Jesus is Watching

Hello everybody, I am glad to say that the Rio Carnival is over and I am alive and well with only a little bit of self-inflicted liver punishment to show for it.

I am currently sitting in an internet cafe in Montevideo (Uruguay) following a 10 day stretch in Rio where I partied in the favellas (see previous blog), partied on the street at Carnival Bloccos, partied at the Sambodrome whilst watching all the parading samba schools and partied in numerous Rio nightclubs and Carioca bars. There seems to be a bit of a running theme here...

In fairness I also took trips up Sugarloaf, spent time on Copacabana beach and visited Jesus.

Apparently Jesus was some Jewish carpenter who could do magic tricks. Don´t ask me why the people of Rio decided to build a big statue of him atop a mountain, but to each their own, I would have built a statue of Churchill... or Gazza.

No but jokes aside, the power of this statue does not really translate into pictures. Firstly it is huge and looms over Rio, often and rather apropriately amongst the clouds high up in the mountains and on a clear day can be seen from almost anywhere in Rio. Secondly and something that you do not realise until you go up there, it is in the most awkward spot to get to in the world and would have been ridiculously difficult to build.

Rio was great, but I am glad to be in Urugauy now. Firstly Brazil is expensive, Rio is expensive for Brazil and Rio in the Carnival is just ridiculous. Put it this way, the Rio Carninal is not for budget travellers. Drinks are not that cheap and public transport is expensive. Taxi drivers know that the only way you can get home is if you use them and thus know they can charge through the roof. Even buses in the day are not cheap when you use a few, which will inevitably happen as you cannot walk anywhere as a foreigner.

Put it this way, in Rio it is fairly safe to walk around specific suburbs, however due to the mountainous setting all the suburbs a linked by tunnels. If you walk through the tunnels you get mugged, not might, you will get mugged (this happened to numerous people in my hostel).

Also everyone clicks onto the fact that tourists need to do certain things around Carnival and thus up the price. For example I was intending to catch a bus to Montevideo from Rio as opposed to flying. This would have taken 48 hours instead of 3, but would have been 5 times cheaper (buses are expensive in Brazil). However because the buses put up there prices and the airlines didn´t it worked out as only $40 cheaper to take the bus and once added costs such as Brazilian accomodation and food had been incorporated it would have been about the same.

Oh well, it had to be done and it was great. 10 days was a bit to long in Rio, a week would have been enough, but it was great. Anyway I´ve gone on far too long, so i´ll speak to you all soon. I´m off to go surfing in Uruguay.

Phil