I'm Off

10am bus to Ipitipoca. Wish me luck! (apparently the park has huge wolves which roam at night...)

Oh, and last night I went and partied it up in Lapa. Spent the whole time chatting to beautiful girls about travel and philosophy. Rio rocks!

The Plan

Ok, so this may seem a little crazy, but hell, what do you expect - It's me here!

I've made a nice lil image (and by lil I mean relatively big) of what I'm going to do. It's a bit big to fit on the ol blog though, so why don't you go ahead and open it up in a separate window. Just middle click on the image below. Go on, I'll wait.



Great, now here's the key you can use to cross reference it. Enjoy!

1. Rio. This is me right now. Beautiful city, but it's time to get my ass moving. Hence the plan.
2. My first point of call is a huge national park named Ibitipoca. I'm gonna buy a tent in Rio, and probably camp here for about 5 days or so. Apparently you can do the most amazing day walks from right in the center.
3. Next stop is an old colonial city named Tiradentes. The city itself is supposed to be amazing, but I'm also going here to try and visit a monastery/school named Colegio Do Caraga right up in the mountains. Sometimes they let travellers stay there, so maybe I'll get lucky!
4. I'm going to try to take an old restored train from Tiradentes to Ouro Preto, supposedly the most beautiful of Brazil's old colonial towns.
5. Huuge journey of a couple of days all the way up to Lencois. Apparently there is this great little EcoCommune I might be able to stay with. Plus the park is supposed to be amazing - a rolling vista of towering, sunbeaten rock pillars.
   
6. From there I'm going to do another massive jump over to another of Brazil's vast and stunning national parks. This one is named Ponte Alta do Tocantins, and apparently has some of the best amateur white water rafting in the world!
7. On the 23rd of July I should arrive here. Araguaina. An amazing 5 day trance festival is supposed to be happening on a little island close to here, and I'm going to try and make it! Read all about it here: Festival Fora do Tempo
   
8. No idea how the hell this massive leg is going to happen. Maybe a plane or something. Who knows!
9. Manaus. The city situated right in the heart of the Amazon jungle. I've got some contacts here now, and I'm going to try and do a real trip into the jungle. Maybe 4 or 5 days.
10. An amazing little ecovillage has sprung up in the jungle here, north of Manaus. I'm going to try and stay there for a couple of days. Check them out here: Abra 144
11. A 5 day riverboat trip all the way down the Amazon you say? Yes. Yes I do. Apparently all you get is a hook to hang your hammock from and a space below to stow your stuff!
12. Apparently, near Sao Luis is an amazing vista of rolling dunes named Lençois Maranhenses.
    
13. BEAAAAAACHEEEEESSSSS!
14. Recife is a city with loads of interesting country around it. Itacare is supposed to be one of the best unspoilt beaches, and Caruaru has a market renowned around Brazil.
    
15. At Barra de San Antonio, one of Brazil's huge rivers spills into the sea, creating a stunning beach way off shore - you have to take an hour long boat ride just to get there!
    
16. Morro de Sao Paulo and 18. Arrial d'Ajuda are two of the most famous beaches in Brazil. They're supposed to be a bit touristy, but unmissable!
    
17. Salvador! Hopefully I'll be able to see Alex for a bit!
    
18. Arrial d'Ajuda.
    
19. Phew. Finally I'll make it back to Rio. Hopefully in time for my flight on the 8th of September.
20. If I have time (and money!), I may fly down to Sao Paulo and the amazing waterfalls further south. It's supposed to be a bit of a tourist trap down there though - can you believe that most people don't venture north of Rio?!

And that's that! If anyone has any advice for me, comment on here or give me an email at fbrann@gmail.com. And if you feel like tagging along, get your ass to Rio! I leave in a couple of days!

Oh, and if you're feeling "hell, that ain't that crazy" or some other such wack sentiment, I've made another map with a nice, understandable scale:



That's right: This plan is like eight Englands long!

Results

Woah! What the fuck? Why didn't you guys tell me?! How did everyone do?

Edit 1:

Liam said...

FIRST!

YES! Congratulations dude!!!
cmon cmon, gimme more results!

Edit 2:

Ahem, rather than posting uplifting news of academic achievement, LeEmo was acting like a YouTube regular. Seriously though, post how you did in the comments - I want to know how everyone got on!

Rio

So, a couple of nights ago I was sitting on a grass covered roof, the whole of the city spread below me in all it's glittering glory. In front of me, a beautiful copper skinned Brazilian woman slowly removed her clothes. Rio de Janeiro is an exciting place to be!

The woman in question was one of Rio's foremost performance artists. Michel, Gabby and Miguel had brought me to a tiny exclusive party where she was demonstrating her latest piece. It was a great example of the eclectic time I've been having in this city - from lazing on the beautiful beaches of Ipanema, to exploring the frenetic festival of São Cristovão .

Rio is truly beautiful. In the day, the skies are almost invariably clear, and the sun shines dazzlingly down over the perfect beaches and sparkling sea. At night, the city lights up, and if you're lucky enough to have a good enough view, the lights of the favellas make it look like the stars have fallen from the sky and are clinging to the mountainsides in their multitudes.

The beaches are as amazing as I'd always heard described. The sand is wide and perfect, and the sea is as clear as Kenya - all this less than 30 seconds walk from the hotels of the city! There's always something going on too, from beach football, to surfing, to the regulars topping up their tans (the Brazilian beach girls are, also, everything that I've heard described).

The whole of the city has a crazy juxtaposed beauty. The streets are pretty dirty, for example, but this lack of care has allowed the most amazing culture of graffiti to emerge. It's literally a world apart from the stuff you see around England. I'll post some pictures, but I haven't had a chance to photo any of the best stuff.

The festival of São Cristovão, where I spent the night before last, was amazing. It felt like an eclectic cross between Camden market, a folk music festival and a huge local food fair - all running from 7pm to 11am the next day. It's a big celebration of the local culture from the north-east of Brazil, so cue loads of crazy music, hugely skillful samba and food that was as good as I've come to expect from Rio (this afternoon I ate at a great little place that charged you by the kilo!)

So, other than exploring the depths of this city - on the excellent advice of Michel, Gabbi and Miguel - I've been talking to as many people as I can about how I should spend the next couple of months in the country. I've actually come up with what seems like a pretty epic plan; I'll post about it when I've sorted out the details.

Rio is fun.


Cash machines are feisty in Brazil.


Mr Dog is cool and all, but he's no Mr Lady.

Graffiti












This really isn't even the best stuff. I'd love to get a picture of some of the huge, wall long murals.

Everybody Loses

Not about travel, but I thought this little piece of dogmatic, right-wing, isolationist idiocy deserved highlighting.

A Piece of Mindless Vandalism

Felix's Travel Tips 1

Every now and again when I'm travelling, I'm in a situation where I wish I had known about something before it happened. As the information in the guidebooks seems to be inadequate on this front, I'm gonna start posting a couple of these useful titbits of information on here.

You Might Die Tip:
You may see this around Rio and assume that it is a zebra crossing:


You might therefore assume that cars will stop for you, as per England, if you are standing on it.

Hell, you may even assume that, zebra crossing or no, if you are in the middle of the road, cars will brake and not actually accelerate when they see you.

The Tip: DO NOT ASSUME THESE THINGS.

You Just Got Scammed Tip:
If one of the many shoe shine guys comes up to you on the beach in Rio, you may think: "Of course I don't need my shoes cleaned. I just put them on 5 minutes ago and they were spotless. Hell, these aren't even that kind of shoe!". Check your shoes before you say this however. You may find that there is a large and perfectly round spot of ugly green poop on your right shoe. Some may say a highly suspicious perfectly round glob of poop. Some may even say "OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST THROW POO ON MY SHOE SO I WOULD PAY YOU TO CLEAN IT OFF WHAT THE HELL MAN". The tip: Laugh it off and let the man do an extremely impressive job of cleaning up the horrific mess. It'll only cost you a quid and will be, in hindsight, hilarious.

Touching Down

I'm in Rio!

My plane landed two nights ago. The sun was setting, tinting the country a deep red, and the city of Rio de Janeiro was laid out below me, the buildings hugging the contours of the land like the jungle from which they emerge. As I stepped off the plane, I got that first whiff of a country that you never quite get again. Brazil smells of coffee, with a tint of lime. I disembarked with a spring in my step!

Getting out of the airport proved trickier than expected. I make it a rule to take buses, rather than taxis wherever I can - It's a really good way to pull yourself off the tourist track. Unfortunately, the collected taxi drivers had different plans! Before I managed to make it all the way out of the arrivals terminal, I'd been informed that take the bus and I'd be shot, stabbed and robbed before I could so much as blink! Not as bad as Thailand though - no actual physical violence required to escape em!

I'd booked into a hostel for my first couple of nights, so I'd have somewhere to sleep off the jet lag. The hostel did not smell of coffee beans and lime. The hostel smelt of beer and diarrhoea. This is probably a hint I should have taken, but I was really tired.

I grabbed a plate off of the barbecue the hostel had going and plonked myself down next to some friendly looking people. They were as friendly as they looked and I managed to slip right into the conversation. Only thing was, the entire focus of the conversation (and most other conversations at that place) was how and where to fuck local women. As I sat down, the big guy to my right was explaining that the women on Copacabana beach were 'crap' because they spoke English and were therefore 'too educated' to convince to come back for a casual shag. Already I was not enjoying the vibe, and I wasn't even aware of the insidious little pests the barbecue food was carrying into my system, ready to give me the worst runs since Laos, land of the screaming shits.

Long story short, the hostel was a crappy tourist trap of the worst sort. The only people staying there were English and Americans who had no interest in meeting or interacting with anyone who wasn't English or American (well, almost no interest). It quickly started to bum me out - I was thinking that I'd made a huge mistake in coming to Brazil if this was what the local traveller crowd was like. Fortunately, I had a backup plan! My mum had, by chance, met a young Brazilian couple who lived in Rio while working at her Alexander college. The next morning I jumped on the internet and fired Michel off an email.

I spent the rest of that day on a tour of one of the shanty towns (favellas) that surround Rio, hanging precariously off the mountain sides. The tour was to promote local awareness of the favellas and dispel the local belief that they were the source of all the worlds ills. (When asked what to do about them, most residents of central Rio wanted them, and all the people living in them, bombed to the ground!) It was an excellent experience - we raced up the mountain at breakneck speed on the back of suicidal motorbikes, then made our slow way down again via all the back streets. Rio is a city of striking inequality. You can walk through the favella, surrounded by crumbling buildings made of whatever materials came to hand, and built precariously up, sometimes as much as five stories, because out just wasn't an option any more. But walk for mere seconds out of the bottom of the shanty town and you'll be surrounded by sleek skyscrapers, oozing wealth.

The favella are actually nothing like as dangerous as people believe. The majority are controlled by various drug dealing gangs who make all their money off of tourists and affluent locals. It is, therefore, in their best interests to ensure that nothing scares this skittish demographic off, and so order is strictly enforced. In fact, the gangs do a much better job than the police manage in central Rio. The only real danger comes from the regular police raids, which invariably end in deadly shoot offs.

Michel emailed back. I was welcome to crash at his. The next morning, I packed my bag, grabbed my deposit and got the hell out of there.

I love this house! It's so full of art that it's overflowing! Even the kitchen has a cave painting on the far wall and is lit by gently strobing christmas lights. Everything has been turned into a little work - old paint tubes have been cut in half and turned into flowers to line the shelves. Michel lives here with his wife Gabriella, friend Miguel and an army of cats. They're all artists of various sorts. The huge, crumbling, messy house is tucked away in Copacabana and is almost buried in the most amazingly dense tropical front garden (the prim and proper neighbours most definitely do not approve).

All three of them are these fantastically warm and friendly people. Michel took me around Rio on errands with him today and I saw a completely different side to the city. When I saw the statue of Christ the Redeemer, driving with Miguel to pick up Gabriella at the beautiful art collage she attends, he no longer seemed like the cheesy tourist trap the hostel had been advertising as "CHRIST STATUE TRIP" and I started looking forward to making my way up to see him myself.

My mood has totally changed. Instead of crushing disappointment, I'm feeling really relaxed, excited and at home here. I'm looking forward to exploring the city properly (Rio is truly beautiful), and meeting all the people these guys have decided I need to meet!

It's good to be back on the road.


Me, obscuring the best view in Rio!


The residents were really freindly towards the small group
of gringos trapsing past their homes. This dingy alley was
actually one of the main streets!


The favella we explored was actually the same one Ed
Norton starts off in at the beginning of the new Hulk
movie. They filmed in only the cleanest and most open
streets though.


I quite liked this night shot of the iconic Christ the
Redeemer statue. I may head up to see it tomorrow.

Commentry

I have had some of the more *ahem* 'senior' members of my family try out the comment system on here, and it still seems to confound a bit, so I thought I'd post a quick tutorial on commenting in 10 easy steps.

1. Peruse my words of wit and wisdom.

2. Form an opinion.

3. Decide that, as with everyone else on the Internet, your opinion is uniquely fascinating and must be shared with the world!

4. Click on the comments link at the bottom of the post you would like to comment on. (It's just at the bottom, next to the time. It's in a funny blue colour and says something like "2 comments so far. Click here to comment.").

5. This link should take you to the comments page. You can read the other comments on the left.

6. Write your comment (without your moniker) in the big box on the right.

7. Read the warped coloured letters and type them into the box below. This provides infallible proof that you are not, in fact, an unfeeling machine. The computer tests this by measuring your irritation every time you are asked to perform this mindless task.

8. Click the circle next to "Name/URL" (Make sure that's the one highlighted, NOT "Google/Blogger" or "Open ID", unless you like that sort of thing.)

9. Type your name into the box that appears.

10. Click "Publish Your Comment"