Here it is, the first of, I hope, many blog posts over the course of the next ten months. We´ll be rattling through places faster than you´d expect, but we´ll be sure to keep this thing updated.
First up was a quick one-night stop over in Porto, Portugal. It seems relatively left out of typical city break circles but unjustifiably. It´s a beautiful riverside city with plenty to see, eat & drink. One of the biggest wins is price. We could sip 2 euro demi-beers on the riverfront, and a bottle of wine at a restaurant in a primely located square was just 5 euros. There aren´t many Western European cities you can get prices like that now, so we´d highly recommend scoping it out.
One of the local cuisinal favourites is called Francesinha; one of the strangest yet most brilliant meals I´ve tasted. Essentially it´s a sandwich of different local meats (steak, Portuguese sausage) with cheese on top, tomato poured over, then baked. It´d be such a good hangover meal, so next time you´re craving a toastie when troughing, spruce up the interior, add additional cheese and tomato sauce on top, and remedy that cotton mouth with this warming wonder.
Next stop, Rio, the aperitif to our vast tasting menu...
We stayed in a nice little hostel in Ipanema in a 6 bed dorm. Dormitory life was quite quickly realised through a crescendo of snorers, farters, and guitarists (the latter being particularly rank; Wonderwall was played (terribly) at least 7 times outside our window).
But, we´ve quickly readjusted our tolerances and accepted that the pros of meeting new people and access to trips in hostels, far outweigh their cons. We also know we´ll be able to get some private rooms at points across our trip too, so we´ll perhaps call time-outs every week or two.
Our time in Rio was otherwise filled with surprisingly good food and of course, the obligatory Christ the Redeemer trip. We´ve decided to make a conscious effort not to go and do trips that simply serve as photo ´ticks´, but having done this trip before myself, I know how worthwhile the view is from under that toga.
1. Putting your hand up and waving to get waiters attention is totally kosher (why is it not in England? It makes total sense).
2. Women, regardless of size, have high self-confidence in comparison to the UK. They´ll comfortably strut around pretty publicly with their thong-parted bums and bellies out. Fair play.
After four days in Rio, it was time to flee the city for island life, Ilha Grande...
I´d stayed on Ilha Grande before and knew a prime spot right on the water, which also turned out to host a pretty good party too.
Most of our 4 days on the island were spent killing mornings until we could start drinking Caiprivodkas again. Caiprivodkas are straight passion fruit juice (grown locally) mixed with vodka, and are a total mouth party.
The majority of conversation with Stu & Tahn centred around taking the piss out of one another, though moreso of them, and some of the amazing slang they come out with. The most notable being the ´plugger blowout´.
Plugger blowout (adjective)
Pronunication - plagger blow-aat)
1. When the plugs of your pluggies (thongs/flip flops) rip out and your foot is released, leaving the bearer flip-flopless and often, floored.
Jokes aside, we spent all of our time on the island with these guys and they were so much fun and completely on the same wave length. We hope to one day see them again in Oz.
Aswell as our new Aussie pals we´d also recuited three Frenchies; two from Tunisia & one from Morocco. The trio spoke great English but also gave us a chance to try out some fairly rusty French, though in reality this has only distracted us from the more important Spanish we should be learning and practising.
With a full gang in tow, on night three, we hit the Caiprinhas.
In summary of the night:
- Alice quickly found herself in a seriously high standard dance off with roughly 20 Argentines.
- Imed (one of the Tunisians) had hit 3rd base with a 14 year old.
- Alice and I (strongly believe) were being propositioned for a threesome with a Brazilian guy.
- and Majte (Tunisian) was whiteying on the hammock.
The next, and final day on Ilha Grande, we´d all decided to remedy our hangovers by scoping out ´Lopes Mendez´, a beautiful beach just a short taxi boat and trek over to the other side of the island. It had pissed it down the night before, so the ´easy 20 minute walk´ turned out to be nearer 45, and laden with blowouts.
It ended up being a fun afternoon with some marginally risky body surfing around rip tides, and yet more delicious local fish, none of which we´d heard of, nor could pronounce.
As our time on Isla Grande drew to a close, we´d lost our five new friends to homebound planes, but gained two more; Costas & Sophia, both from North London and who would fast become the companions for an entertaining few days ahead in Paraty.
Paraty is a sleepy town just south of Ilha Grande on the mainland, but filled with beautiful colonial buildings and just a short 4x4 ride to the jungle. After a welcome eight hours in a private room in our new hostel, and at last a breakfast that didn´t consist mostly of cake, we hopped in a Jeep and headed out to the jungle with Costas & Sophia.
The ride took in two Cachaceries (the local spirit made of sugar cane that makes up a Caiprinha) and three waterfalls, one of which you can slide down...
The order of play was Cachacery first, which meant shots at 11am. A tad ferocious but all in good spirit.
We then moved on and into some beautiful forest, thickly vegetated with skyscraper-height bamboo and dotted with little long-tailed monkeys. But the true highlight was yet to come. I´d heard of a natural waterslide near Paraty, but it´d looked pretty pesky in photos I´d seen. It´s not.
I´ll let the video do the talking but Alice´s reaction is the moment.
We closed the day with some magic mousse back at the hostel; weed infused chocolate mousse kindly sourced from Costas time in Rio. It took close to an hour to kick in, at which point we were sat in a bar drinking Brahmas in first-joint fits of laughter, failing indisputably at hiding our high whilst failing moreso to interact at all with the Brazilian waiting staff.
That brings us to the point of writing this, at which time we´ve have had to stay another day in Paraty after not booking our bus in time. Oops.
Tomorrow we begin a 28 hour bus extravaganza to get us up to Pùerto Iguazu in Argentina. Brazil has been a brief blast, and one we hope acts as a taster to the whole bottle in the coming years.
Adios.
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