Florianopolis, the brazilian paradise

Florianopolis, aka “Floripa”, is often mentionned as the best place to live in Brasil… why ? Because you can find there all what you can expect in holidays… if you put the price :)

There are two places to stay at… the city itself & the island Santa Catarina, located 45’ by bus from the city center (and other amazing sites a bit farther but we didn’t have the chance to go… however, it may be important to highlight that the second largest Ocktober Fest in the world is happening some kilometers more north, in the city of Blumenau :)).

- So, Dowtown, you can find markets, pedestrian streets, shops, cinemas, international restaurants, luxury shops… a lovely little city (of still 1’000’000 inhabitants) with high western standards (bring your credit card). But Floripa is especially known for its gigantic nightclubs (some parties at 10’000 people!) for an unreasonable price (25 EUR entrance for guys, hardly cheaper for girls). Girls there have a European style, with whiter skin as you get more to southern brazil, and Argentina. There are also known to be the most good looking of the country… this is a matter of taste but if Brazilians from all the country are coming here, there is a reason… sun, hot girls, crazy parties, this is Floripa!

- A bit farther away, you can reach the ilha Santa Catarina, and its 56 paradisiac beaches. Here, the atmosphere is very different, chilling. We got our hostel in Barra de Lagoa, a beautiful village of surfers… and here we are: the area is a world-famous surfing spot. The world championship of body board are always ending in Praia Mole, hundreds meters away from our Hostel. Therefore we definitely had to learn how to surf and we focused two days on this :)

When learning about surfing, the first thing you need to know is not to take the smallest board… even if it looks easier to ‘handle’, you will never make anything out of it :p As we weren’t progressing at all, we took a training to learn the basics, on a long board… and we could stand up! (a pity that we don’t have pictures… being both in the water ^^). The thing is that beginners are surfing during several months with a very large board before being able to use the standard surf board without frustration… but now, we are ready to go on… New Zealand, Australia… watch for us! :)

Iguaçu, Iguazu, Iguassu

The Portuguese, the Spanish and the English spelling. Nevertheless, they all refer to the same place: the waterfalls on the border of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, one of the new natural wonder candidates of the World. If you have seen Niagara, you have seen nothing! The falls are massive and it takes two days to see both the Argentine and the Brazilian side.

We started on the Brazilian side. The falls can be visited in a few hours, and you will only get wet at one place. Next day in the morning we crossed to the Argentine side. The city itself is smaller and poorer than the Brazilian side: the old cars and the poor conditions even reminded us to that of Peru. The waterfalls themselves are more spectacular from the Argentine side: you can spend a whole day wandering around, making photos, taking a speedboat trip to feel the power of the waters right in your face.

Let the images talk for themselves.

Salvador and Morro de Sao Paulo

So we arrived to Salvador at midnight, collected Aline, the lost German girl at the airport and got a place to sleep at the house of Julius, an emblematic figure of the local couchsurfing community.
The very next day we headed early to visit a nearby island called Morro de Sao Paulo. There are two ways to get there: the long and cheap, and the short. We decided to take the long way and to return on the short one. The long way takes up to 9 hours: bus, ferry, another bus, another ferry. Nevertheless finally we arrived, and took refuge in a nice hostel. The beach was nice and the waters were warm and clean. The locals offered a variety of fruit juices mixed with cachaca during the night.

We spent a great evening here with Aline and some Italian friends, and next day we were ready to return on the rapid boat. The rapid service takes only 2-3 hours, and we have been warned that it is not for the faint-hearted. When you embark on a boat that has a little plastic bag attached to all seats, you should start to be suspicious. We managed quite well, but during the trip three people were vomiting around me, sometimes solitary, sometimes in chorus. To ease their pain there was an endless samba performance displayed on TV.

Arriving back to Salvador, we headed for the great fiesta of Tuesday nights: after church, a huge number of people gather in the city center to listen to live music and enjoy a couple of drinks. It tells everything, that the police officers walk around here with bulletproof vests and a loaded gun in one hand. It was here where Paul was pocket searched by a local guy and later found out that some bills were missing from another pocket.

Next day we visited the elevator, the golden church, which of course has a saint of Santa Isabela da Hungria:), and Barra beach. According to the legend Salvador has 365 churches, and apart from the classic ones, there are plenty of modern churches. Some of them are huge and highlighted during the night like a casino in Vegas. Apparently in Brazil churches have such tax advantages, that even cats and dogs are opening churches and creating imaginative religions:)

In the evening had a few Skols, the local specialty, acarajé, and met some great people on the local couchsurfing meeting.

Rio: the marvelous city

So we took a bus from Sao Paulo to arrive to Rio de Janeiro. The comfort of the bus was incomparable to what we experienced in other countries of South America. The 8 hours trip passed quite easily, even though the last hour we spent trying to get inside the bus terminal. There was a queue of buses only, several blocks long. As we waited in the traffic, we noticed: not a single horn was sounded. Quite a different experience after Peru:)

We had our hostel in Botafogo, and in the next days we discovered Ipanema, Copacabana, Pao de Acucar, Cristo Redentor – names of places that are always associated with Rio and fascinate the mind of probably all of us.

As we also had a number of rainy days, we spent some time in museums and also visited Petropolis, a city in the mountains, wrapped in clouds near Rio. It was there where we spotted a Hungarian confiteria, and just minutes later, two elderly ladies chatting in Hungarian on the same bus that we took. Back in Rio we also stumbled upon a selection of Hungarian writers published in Portuguese and a t-shirt commemorating Puskas.

We also visited Maracana, the once greatest stadium of the World is now under reconstruction, waiting for great matches to be played during the next World cup.

Since we had bad weather, our beach experience was not so great. Copacabana had strong currents and not so many people. We saw some shamelessly small bikinis, but the women behind them were not as perfect as expected:) Nevertheless a freshly opened coconut is still a pleasant experience at any beach.

Probably the most memorable event was a Friday night in Lapa, the local going-out district. It is a bit like Bairro Alto on steroids: huge streets are closed down, people chatting, eating and drinking outside, occasionally entering some clubs to dance, or just simply dance under the open sky. The district serves all vices: you can get cheap beer, even cheaper caipirinhas, drugs at will, female or male prostitutes and only God knows what else. Careful with the alcohol consumed though: many boys look like girls, and many girls look like boys, sometimes its damn hard to spot the difference:)
We have also witnessed a spectacular act of vomiting (similar skills we have only seen in Finland:)): a guy was holding a girl by her pony-tail, while another guy was pushing his fingers down her throat to get rid of the excess capirinhas consumed.

Despite the bad reputation of Rio, we had never experienced a single moment of insecurity. As people normally don’t stop at red lights during the night, we witnessed one car crash (yeah the horn was not enough this time), but probably that was all. Just after we left a kind of civil war broke out though: police fighting with gangs who set cars and buses on fire. This we only saw in TV from the relaxed atmosphere of Florianopolis.

 

Sports: Corinthians vs Cruzeiro

So we happened to get some tickets (thanks Veri!) to this match in Sao Paulo. Both teams were in the top 3 of the championship, so the tension was expected to be high:) Another special feature of the match, that Ronaldo (the fatty one) is playing in Corinthians, but planning to retire next year. Great opportunity then to see him on one of his last matches. As we found out, in the team of Corinthians, there is another legend, someone I like way more than Ronaldo: Roberto Carlos!

So we arrived all enthusiastic to the stadium, which turned out to be not the stadium of Corinthians, but some replacement one, as most stadiums in Brazil are closed down for reconstruction for the upcoming world cup. There were around 35 000 supporters, and painfully enough only a dozen toilets:)

The match started in pouring rain, huge flags and banderas were covering all sides of the stadium to greet the local favorites: Corinthians. We quickly learnt the local cheering also, which is not really complicated: “Timao, timao”, and slight variations;)
Cruzeiro was way better throughout the match, and the celebrated star, Ronaldo was catastrophic. Not that we expected much more, but every time he got the ball, the ball was bouncing away, or he was pushed to the ground by a defender. A performance that even semi professional Hungarian players can easily reproduce. Roberto Carlos was also just a shadow of his past: inaccurate passes, less running, lacking any enthusiasm. All together it was comical to see them but also an honor, since they were such great players some years ago.

The match was 0-0 until the last 10 minutes, when Ronaldo produced one of his theatrical falls inside the penalty zone and the referee awarded a penalty kick. Bothered by no one, he managed to score and thus winning the game for Corinthians. Just by this he became the man of the match, ironically.

During the match the big display showed a number of interesting statistical data, we try to remember some of them:

• number of visitors: cca 35k
• number of military/police visitors: 1k
• priests of different churches: 13
• students: 1k
• number of people wearing no.9 Ronaldo shirts: 40k
• distance covered by Ronaldo: 12m
• Hungarian visitors: 1

Sao Paulo

I thought airplanes almost landing on the rooftops only happens in Lisbon. Until we landed in Sao Paulo. The city is huge, just to get from the airport to the city center can take 1.5 hours or more.

During our short stay we tried the sweet pizzas, visited the local market, been to a samba school, attended a free concert of Norah Jones, seen a football match, been on a theatrical concert, seen cracolandia and the museum of Portuguese language.

The samba school of VaiVai was great: they literally closed down an entire street, where dozens of girls were shaking their butt to the rhythms provided by the guys. They were practicing for the upcoming carnival. We made a couple of photos with them, most of them looked better from the distance, the blondie next to me had the worst smelling breath ever, so we quickly ended the conversation.

Later on we went to some samba dance club, with good friends, lot of Xiboquinha (local drink with cachaca, only consumed by the friends of Simone) and plenty of butt shaking:)

Cracolandia is the saddest and ugliest part of the city. It lays just one block from a big train station and the museum of Portuguese language. Dozens of homeless and drugged people hang around here all day long, doing nothing, waiting for occasional free food from some charity organizations. For obvious reasons we have no photo of this area, here is one from pessoaldofaroeste.blogspot.com.

Just for the city, Sao Paulo is definitely not a place you must visit. The people we met there were great though and huge thanks to Verica, Simone and Tercilio who not only hosted us, but also showed us the real Sao Paulo. Obrigado queridas!:)