Rio de Janeiro´s Crazy Carnival Week!

From the start of this trip, we knew that Rio de Janeiro during Carnival was going to be the craziest experience for us in a city, and it did not disappoint. When researching Rio, many sources site the crime and how dangerous it is, and, after having our wallets swiped a couple weeks ago, we were very anxious about this. We arrived to a packed bus station in what we would say a sketchy neighborhood, at the very best. We were on hyper-alert until we reached our hotel and got in contact with some other English speakers (only Portuguese is usually spoken in Brazil). We then heard stories of people in the hostel getting held up at gunpoint and one group that was robbed 3 times in 1 night! Luckily, we were exhausted, otherwise, it may have kept us up that night.

The view from Christ the Redeemer.

Our first day was spent catching up on sleep from the rough 24 hour bus ride from Iguazu. The next day, we took the cable-car up the nearby mountain of Sugarloaf, which offer views of the city from around 1100 feet. Once we got to the top, I decided this was already more beautiful than Cape Town, which is saying a lot. The coastline is littered with pristine beach after beach and small islands, making it look like a picture-perfect paradise. This was one of the two places we visited in Rio that we decided to take our good camera with us (the other being Christ the Redeemer).

It's hard to beat a view like this!

That night, we ventured out to a street party in Lapa with several other people from our hostel. We danced down the street in the parade, saw a pickpocket get, literally, kicked in the ass right in front of us, and made it back to the hostel by around 4 am.....We were the first 2 people back in our 12-person dorm.

Rio has about half a dozen beaches within a long walk from where we stayed and spending the day there is any amazing way to beat the heat. We spent several hours at Ipanema and Copacobana and I was even able to coax Erin into swimming with me. The water was a bit cold, but both beaches were absolutely packed. The entire 3 mile length of Copacobana is visible at any point because of its arch shape, and it was umbrellas and people as far as we could see.

Another cool thing in Rio is the Escadaria Selaron. This is an amazing tile staircase made of thousands of different tiles from 60 countries all over the world. It was started around 1990 by a Chilean artist, Jorge Selaron, and he has been maintaining them ever since. It was another hot day in Rio so it took everything we had just to climb the 250 steps. I have laid some tile in my day, and it is difficult work, but this is on an entirely different level!

Erin hanging out on the Escalderia Selaron

The main attraction of Carnival is the Samba school parades at the Sambadrome (a massive structure built solely for this event). We had tickets for the last night, the finale. The parades started at 9 and lasted until 6 am. We were able to last until around 4 after seeing about 4 of the 6 schools. It is an experience best captured in videos and pictures. Weirdly enough, our favorite school ended up coming in 8th out of the 12 schools from Sunday and Monday nights. If there is one thing we would recommend to do when going to Rio Carnival, it's going to the Sambadrome for the parades. You can even dance in them and keep the costumes, for a pretty penny, of course.

This is part of our favorite parade, The Mangueira Samba School!

Going strong!

My favorite float of the night...a badass dragon!

 

Here is a video from the Sambadrome. (Hopefully it plays correctly...)

The last, but certainly not least, thing to see was Christ the Redeemer. We took the tram up the mountain at insanely steep grades. It was the hottest day we spent there in Rio (100+) so we didn't want to do too much hiking. Being on top of that mountain is amazing. It has given us the best scenic views and on par with the best from our trip to Yosemite last year, except this gave you the ocean, beaches, and the city. Christ the Redeemer can seem small from the city since it's so far away, but up close, it makes for perfect pictures. That's if you can manage to squeeze one in between the hundreds of people fighting to do the same thing. I think we got some good pictures, though.

It's WAY bigger up close...

It is completely packed up there so we were only able to get one or two good pictures of us with Christo in the background.

This seems like a reoccurring theme, but we were again ready to leave this city. We are looking forward to cooler weather and getting out of the city for awhile. Our next stop is the Torres del Paine National Park in the Patagonia in Chile where temps will be near freezing. It'll be quite the change from Rio where we only had A/C at night. We were happy we did Carnival in Rio. We made it out with all our gear, money, and limbs, but it's hard for us to imagine doing it again.

(Written February 16th)

Poor Niagara!

"Poor Niagara!" is what Eleanor Roosevelt supposedly said when she first caught a glimpse of Iguazu Falls. Sitting on the border of Argentina and Brazil, it is located where the Iguazu River flows over the Parana Plateau. It is on the same caliber as both Niagara Falls and Victoria Falls (which we just saw a few months ago in Zambia). Although Iguazu Falls is a third taller than Niagara Falls, Niagara has a greater flow of water in the course of a year. Victoria Falls on the other hand has the single greatest sheet of water falling at one time out of all of them.

Since we were coming from Buenos Aires, we visited the Argentine side of the falls first. We had to spend a few days in Puerto Iguazu (the nearest town) anyways to apply for Brazilian visas. The bus ride into the falls is only a short 20 minutes away. We couldn't believe the masses of people that were headed in the same direction, but once we were there we could understand why.

Walking along the lower circuit, Argentine side.

The Argentine side of the falls has two main circuits, and we started with the lower circuit first. The highlight of lower circuit was the boat ride to the small San Martin Island, which is right up against one of the major falls. We hiked up a short way to the main lookout and were instantly misted with water. We had a perfect view of the a rainbow against the backdrop of the water. From below, we could see all the different levels of the falls. This differs from Victoria Falls, which create almost a straight line of water falling from the same height all the way across.

The rainbow from San Martin Island.

Getting drenched at Garganta del Diablo.

The upper circuit was just as exciting, as many catwalks took us over the top of many of the falls right into the heart of the falls, called Garganta del Diablo in Spanish. In English, it means "Devil´s Throat." Here, water is spilling over the falls in three different directions all in one place. Again, as soon as we reached the end of the catwalk, we were getting soaked from head to toe. Somehow, Sam still managed to shoot a few pictures.

We saw a rainbow on the Brazilian side too!

More of the fall!

After a full day of walking in the hot sun, we were exhausted. Luckily, we secured our Brazilian visas without a hitch and were planning to across the border the next day. We still hadn't decided on whether to visit the Brazilian side of falls. We felt like we didn't know if the experience could get any better, but everywhere we read told us we needed to go for it.

The Brazilian Garganta do Diabo from afar.

And we were so glad we saw Brazil's version of Iguazu the next day. On their side, there is one main walkway that extends the length of the falls. We saw them up close on the Argentine side, but Brazil gives you the panoramic shots from further away. You can't really appreciate just how great the falls are until you've seen it. The walkway on the Brazil side also ended at the Garganta do Diabo (Portuguese), so we still didn't walk away dry.

Up close and getting misted.

After seeing the natural beauty of the falls, we were gearing up to head back to the city. Rio Carnival is coming up next! We went directly to the bus station to wait for our overnight ride to Rio. Somehow, both of us missed the fact that Brazil is actually an hour ahead of Argentina. So even though we only drove 20 minutes across the border, the time had changed on us. We were sitting at the bus station when our bus left without us that evening. Luckily, they put us on another bus the next day without an extra charge, but it still meant we needed to find a place to stay that night. I don´t think we´ve stayed in a real hotel the entire trip so far, but we splurged that night on one nearby. We didn´t take for granted the whole room to ourselves with two double beds and our own (very nice and clean) bathroom. Sam took advantage of the pool before it became dark outside. And we feasted on the best breakfast of the whole trip so far the next morning before finally boarding the bus to Rio!

One small section of our buffet breakfast before heading to Rio de Janeiro!

(Written February 9th)