We ended up spending a while longer in Rio than we originally planned. We've done that a couple of times on our long trip, usually after a period of some pretty intense traveling. After we'd moved around a whole bunch in India we spent nine days in Thailand's Koh Lanta and in Indonesia we got stuck on Gili Air for twelve days. We hadn't had any regrets about staying in one place for long so after we'd spent about a month and a half road tripping around Australia and New Zealand we thought we should rest for a while. A while meant seven days altogether which we used to recharge our batteries and doing some of the things that had been left on hold, like uploading pictures on Google Drive. Surprisingly Australia and New Zealand had very limited wifi connections for us to use so a lot of other stuff was needing to be done as well. That's not to say we spent the entire time indoors hugging our laptop, we did get to see the city to some extent. Not all of it, but enough to blog about!

We arrived late on a Saturday evening and found our hostel, Habitat Carioca in Gloria, with a little difficulty. There's no sign pointing it out on the street, but it's there none the less. The small hostel is located upstairs of an art gallery and has a couple of dorm rooms as well as four private ones. We'd booked a small private room through Booking.com for three nights, costing us R$280 in total. The room itself wasn't much, just a small windowless booth really, but it did have a comfortable double bed and air-conditioning. Breakfast was included and consisted of freshly baked bread, cheese, ham, spread, coffee and fruits. Fruits were available through the day in the common area, which was nice. There was also a water filter in the bathroom that we used to fill our bottles from so we didn't need to buy it from stores. We actually saved quite a bit on fruit and water staying there. The atmosphere was nice, there was music and singing going on every once in a while, also in the church just next door. I resisted the urge to use the PlayStation 3 to play their Batman: Arkham Origins as well as watching their Netflix, we did want to get out every once in a while. We liked the place a lot and ended up extending our stay to a week. Doing this meant that we had to change rooms twice, but it didn't really matter since we got better rooms for R$100 per night (normally R$120). Our second room was quite big and had a window, a big chair and a fridge, but the bed wasn't as nice. The third room was on the small side again, but it came with a fridge and a thing to hang clothes on. One really does get excited about little things after traveling for so long…

Last thing worth a mention about the Habitat Carioca Hostel was the wifi. We're not familiar with the standards of South America just yet but it worked great. Like I said before, we haven't really been able to upload much on the internet lately since wifi was either nonexistent or expensive in Oz and NZ and extremely slow in Indonesia. Here we got almost up to speed with the pictures, which was great since it means there's that much less to worry about. Those pics are going to make it through the trip even if the camera and the computer don't!

The city

So what did we learn of Rio outside of our hostel? We got there on a Saturday so our first full day was a Sunday, which we used to explore some of the Centro. It was almost eerie quiet, considering how big of a city we're talking about here. We had picked up Rough Guides' The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget from the book exchange at the hostel and following its advice we started our tour from the Praca XV de Novembro, only then realizing that we'd actually passed most of the sights on our walk there. It wasn't really a problem though since as we were contemplating this the bells of Igreja de N. Sra. do Carmo da Antiga Sé (holy cow that was long…) started playing Ave Maria to tell us that noon had arrived. This meant that places were opening up. We went to see the free art gallery at Paco Imperial mainly because it was free, we're not that into galleries and museums. That didn't stop us from continuing with the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, which was also free, but only on Sundays. There we realized that we actually do visit museums quite regularly because the place is made to resemble the Louvre in Paris, showcasing copies of famous antique marble statues actually held there and in the Vatican city. We'd seen all the originals on our other travels. It was weird to realize that…

We continued our busy sightseeing day by walking through Cinelândia and Passeio Publico, home to some busts of famous people and a whole lot of vagrants. I almost missed those in Australia and New Zealand, they had been so plentiful in Asia, the same as the ubiquitous smell of urine. Not wanting to get too much into the local customs we relieved ourselves back at the hostel before continuing on to the main event: the Cristo Redentor statue standing in guard of the city high on the hilltop.

We walked all the way south to Cosme Velho where we took the Trem do Corcovado for the rest of the way. We'd read on our guidebook (published 9/2013) that the ride would cost R$45, including the R$20 entrance to the statue. It had gotten more expensive of course, costing us R$62 per person (no student prices available). There would have been vans driving up the hill, but the day was running out on us so we didn't look into those other than that our guidebook said they would have cost R$20 per person, not including the entrance fee. The train ride was kind of nice, going up a very steep hill in a thing as small as that made me feel like we were beginning a roller coaster ride. I was a little on the edge there, but not because I was fearing a sudden burst of downward facing speed. I had high expectations for the view and the sun was setting rapidly. The train took off at 4.45 p.m. and took about twenty minutes to make it to the top, if not more. This meant that we had to run up the stairs to catch a glimpse of the city basking in the evening sun before it got covered in darkness. Later it was nice to see the city light up again, so in the end it was actually the perfect time to get there. The statue of Christ was just as I'd imagined: about half the size of what you'd expect it to be. These things are never as big as they seem in the pictures… It was great to get to see it up close though, since it's one of those things that everyone knows is there. I liked it a lot, there truly is something very solemn about the statue's expression. And I deeply enjoy knowing that the crown of thorns he wears is actually a lightning rod…

After we spent the first full day in Rio doing all of the above, we could hardly make it out of bed the next day. There's a fifteen hour time difference between New Zealand and Rio, which caught up on us only after two nights there. I at least was pretty exhausted for a couple of days, which contributed a lot to our decision for staying a while longer. We chilled at the hostel a lot but got out every day too, to explore some more. We saw the aqueduct in Lapa, the Samba region of town, and walked to the busy market streets of Saara where Sini bought a few items of clothing. We also took a stroll around Praca da Republica where we encountered a peacock and some rabbit sized rodents that a little googling ("rabbit sized rodent Rio") identified as agoutis. Never heard of those… We also saw the Igreja N. Sra. da Gloria do Outeiro atop a hill close to our hostel. Supposedly the architecture is significant. I liked how they had painted tiles on the walls instead of paintings.

By the way, while getting fed in a big city like Rio de Janeiro isn't really a problem, one can make one of it anyway. The Cariocas, as the native habitants of the city are called, eat well at lunch and somewhat less during the evening. Lately we had been doing the exact opposite, which required some changes in our part. There is no shortage of lanchonetes, where you can devour some salgados (snacks) for about R$2-5 per piece, or you can opt for pre-made dishes with a choice of beef/chicken/fish on top of rice, beans, French fries and farinha, a dried flour sprinkled over everything, for R$10 and up. The latter option is only available during lunch time though, so missing that means that you have to resort to real restaurants which cost a lot more. Or do as we did and go to Subway. We're allowed to do that because we hardly ever do it at home. We didn't end up eating in any of the restaurantes a kilo where you pick up your meal from the buffet table and pay by weight, mainly because we felt like it would have involved too much hassle trying to figure out the ropes. It's hard to find people who speak any English here, which makes things a little difficult some times. We both speak a little Spanish and it has been of great help, but speaking it to people makes me feel a little weird, wondering if they think that I don't realize that they actually speak Portuguese here.

The beaches

Yes, we went to the beaches as well. The closest one to us was Praia do Flamengo, easily accessible through multiple bridges stretching over the highway. We didn't see those the first time we went and hopped over about eight lanes of traffic. Oops. The beach was a nice long stretch of smooth sand from which you could watch airplanes take off and land on the domestic Santos Dumont airport. According to our guidebook the water isn't clean enough for swimming, but that didn't bother too much because according to me it was too cold for it also. We always judge beaches by the trees suitable for hammocking and this one would have been perfect for that. The park next to the beach is full of palm trees growing in perfect intervals for hammocks, but we didn't really think it was appropriate to hang there. Instead we just spread my Ticket to the Moon on the sand. It was nice and quiet there with not too much going on except for the occasional ball games that seem to be an integral part of Rio's beach scene. At first we thought they were playing beach volley, but then we realized that they weren't using their hands at all. The game started by seating the ball on a little lump of sand and kicking it to the other side, where the two opposing players would either kick or head-butt it or bounce it off their chest or shoulders. Further googling tells me that this is called "footvolley". I searched for "beach volley without hands" but Google tried to suggest "beach volley without bikinis" instead. I guess that's what makes it the most popular search engine in the world…

Speaking of bikinis, they're kind of like the Cristo Redentor statue, smaller than you'd expect. Especially the bottom parts, with the bottoms themselves being quite substantial. We walked to Praia de Copacabana once but decided to take the metro for the other trips since it only cost R$3.70 per person one way. The famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema lie right next to each other and it's hard to judge which we liked better. Neither offered any kind of shade and both could be dangerous for swimmers with big waves rushing in, throwing surfers around as they went. We relaxed on the flattened hammock with our books and people-watched. Some more googling for you: according to The Guardian Brazil surpassed the United States in 2013 as the world leader of cosmetic operations with 12.9% of them being performed here. This included 515,776 breasts reshaped, 380,155 faces tweaked, 129,601 tummies tucked, 13,683 vaginas reconstructed, 219 penises enlarged and 63,925 buttocks augmented. As a medical student I have mixed feelings about this. Plastic surgery has its place in the field but there seems to be some overuse here…

By the way, it was Sini who pointed out the girls whose breasts seemed to defy gravity while laying on their backs, not me.

Just saying…