humour and banter. It wasn't that bad to tell you the truth. It's rare with either JJ or Frichot that the annoyance factor gets anywhere over a 2 on the Richter scale. Still, on this night we all crashed out a smidgen earlier in a kind of silent protest, and I guess as an energy saving strategy for the following evening!


31 December 2011 - 01 January 2012 (New Years Réveillon 2012)

Now this is the day that I had been anticipating for well over a year. I had intended on being at the greatest party in the world the previous year but when things came unstuck in Bolivia I set my sights on 2011-12. Admittedly the idea of returning to South America was more set in hope than anything else but I usually figure that if you put things out to the universe then the worst it can do is not give you a response, and then at other times, well it seems to be able to work a little magic for you.


The tradition in Rio is to where white for NYE, it's meant to bring the individual good luck for the new year. There are also options for wearing all green or blue, but for me, I'm a traditionalist by nature and my thinking is if I can call in an ounce of luck in advance, well then so be it, but if I get call in a whole bucket load with 2,000,000 other people on Copacabana beach then why the hell would I not want to be part of that goodwill tsunami!? It's like the 'God' argument, fair enough if you don't want to believe but if you do per chance and things work in your favour then it's a win-win, and if God doesn't exist, well then you've really lost nothing in the process, but alas, I digress.

Now that's the way to 'take down' a meal!

The pacing and tempo for any NYE  is generally very different from all other days of the year. Go out too hard and peak too early and all possibilities are lost to you. You have to build from early afternoon, into the evening and then last into the morning. The start of the last day of 2011 for this trio was actually late afternoon with an epic meal at a place whose name I don't recall. The food was great, relatively cheap but the portions were immense. Frichot ordered himself half a camel with a side of horse and I have no idea how they managed to fit the 57 plates onto a table made for two but it was a sight to behold. Jetson gave it a good shake also but even on this day, in the challenge of Man v.Food, food came out the victor.


Pacing ourselves into the early part of the evening, we had a few drinks to move the night along and then somewhere around 9pm hit the beach to wait out the last few hours and call in 2012. Now unfortunately at this point in time the rain also decided that it wanted to partake in the festivities and damn it, it was adamant that it wanted to hang aroud. Down it came! Constant, persistent, incessant, ludicrously frustrating and irritating. A Rio NYE with rain to me felt like a Melbourne Cup without the horses, WTF man! C'mon, a break please! We thankfully managed to hijack a few beach umbrellas and beach chairs to keep ourselves 'relatively' dry but geez, it was an uphill battle to lift our spirits for those final hours.

Seriously, it's NYE in RIO!

I think Jetson's face here says it all!

Umbrellas abound on Copacabana!

Perhaps I should qualify that last paragraph, JJ is always in good spirits! You could tell her that the world was going to end in 45 seconds and I think she would laugh hysterically until the very last. For both Frichot and myself, well, we quite usually need things to go our way or some sort of a trigger. It wasn't until perhaps the last 30 mins of the countdown that we really started to get swept up in the NYE fervor, rain and all.

Counting down for those final few minutes and those last few seconds of course I considered myself more than lucky be in that place, in that moment with two great friends. And then it happened! The GREATEST FREAKIN' FIREWORKS DISPLAY OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!! I've seen a few in my time but I tell you now my friends, nothing, but nothing, will ever beat the intensity, vibrancy and 'good vibrations' of a 2012 shout out on Copacabana beach.

Check out Jetson's video of the fireworks here

[The Adventures of Jet Frichot - NYE 2011-12 - Rio]

The videos tell a FAR better story than the photos below!

This video is also pretty good

[NYE - Rio de Janeiro - 2011-12]

New Years Réveillon 2011 - Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro -Brasil

New Years Réveillon 2011 - Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro -Brasil

Standing beneath that fireworks display was mind blowing. The colours were so vivid and the sheer size and breadth of the display down the beach just made you feel as though it was wrapping around your being. I could feel the shock waves from the bursts hit me squarely in the chest and make their way through me. To say that it was captivating and spellbinding would be to do it a huge disservice, so the best I can really do is to add the photos that I have and some of the YouTube videos, inclusive of Jetsons, to show you how damn intense it was. This was certainly a highlight and for anyone that ever has the means and capacity to be here for a NYE, then I would say without hesitation, do it!

New Years Réveillon 2012 - Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro -Brasil

New Years Réveillon 2012 - Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro -Brasil

New Years Réveillon 2012 - Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro -Brasil

I don't quite recall the duration of display, it may have been 15 mins, it may have been 30 but in the end it didn't really matter, I'll always have that experience to carry with me, so too the 2 million other people that were on the beach at that moment. As the haze of the display mystically morphed into those irritating rain clouds once again, the weather that we finished 2011 off with got pulled into 2012. Still, people seemed to be in great spirits and many were dipping their toes into the Atlantic for their first swim or 'splash' of the year.

New Years Réveillon 2012 - Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro -Brasil

First swim of 2012 - Copacabana beach - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

It was at this point that Jetson departed for the night, I don't think the fireworks display was quite the inspirational drawncard and was incapable of holdimg him with us until the morning. I on the other hand wanted to stay out on the beach and watch David Guetta do his set and somehow sold JJ on the idea that hanging around until 2am to check it out was going to be well worth the trouble of braving the rain and masses of people.

[David Guetta - NYE 2012]

Why I had it in my head that trying to make our way to the stage was going to be the golden ticket, I'm not sure, but our path to Guetta glory was blocked by parties, tents, public urination, spruikers, jokers and anything else you could imagine. Once 2am rolled around Guetta jumped on stage and yelled out in his inimitable French accent , 'Hello Rio, this is going to be the biggest party in the world tonight' ...for some reason that I still haven't worked out, somehow JJ and I bastardised that simplistic intro and our memories both acted to convince ourselves and each that his opening line was, 'Hey there Rio, this is going to be the biggest f*cking sh*t on earth EVER!!!', of course that's not what he said but we believed it for a while.


(For the sake of posterity and because I was recently able to find a clip of what he said, if you get to somewhere around 3.11 via the video link above, what Guetta actually says is...'[t]his is going to be the biggest club ever on the planet' ...Well DG, over a million people would probably have you close to the mark!)


Now I think Guetta would have gone off, I really do, but the sounds from 100mtrs off the stage was appalling and the idea of having to put up with that for 90mins was not going to sit well with either of us. It was at that point that we decided to make our way back to our Copa unit in the sky, via the other million people that were backed into that small beach front space. Man, now that was a task. There were waves of people moving every which way and what you thought was the direct route out, or what it should have been, turned into wild web of off ramps,  misguided short cuts and incidental moshing. What should have been a 10min walk out took nearly an hour, perhaps longer. That's what you get for taking on an NYE in Rio though, and just for that, I have it in my head for making it back one day and doing it all again!

Chaos on the streets - view from our apartment on New Years Day

Rio de Janeiro - Like a boss!

Rio de Janeiro (Brasil)
29 Dec - 30 Dec 2012

Sometimes no matter how hard you try you just can't forgive people for the wrongs they've committed against you. A step up from that level are crimes against humanity, this involves an individual's complete disregard for the pain and suffering that they intentionally inflict upon other humans for the sake of either their own gain, morbid or perverse amusement, or whatever else may come their minds. Then there are the crimes of Jet Frichot. His crimes raise the bar far in excess of what can be considered to be a true crime against humanity. So lets just start with the parameters here just to let you know what I'm talking about. If you were born any time before 1980 then you might remember this commercial [Tia Maria - gold & brown]. Now for some reason Jetson had it in his head that singing the ridiculously catchy line, 'Tia Maria, gold and brown, drink it until the sun goes down', with the word 'sun' substituted for all things buttocks related, would be amusing...and you know it was, for a little while, but then that damn commercial got stuck in my head for hours, then for days and now 6 months latter reflecting on our time in Rio I STILL have it in my head. Just listen to it!! Get a grasp of the lines... '...she's got a taste for the gold and brown', like what the hell are they driving at there? Ah Jetson, there's a warrant out for your arrest, I want you to stand trial in the Hague for the punishment you've inflicted not just on me but for all people that have unwittingly had to listen to me repeat the gold and brown line for the last few months!

THE beach of Rio - Copacabana

Ipanema - a credible second

For an afternoon at least I was able to divert my mind away from the Caribbean stylings of Tia Maria and delve into the bossanova driven [Girl from Ipanema]. If you haven't heard it then give it a run, this song is so smooth that it rightly demands that word 'smooth' be spelt with an additional two 'o''s! It just has to be smooooth for the purposes of this song. It was more than easy to have it as my mental soundtrack as we cruised up Ipanema beach and watched the beautiful people of this area get their voyeuristic fill by exposing most of themselves whilst on the golden sands of one of the most famous strips in the world. I mean I wasn't complaining about that, they have to do what they have to do to get through their days, right? The only disappointed was the damn persistence of cloud that appeared to be has angry as I was about the omnipresent nature of that damn Tia Maria tune! (I'm still singing it as I write!). That aside, hanging out by the beach is a lesson in what it is to be a carioca. You get your 'chill' on, you accept caipirinha's willingly (although the alcohol content made them a brutal concoction), you have lengthy skewers of fresh prawns delivered to you with a slight nod of the head, in fact, almost anything can be delivered to you whilst on the beach.

JJ and Jetson walking along Ipanema - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

There was a sale on doughnuts in downtown Copacabana!

The real issue with Ipanema is that it's just not Copacobana. Everyone has their preference of beaches obviously and I guess it's like arguing for a winner between Manly and Bondi (none of the above incidentally). For me Copacobana is THE beach of Rio and whilst Ipanema can happily play wing man for as long as it wants, just like in Top Gun, Ice never really gets the better of Maverick, it just never happens. Hanging out on Ipanema for the afternoon was still a pleasure but the walk back to Copacabana was simply a dumb idea, ranking right up their with other dumb walks I've had with (surprise, surprise, JJ!!), please see Marais to the Eiffel Tower & Barric Gotic to La Sagrada Familia,to get an idea of what I'm referring to.

One of the New7Wonders

I'm a true believer in the saying that you're only as good as your last performance. It's alright to have a legacy, it's great to have a history of success but you can't ever express to the masses that you're the greatest in that moment if your last performance was a loss. Now this is where the Egyptians come into play. Back in 2001 a Swiss corporation named the New7Wonders Foundation started an initiative to nominate and then to name the new 7 wonders of the world. The Egyptians fearing strong competition from the likes of the Opera House and the Statue of Liberty called the project absurd and put in their sternest of complaints.

Cristo Retendor - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

View over Botafogo and out to Sugarloaf - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Rio panorama - yeah, it's kind of 'ok'!

One for the Facebook profile

Now the pyramids of Giza are a marvel and I have the feeling that if the competition was run fairly that these guys would have been included without question, but the foundation took pity on the poor Egyptians and included them as an 'honorary candidate', existing as a wonder but in an 'honorary position' outside of the new 7!? Now the Egyptians just look like a bunch of whingers that had a massive dummie spit.

Check out Jetson's link from the 'Almighty Cristo' - [The Adventures of Jet Frichot - Christ the Redeemer]

This brings me to who actually is in the top 7 [New7Wonders] - check it out at the link if you need to, but I'll clue you in as to who one of the seven is, Cristo Redentor. This modern marvel tops out at nearly 40mtrs and is known to be the fifth largest statue on earth. It also holds pride of place over Rio and without question has the BEST view in town. It's like Jesus himself had a look around, selected a spot and said, 'Yes, it is good'. The statue has become an icon for Rio and for Brasil, and wherever you travel in this town you can see it's outstretched arms welcoming all from far and wide from its golden position atop Corcovado.

On this day we decided to challenge the weather pattens of Rio once again and aimed ourselves for a summit run of Corcovado and a date with Cristo.

Cristo playing a coy little game of hide and seek

Cristo Retendor - Corcovado - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

For the first hour or so of our tour we looked to have somehow obtained a large slice of luck as the sun came out and flirted with the idea of  becoming a splendid day, but as the reality of the queues dawned up on us (they're insanely long and convoluted), so too do did the clouds come rolling in off the Atlantic and for several hours this wonder was shrouded amidst a veil of Brasilian secrecy. There we sat, at the base of the statue not being able to see a thing! Cristo had done a Copperfield for all intents and purposes and Claudia Schiffer was nowhere to be seen.

Gene Simmons with Cristo

Sitting at the base of the statue for an hour or so we decided to 'wait it out'. Not so much of a struggle with a bar being on hand to assist with the decision making...and so as our minds became foggier, the clouds around Cristo cleared. The more we drank the clearer things became. Call it good fortune or 'Cristo tax' but I really enjoyed the way in which that unwordly trade off was made.

Cristo Retendor - Corcovado - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Yeah, 'that dude again!'

Cristo is massive by the way, he really is! What is particularly amazing is his location. You look around at the vista, the slopes of the surrounding mountains and think 'who the hell was it that thought a statue up here would be a TOPS idea!?' - FYI, initially it was a priest by the name of Pedro Maria Boss - You can just guess what his directions were huh, 'yup, put that statue way up there and build it like a BOSS!'

Cristo Retendor - Corcovado - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

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Rio de Janeiro - una mas dia de lluvia y nubes

Rio de Janeiro (Brasil)

27 Dec - 29 Dec 2011

Recovery from our date of arrival was imperative but that first meant that we somehow had to muster the courage and energy to roll out of our 'accomplices in immobility' and face the day, which mystifyingly was one of persistent drizzle and cloud. At this early stage we could not have possibly recognised that this would be the modus for Rio, but oh, how those picture perfect postcards  of Copacabana and Ipanema that I'm sure, residing in the recesses of our mind, lulled us into a false sense of security. We'll get to that later.

The Mexican 'know it all' and egotistical author, (perhaps he's not, but he comes across as conceited to me), Carlos Fuentes noted of Miguel de Cervantes that, '...he leaves open the pages of a book where the reader knows himself to be written', and if that is the case then our remaining hours of this day were going to be pristine white pages filled with absolutely nothing, because we knew very well what was written for us! The requirement of food! This need oddly enough would have us wandering into restaurante Cervantes a little later that evening in search of some evening fuel requirements (see what I did there....yeah...serendipitous huh).

Check out this video from Jetson - [The Adventures of Jet Frichot - Cervantes]

Now restaurante Cervantes is quite the little iconic establishment, well in Copacabana at the very least as it's well known for its late night fare and the fact that it serves 29 different types of sandwiches, all which include the imperious abacaxi (pineapple). Why with the freakin' abacaxi? Still,tt's a rather cool little joint, more like a medium sized kebab house in Sydney where you're able to get sandwiches packed high and wide with pork (mostly) and  in the same breath order the local chopp, all whist standing at the bar and either getting stuck into what will become the mother of all hangovers or recovering from what inevitably was one. As I said earlier, our pages on this day didn't require any stylised writing for our movements were all intuitive and quite simplistic, i.e., get up, walk, search for food and sleep. Sometimes walking in a straight line is quite poetic.

Street Art - on our walk to Sugarloaf - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

28 Dec

If you want to take a journey into the heart of Rio with me right at this point, even if you only have a few minutes, then just play this clip [Rio ....Rio.....Rio] ...ahh, the sound and the smell of rain hitting the pavement, the constant, relentless droplets falling out of a darkened Brazilian sky, it was all still so very new for me at this point. Our days in Rio so early on in the piece were very much filled with optimism and the hopes for glorious sun drenched days with bluebird skies and golden sand between our toes. Cloud filled mornings, in my mind at least, were a mere aberration, a pit stop on the way to lazy days of lying on the beach, caipirinha's in hand and mentally traversing the lines of Joao Gilberto's (Girl from Ipanema).....because no way in the world would I be singing THAT song by THAT Manilow guy! Even if I was laying out on the correct beach.

Still, for those first few mornings the rain presented me with the challenge that I needed. If I didn't have the sun to accompany me on my morning runs then the mocking rain would at least spark the competitive spirit in my being, and so on this morning of persistent precipitation I ripped into he sands of Copacabana with the intention of telling the universe that if it intended on stopping me then it would have to step up its offerings.

Cable Cars to the clouds - Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

As a side note, the inhabitants of Rio sul are fitness carnivores. They devour the beach, the weather and each other in pursuit of peak condition. No matter what is going on they're capable of overcoming the issue in the search for their perfect beach body. It was inspirational in more ways than one and gave me enough fuel to get up and down the beach without showing my infirmity, which of course was the fact that beach running is absolutely 'punishing'!!! A couple of hundred metres on those mounds of unforgiving sand and you're into the beginnings of a private hell that beauty cannot readily remove. The only thing that keeps you going is a sense of personal pride because if nothing else, I wasn't going to be 'quitting' my run in front of anyone! I would have been labelled an outcast I'm sure, or even worse, a gringo!

Back at the Copacabana ranch house, JJ and Jetson were stirring into existence from their recovery slumber. On this day we had initially decided to head into Rio Sul shopping centre in order to assist me in acquiring a new camera (because obviously mine got totalled on our first day away) and then we had it in our head to make it to one of the most iconic landmarks of Rio, Sugarloaf mountain, and in actual fact we did that. Somewhere along the way the sun stuck its head our for a cameo also but upon arriving at Sugarloaf it appeared that everyone else had cottoned on onto something that we wouldn't fully appreciate for a few more days yet. The arrival of the sun at this time of the year is rare and with those opportunities comes the requirement to move at speed. This speed of movement translated into Sugarloaf looking like a Boxing Day sale gone made. With a mass of people, humidity and the briefest appearance of that 'golden orb' we opted for the sane position and moderated our goals for something more achievable. To the bar it was - obviously, but one that had a trick up its sleeve [Bar Urca].

Seafood lunch on Guanabara Bay - Bar Urca - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

JJ @ Bar Urca with that determined guy and the 'weird water craft' that persisently FAILED!

As their site says, this place is a gastronomical tradition in Rio. It's a corner pocket bar situated on the shores of Guanabara Bay and an absolutely picture perfect place to have lunch or dinner. All we needed to do was order (and thankfully my guerrilla Spanish got us across the line), grab a few bottles of beer from the bar and then sit on the shores in our own seafood and alcohol induced splendour. By this time the rain had abated and the clouds looked as though they were being scared off into submission, or were at least on the way to doing so.

The back of Copacobana from Porto Bay - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

The stage being set up for Guetta on New Year's morning - Copacabana - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Porto Bay - Copacabana - Rio de Janeiro

Looking north from Porto Bay, up Copacabana to Leme and 'hints of Sugarloaf' beyond

Those few hours out there were quite spectacular and looking back now I always regret that we didn't find it in ourselves to head back. Still, with lunch over we headed back to Copa for some later afternoon activity with some fris on the beach and then found our way to the rooftop bar at the Porto Bay, something that turned into our 'go to' option on many a day whilst dawdling along Copacabana, and really, some twenty floors up an overlooking one of the most spectacular vistas in the world, how much could you get wrong?

29 Dec

When the driving rain drew us out from our lucid dreams on this morning we were already clued in to what we needed to do. Now I'm not partial to early mornings at anytime, and I know that our resident rock star Mr Frichot isn't either, (leaving the one member of our party who is!), but directed movement at 8am was imperative if we were to beat the masses that wanted to make their way up Sugarloaf.

Check Frichot's video from Sugarloaf here - [The Adventures of Jet Frichot - Sugarloaf Mountain]

Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

The odd thing of the early arrival and any tourist attraction is the absurdly low numbers of people  in attendance (go figure). Whereas the day prior there had literally been thousands of stranded souls in the parking lot, on this day we had calmly walked to virtually the front of the line to the cable cars, calmly waited for the 8:30 opening and we away in the first couple of groups. There's something to be said for planning! I mean it's not going to be a rule that I'll ever want to live by but even I have to concede that there are benefits.

...and whilst at this point I could blabber on about how spellbinding the view from Sugarloaf was, I think I'll just leave it to some of the photos in order to sell you on the reality (enjoy).

Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Pão de Açúcar - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

The view to Copacabana and Ipanema, further afield - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Overlooking Urca and Botafogo

Cristo on a bleak day

You keep reading this blog - 'Ya hear!!'

Rio de Janeiro - Delirium tremens with Taio Cruz

Rio de Janeiro (Brasil)
26 Dec - 27 Dec 2011

Europeans first rolled into Rio on the 1st of January 1502. It just goes to show that even back then this place had the reputation of being the very epicentre of the 'good time and good vibe' world. I often think that as the Portuguese made their way up the Brasilian coastline on that New Years day, courting the inevitable mead related hangover, hushed and whispered tales of wild brotherly love surely would have bubbled to the surface from the subterranean depths of the ship, gaining vibrancy and clarity via a new day on the back of sun drenched decks. The leader of the expedition and captain of the vessel, Gaspar de Lemos, who more than likely would have been caught in several compromsing positions the evening before in what would have been a debaucherous night of revelry, excess and 'fast living', would have stood proud and tall on deck. Dehydrated and searching his ruck sack for Nurofen, his enigmatic pronouncement that they had encountered the mouth of a mighty river and that it should be now known as the River of January I'm sure would have been met with the equivalent Portuguese response of 'What a dumbarse!'. Seriously, that's your best captain? The River of January? What about those mountains we passed yesterday? I guess they're the Mountains of December, or that jungle the previous months, the jungle of November! You sir are an idiot! In all honesty the crew weren't all that far off the mark, the river was actually just a bay (Guanabara Bay), but, Rio de Janeiro just sounds so much cooler doesn't it?
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Our crew of three didn't exactly have the luxury of making our way into Rio via the rolling, karmic waters of the Atlantic. We had intelligently opted for the 7hr ride on terra firma from Sao Paulo. Something I was completely fine with as my desire to take to the skies in South America was going to be limited to Emirates flying me out. There's something about South American air crash statistics that don't quite instill me with absolute confidence, nor do I like the idea of lying out on a glacier somewhere calously calculating which of my friends I'd have to eat first (it would have been you Jet, FYI).
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Arriving at the main bus station in Rio several hours after our scheduled time of arrival we were greeted by our driver Jorge. This was a beaten man. His feeble attempts of conviviality however unravelled smartly like the contrived fantasies of a compulsive liar. His face weathered, eyes sunken, sullen by demeanour, this wasn't the warm samba style, free wheeling, free loving welcome I had anticipated! Of course, I think he had been waiting at a mind numbingly boring bus station without notice for three hours, perhaps all the while anticipating his arrival home hours earlier to a lovely wife who had probably prepared him a hearty dish of feijoada. Well, whatever Jorge, the drive into Copacabana was always going to be the end of out association.

But who cared!! There we were, in Rio de Janeiro man!! This is the place that I had anticipated on being in about a year earlier and perhaps would have been but for some light fingered bandits in La Paz, but ok, that story is old hat and the scenario that I found myself in right at this moment was by far the better option. I had JJ and Jetson with me and this place was going to get taken out, like a boss!

Copacabana Beach - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Copacabana Beach, overcast and with a 'hint' of rain. Unfortunatelty this was to become a familiar sight over the next few days

Home of the Olympics in 2016 - Welcome to Rio!
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I always feel that those few moments when you arrive in a new place are always filled with mystery and intrigue. Your senses are alert to everything going on around you and your mind, well mine at least, always tries to make sense of location and lock in a familiar landmark. This I found was somewhat easy to do in Rio. Sambadrome on the right,  a minute or two later our first sighting of Cristo Redentor (on and oddly clear evening) then Sugarloaf (Pão de Açúcar) as we rounded the bay in Botafogo,through Tunnel Velho and finally spitting us out into Copacabana itself. The apartment that we were going to call home for the next 10 days was located on Avenida Prado Junior, just over one block from the beach. From memory we had arrived just as the sun was dropping out of sight and after what we had been 'assured' were going to be the last of the days of rain that Rio had scheduled (yeah, I'll get back to that one).

Sugarloaf (Pão de Açúcar) - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Copacabana - lesson 1

The Caipirinha - roughly translated to 'country bumpkin'

It's made in the following manner;

Ingredients

1 lime quartered

2 tsp fine sugar

2 oz cachaca (is a distilled spirit from Brazil that is in a class of it's own but it is often associated with rum)

Working it

1.Place the lime wedges and sugar into an old-fashioned glass

2.Muddle well to create a paste

3. Fill the glass with ice cubes

4. Pour in the cachaca

5. Stir well

Now I've been fortunate enough to have acquired some knowledge as to night one proceedings of holidays when travelling with friends, in fact, lets at this point reflect on a few of them for the sake of posterity [Beatles mania in Kuala Lumpur], [Lost Angles - Los Angeles], [KL Streetsmarts in Kuala Lumpur again], and after those classics you can now add to that infamous list, Delirium tremens with Taio Cruz. It was absolutely predestined, it was the rite of passage that needed to be had and the most befitting course of action by which we were to christen night one in Rio. And so it was, that as we exposed ourselves to a relatively balmy evening we took up residence at a small bar overlooking the beach in Copacabana, ordered a first round of caipirinha's and downed the sweet, syrupy, sugary goodness of what a beachside caipirinha is meant to be...but my God, where were the alcohol police when the cachaca was being dosed out so liberally? It reminded me of a few free pouring tequila nights in Mexico City where the simple objective on those evenings was to survive.




The view from Porto Bay - Copacabana Beach - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil



This is the point in time where the infamous carioca haze of feigned lucidity really did a number on my memory because the vagaries of what happened from drink one to waking up the next morning are punctuated only by snippets of residual images that I'm not quite sure are imagined. What I recall was this. We had many drinks on the beach. We ran into a kind fun loving kid whose 'amor' for the world was all encompassing, he really LOVED everyone, EXCEPT Cristo, why that was I couldn't quite decide but to quote him directly, his take on the all dominating protector of Rio was to say this, 'F**k Cristo, F**k him'. Alright bro, I think your friends should probably get you home huh?

Clouded and shrouded - Cristo on a typical day - Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Check out this link from The Adventures of Jet Frichot - Copacabana Beach

I believe after this point we bunkered down at a restaurant for a few hours, ordering the national drink on what appeared to be an endless conveyerbelt of caipirinha service. In between that point and getting home at 4am it was actually Janelle who requested that we entertain ourselves for a few hours at a local strip joint!? What THE? Yup, that request makes as much sense to me now as it did on that night. I'm sure there was a comment thrown around about 'Just getting it out of our systems' , although for me in all honesty strip joints have always been kind of lame. I kind of struggle to remember anything that happened in there in any case other than the fact that it was practically across the road from where our apartment was............(fade out, night one)

.....then the morning comes

I woke up somewhere around 8am. My mouth was a little dry but yeah, I was ok. Janelle and Jet were still asleep but they had arrived safely and we had survived. I did the internal audit quite quickly and miracously felt quite reasonable. That self assessment was the only encouragement that I needed to jump up, get changed and hit Copa for a run! Crazy right!? I mean I think I was so pumped about doing this that in the days that followed we could only reason that it was the endorphin rush that had given me a 'delayed onset hangover', although in actual fact don't think it every truly arrived.

That first run on Copacabana was a true highlight for me. Hitting one of the most famous beaches in the world, the breakings waves of the Atlantic setting my rhythm, Cristo adorning the peak of Corcovado, breaking through the morning clouds ever so majestically, the magnificenc of Sugarloaf to the north of the beach , it was hard to imagine a more perfect setting to get out and get active? And IF you did need to resort to any type of additional inspiration then there was plenty of fodder in the form of fellow runners to provide that a spring in your step and an increased turn of speed.

...and if that run was spectacular then my return to the apartment was a lesson in what it is to be triumphant in continued drunken bliss. Assuming on my arrival that my fellow cohorts were merely tired and not in the throws of a monolithic hangover, I jumped up on the bed of one Janelle Jordan and gave a bullocking rendition of the Taio Cruz classic I got a hangover. It was only at the point that I'd completely devastated the chorus that I realised that young Jordan was in a world of cachaca induced anguish because her lack of appreciation for what I was laying down, and paralleling by jumping on the bed, was exactly mirrored by her lack of movement. Then my brain kicked in... 'Whoa, she really did have a hangover and she has been drinking TOO much for SURE' ..and as for Frichot, well that man had retired to the spirit world hours before and there was nothing that could be done at this stage to bring him back into the realm of the living, or perhaps my universe of stupidity

(...to be continued)

Sao Paulo - Hitting up Sampa

Sydney (Australia) - Sao Paulo (Brazil)
24 DEC - 26 DEC 2011

My few days leading up to departure on Christmas Eve had been some of the most surreal of my relatively short existence. By extension, my time in Brazil was going to be characterised by an emotional transgression that for me had always surpassed the limits of what anyone else would consider normal. 'Watcha going to do?', when it comes to emotions I've got to say, I think I'm far removed from your average bear, but I'm OK with that and I was more than OK with the circumstances that had somehow attached themselves to my internal fabric prior departure.

Christmas Eve was a standard affair in the Elisher household but at an earlier start time to what we were usually accustomed due to our designated Emirates international conduit departing Charles-Kingsford at 9:45pm that evening. Now for anyone that doesn't know, Emirates are based in Dubai, so if you're just now starting to run the logistical app in your mind then don't bother. The Sydney - Dubai - Sao Paulo route IS the LONG way to get to Brazil! I know that, but somehow the price for the long way significantly cheaper than the most direct routes to Rio, by a substantial margin. I thank my research skills for that otherwise this write up could very well have been How we got to St.Petersburg rather then how we ended up finding our way to the River of January. It was going to be a flight option that both Frichot and Jordan would hate me for some 33hrs later when we finally landed in Brasil.

As flight EK413 thundered down highway 1, i.e., the main north-south runway that assists these birds of coordinated aerial mass movement get 'high and wide', the kiddies in the cabin had already commenced their ritualistic wailing. From what I've noted in my recent years of travel this appears to be a time honoured 'altruistic' activity undertaken by the general populous of individuals under 5 years of age whose objective it is to warn all others of the imminent doom that is lurking, or rather just waiting, in a type of suspended animation within the confines of the cabin. Somehow as adults we never quite get around to understanding the fear conveyed in these shrill cries but have always associated them with the pain caused by the pressure adjustments in the inner ear as the plane ascends. From my studies however this is not the case! After listening to these cries, when they commence and the orchestrated symphony, there appear to be complex communications between the bambini that goes something like this;

Wailing kid 1 - 'Whoa, we're traveling really fast! Oh my God, this huge thing is lifting off the ground, I think I'm going to shit myself!!'

Wailing kid 2 - 'Oh man, I think I'm going to shit myself!!!'

Wailing kid 3 - 'Yeah, I know I'm going to shit myself'

Wailing kid 4 - 'I totally shit myself! Man, I shit myself bad, oh I can't believe it!'

Wailing kids 1 & 2 - 'Oh that dude shit himself! We're all going to shit ourselves, we're doomed!'

Frichot or Mr FML when it comes to air travel is just like a mosquito zapper in these situations. Somehow how these little turd busters are always so strategically placed around Frichot that when the chorus commences you just now that the prime position for its appreciation will be in the very seat that Jetson is occupying. Once the head shaking started and once the manic seat rocking intensified I just knew that the next 15hrs to Dubai would have him exiting his right mind somewhere high over the Indian Ocean. I offered my mate a Buddhist like blessing and wished him well in his search for a Zen like state but I knew the realities, I knew the route ahead and I knew that he didn't have any Xanax freely available (not for himself but to hand out to the kids), he was as they say on the slopes of Everest, In the death zone, and nobody can assist you there, not a soul!

I had on the other hand taken what I felt was the more audacious challenge and that was to occupy the seat next to Janelle.......for 15hrs! Now to call JJ a talkaholic would be liking call Charlie Sheen a casual user, we both know that just ain't so. On the other hand I'm more of your counter punching conversationalist, I don't mind listening more than talking but this to me was going to be my own type of moonshot. My masterstroke however, and the key to my defensive arsenal is my ability to sleep on any form of transport. Once there's movement and I'm locked in for a journey them I magically commence my travels through ethereal lands for what ends up being hours, literally hours. I'm uncertain of how I manage this but all I know is that after the supper service had been completed, the lights dimmed and the cabin settled, I was dialed in to what must have been 30+ playings of the Rumours album - I was hostage to my internal air travel zombie.

Dubai International Airport - U.A.E - Frichot in disguise, Speedball is just that big in the U.A.E

 

Just under 15hrs later we were following our glide path into Dubai International. There we were, half the distance to our destination, halfway around the world and in an airport on Christmas morning. You just know that in a situation such as that, with 5hrs between flights and then 15hrs from Dubai to Sao Paulo, the only obligation you have as a traveler is to find a bar and drink. That's realistically the only way that you can rock Christmas Spirit authentically when you're locked away in transit. If there was a Facebook page for 'I Drinking whilst in transit'  then somehow I'd find a way to be giving it two thumbs up!

EK261 - only 14hrs to go - Dubai International Airport - U.A.E

Our ride

I don't remember much of the flight from Dubai down to Sao Paulo, I slept for most of the way, much to the chagrin of my accomplices. Some 14hrs of quite time with Fleetwood Mac and half baked attempts at watching Senna on 'ICE' entertainment, seemed kind of appropriate considering we were going to be landing in his home town.I have it in my mind that I attempted to watch in four times and failed on all occasions. Somehow I had lucid dreams of F1 and grand failure all across the Atlantic, kind of disconcerting when you think back to Air France flight 447 from Rio, and oh yeah, Frichot's premonitions of frolicking in the water after what he imagined to be a plane crash.

'Merry Freakin' Christmas Jeston' - photo 1 of the 'Jet sleeps through Brazil' series - Serhs Executive Hotel - Sao Paulo - Brasil

Somehow we all survived the 35hr torture test to Sao Paulo, some better than others. Arriving late on Christmas day we were dishevelled, mentally broken and in need of a place to lay our hats, because for that night, we were going to be calling the Serhs Executive our home. Oddly we all managed to escape the clutches of the hotel in direct pursuit of a good 'ole fashioned Christmas dinner, but where to find one when you're not exactly in the city centre and in one of the most Catholic countries on earth? Certainly it was going to be a somewhat fruitless attempt in the barren wasteland of the burbs of Christmas central? So you would thing in any case. Magically, in charmed, Christmas miracle type of manner we stumbled just a few blocks into a hotel that had majestically set up a buffet for what they anticipated to be hundreds of people.When your three heroes walked into the scene we automatically doubled the attendance, with the other people present being the wait staff. It was odd and amusing, in a way that a Phonsovan hotel room is cavernous and soulless.

Downtown Guarulhos - Sao Paulo -Brasil

The New York of the southern hemisphere - Sao Paulo -Brasil

Sao Paulo -Brasil

Turning the page on Christmas Eve the next morning we headed down to the main bus station in Sao Paulo and jumped ourselves a ride into Rio. Originally the plan had been to fly internally but a few logistical issues had us on a 4hr meander through the back blocks of Brasil. I was good with that failed opportunity, I don't mind losing three hours for the sake of losing my sanity at take off, although, I almost did lose my sanity with Jetson whose attempt to exchange a few dollars into reals nearly had us waving goodbye to our ride! Man, oh man, that would have been entertainment for the whole family to see.

On our way!

In any case, there we were, riding high and on our way to samba central. Rio and I were going to get acquainted, finally.