July has been "Musica no Museu" month in Rio with the emphasis on old music and we went to 3 music events in interesting venues; Museu de Arte Moderna (Indian), Justica Federal (Harpsicord and Recorder) and Museu Internacional de Arte Naif (Madrigals). The second concert was the most pleasing in an interesting old Court of Session room. The third one was in a gallery surounded by naive paintings that are so Brazilian. At the weekend P was inspired to take up a paintbrush and paint two canvases to put on the wall here- one green and the other yellow! The second one was called Bradley in honour of the Tour de France winner - the first will be called forest scene!
Continuing with the sporting theme, we are having a different Olympic experience from the rest of you. It's strange that we're in Rio for this one and will (probably!) be back in the UK when it's Rio's turn to host. I watched the opening ceremony from a hotel room in Macae as Patrick had meetings up there and we decided to make a weekend of it.
Macae is to Rio what Aberdeen is to Edinburgh. A similar distance away up an east coast and the operations centre of the Brazilian oil industry. You'll see from the photos that, unsurprisingly, Macae wins out in terms of its climate and hence its beaches are perhaps more populated ( but thet say the water is almost as cold due to the upwelling from close deep Atlantic waters).
We were driven up by Carlos (BG's most trusty driver) and once we'd got past the endless road-side stalls the countryside was very pleasant and rural and green. We were clearly still in the Mata Atlantica eco-system and adverts for Ecoparks advertised golden headed monkeys but we did stop (this time).
Apart from its glorious long beaches, Macae doesn't have an enormous amount going for it as a tourist destination but it felt much emptier, cleaner and fresher than Rio with far fewer high-rise buildings though it's expanding rapidly.
Patrick had meetings at Petrobras and the University at Macae (UENF) and we met up with people he knew in the evening. One of them, Professor Abel kindly offered to drive us to Buzios on saturday as his family were happy to have a day out there. This meant we had two less bus journies to make so we accepted gratefully. It was an interesting drive down there through almost continual sprawling towns with lots of holiday accommodation - pretty much empty at this time of year.
Buzios (translates as "Pearls") is an old fishing settlement that was 'discovered' by Brigit Bardot in the 60's and is now seen as Brazil's Saint Tropez. It's situated on a jutting peninsula with 17 beaches and has plenty of restaurants, bars, boutique-type shops, a cobbled main street & lots of up-market (by Brazilian standards) pousadas.
Ours was owned and run by a French woman who'd been there since the 80's (when apparently Buzios was much "nicer" - presumably less crowded!) and was a good choice apart from the midge in the room and the music (Sant Anna) festival going on further along the beach. It was a very pleasant place to mooch around but it did make us wonder what on earth it must be like in the high season as it was pretty busy on the 'winter' weekend we were there. Some of the beaches were very small and at high tide were very crowded.
You can get a sense of what it looked like from the photos we've uploaded onto the July album.
We caught a long distance bus back to Rio which was a hop & a skip of a journey compared with our last one to Brasilia. This was followed by the usual hair-raising journey from the bus station to our flat. I am mystified why long distance buses are driven so sensibly and Rio buses so nightmareishly!