Rio

Our friends, Malcolm and Doreen, inspired us to explore Rio with them

Rio revealed many new sights: this is the elaborately presented chapel for naval officers.

... and here is an example of the mosaic pavement patterns that are a characteristic of Rio and Niteroi.

We went up to Santa Teresa on the tram which dates back to 1896! Called the "bonde" as it was financed by the issue of bonds.

Interesting buildings from early 20th century (the yellow cafe in 'Cinelandia')...

... and the late 20th century Petrobras building.

Some streets hark back to the 19th century...

... and here is how they look when you can see one century peeping out through an earlier one.

We all ate together in a favourite restaurant

... and here we are still looking well!

For the past fortnight, our friends from the UK, Malcolm and Doreen, have been staying with us. Malcolm said that he found our balcony the best observation point to see and photograph birds he could imagine - we think he took over 200 photos of the bird life here! They brought tea bags from England as this is a scarce commodity in Brazil!

We spent 3 days in one of our very favourite places, Paraty. We stayed in a beautiful pousada where all the chalets faced out to sea. Although every day was sunny, our first hour's experience saw a downpour with our friend's balacony going under water - so they were moved to another chalet. We all went out onto the water in Toninho's boat where idyllic swimming, pleasant relaxed eating, sunbathing, seeing unusual sealife and visiting strange caves were the highlights. As blogger will not let us download the Paraty photos at the moment, we'll publish them separately later.

VITORIA

The Casa de Pedra

Pat & Maristela

Pat being taken for a ride

Carnival

A week in Vitoria saw us escaping Rio rain and enjoying some sunshine. We managed some trips out of the city to see some places of interest in Espirito Santo. Perhaps the most interesting artist/architect/sculptor lived in own ‘Casa de Pedra’. Inside were a huge variety of his sculpted works, all created from dead wood. The house itself was made of stone, wood, clay, glass bottles and formed around a live tree.

On another day we visited a beautiful area beside an Indian reserve. We swam where the river met the ocean and the whole family drank copious amounts of liquid beneath the shade of coconut trees. Paula’s cousin took Pat for a ride on his motor bike before returned to Vitoria by car.

The next day we travelled to a coastal village where a traditional carnival was taking place. People dress in weird and wonderful costumes, men clothe themselves as women and floats depicting various stories are wheeled through the town. The floats we saw caricatured the corrupt lifestyle thought to be enjoyed by politicians in Brasilia.

Santa Teresa

Sitting on a terrace in Santa Teresa

Italianate houses in Santa Teresa

Pat's brilliant snapshot of the tram as it whizzed past

The local samba band?





Video showing Rio from Santa Teresa

Well! What a week we’ve had! In fact, it’s been 10 days since we last saw the sun. We can honestly testify that Rio rain is wet.

Ducking out of the rain one day, we ventured to the museum designed by Oscar Niemeyer that is shaped like a teacup. Pat celebrated the break in the rain with a photo of Ray in front of the teacup. Inside was an exhibition of Niemeyer’s architectural achievements. He is now 101 years old and has 5 projects on the go around the world. Another man who doesn’t seem to want to retire!

Although it was raining in Niteroi, we took advantage of a break in the rain over in Rio and drove to Santa Teresa – a picturesque, hillside area made notorious when Ronny Biggs decided to live there. It is served by old trams and affords spectacular views over the city (video and other photos above). We found an excellent restaurant and were entertained by a samba band outside.
We are off to Vitoria for a week in search of better weather and arrived yesterday … to sunshine!!
And we are staying in a hotel … so neither of us are doing any housework.

EVERYDAY LIFE

The strange, deserted island

The three photos we could not download at the last posting are now attached.

This posting, however, tries to give an idea of everyday life in the apartment. Because it is very hot , we have divided tasks up equally. Pat does the washing, ironing, floor sweeping, floor washing, cooking, bed- making and general tidying up. I do the washing up (viz, photo). As a result of this totally fair division of labour, I am now healthy and almost free of any chest pain whilst Pat has lost half a stone, In an unprecedented show of revolutionary zeal, Pat now proposes that I take over the floor sweeping! As this might seem too great a change of tasks in one go, I suggested that we put the move to the vote of our blog watchers so that we might gauge the mood of those who know us well (and get me used to the idea!)

Of course what I omitted to mention was that Pat also takes the photos. We had another amazing storm which, as it cleared, left a spectacular sunset with colours like an Odilon Redon painting.

BUZIOS

Life can be hard. Incessant sun beating down mercilessly: the sound of Brazilians rushing to the beach: the smells of fruit and ice cream wafting up to our flat. It was clearly time for us to have a week-end away from all this – so we went to Buzios.

In Buzios the sun beats down mercilessly, there are hundreds of Brazilians rushing to the beach … and the smells of fruit, ice cream and other food pervade the resort.

About 2 hours drive up the coast from Niteroi, Buzios is a peninsula surrounded on three sides by sandy beaches. Some years ago, Argentinians bought much of the property. One particularly handsome specimen started chatting to Pat whilst they were both in the water. Then he left the beach with his young boy friend.

Others visiting the resort include tourists ferried in from large cruise ships anchored offshore. These impressive ships have also impressed the local shops, where prices match those of central London!

So we decided to escape the hubbub of shoppers by hiring Roberto’s small boat.

The waves gave us the sensation of riding a roller coaster, and we all got very wet. What fun! Roberto took us to visit various bays where Ray, Pat and Ben swam, in the warm water. Then he sailed away from the coast for half an hour until we reached a rocky island with birds of prey hovering menacingly overhead. Perhaps more menacingly for us were the shoal of jelly fish surrounding our boat: so we decided not to go into the water at this point.

On the way back we came across a strangely haunting island. (It reminded Ray of Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead). Previously a five star hotel consisting of individual chalets, now the buildings are derelict. However, the owner prevents any trespassers from landing by installing one guard with a rottweiler! Nonetheless we enjoyed the best swim of the day there. Finally we returned to the jetty wending our way between cruise ships, large schooners, water taxis, medium-sized fishing boats and very small rowing boats.

(Here we would have uploaded a photo ... but google failed us and refused to upload photos so we can try to upload them at a later blog)

The food in Buzios was excellent (like everywhere else we’ve been). We visited The Banana Restaurant twice – definitely to be recommended. Ben and Paula discovered a much more expensive Thai restaurant where we treated ourselves to another excellent meal. Afterwards we retired to an unusual bar where nearly all the seats faced the sea.

(Again ... photos later)

Here we relaxed before retiring to our low-cost pousada (bed & breakfast). Now we are back in noisy Niteroi where life can be hard. Incessant sun beating down mercilessly: the sound of Brazilians rushing to the beach: the smells of fruit and ice cream wafting up to our flat … I think we’ll go and buy some ice cream now!

New Year

Ray resting after swimming at Itacoatiara

Itacoatiara Ocean Beach: still recovering on 4th January

Champagne on New Year's Eve before setting off for the fireworks

Ben, Paula and their friend Renata on Icarai beach on New Year's Eve

Strange sitings n the sky!

NEW YEAR’S EVE

The day started (as usual) nice and warm! Whilst I was still in bed, Ray was having his breakfast and suddenly saw the strange writing in the sky Oi Oi which means hello hello. It’s actually advertising a mobile phone company – but looks very good in the sky.

It is traditional in Brazil to great the New Year at midnight by going down to the beach, watching a firework display and, at the stroke of midnight, tossing a white flower into the sea and making a wish. There are 3 spectacular displays around the bay: the famous one at Copacabana where up to 2 million people collect, a superb display at Gloria, and on our side of the bay, a fantastic display at Icarai. The one big advantage of being at Icarai is that you can see all three displays at once! We tried to capture someone of the spectacle in pictures.
In the first week of the new year, we have been recovering from the excitement by occasional visits to various beaches

OUR NEW APARTMENT

Here are a couple of photos from our balcony looking across the bay towards Rio.

On Friday evening (28th December 2007) at 6.0pm Ray and I moved out of Ben and Paula’s apartment to one of our own! Fortunately it’s only down the road from them (but when it’s up in the high thirties it seems far enough to walk). As you can imagine we were both quite excited to be having our own place (again). But nothing changes! Ray is still on his laptop while I do all the cleaning and unpacking as you can see by the first photo (only joking).

We have one bedroom, a large living room/dining room (with double bed settee), shower room and kitchen, and good balcony with a hammock when we have the time to use it. We are on the 3rd floor side apartment but with a view to the front. I took the picture of Ray on his laptop this morning whilst doing the washing and tidying up!


I have not done any cooking here yet, but yesterday we went to Carrefour to get some essentials. Not planning on doing too much either as it so hot. You think when you go shopping you would recognise most things. Bread, milk and coffee are all very simple, but trying to find tinned tomatoes was not. I managed to pick up 3 tins of tomato purée instead. Thank heavens Ben was around and put us right.

We are planning on having a meal with Ben and Paula on New Years Eve, not sure if it’s going to be here or at their place. We bought a magnum of champagne from the duty free so we’ll be holding a glass or two up to all our family and friends. Most of you will be in bed by then (I think) as we are two hours behind here. Then we plan to go to nearby Icarai to watch the firework display. If it’s anything like the one we saw in 2005 it will be worth going to. Hopefully we’ll get some good pictures to put on the blog. Unfortunately we are not on the Internet at our place so need to go to Ben and Paula’s to collect emails and put this onto the blog. As you can see, Ray is still very much in relaxing mode!