El gran viaje 2007

Sergio and I finally made it to Rio last Sunday, and we immediately felt at home there. Our hostel was a mere four blocks from the beach in Copacabana and it was cheap, clean, and friendly. We spent a week there total, and we managed to do most of the requisite touristy stuff like visit the colonial churches and take pictures from the Christ the Redeemer statue, but we definitely spent most of our time hanging out on the beach.

Besides the beach, the highlight of our time in Rio was the Favela Tour we took on Friday. It seems a bit weird to go on a tour of a favela (translated usually as ghetto or shantytown), but our hostel and guidebook both recommended it so we decided to go. It turned out to be one of the best experiences of our trip so far, certainly one of the most educational. Plus the company donates some of the profits to the schools there.

We visited two favelas in total. First we went to Roçinha, the second biggest favela in Latin America with about 150,000 residents (like a city within a city). We visited a community art project there where local kids go to sell their artwork to tourists on favela tours. Then we drove around Roçinha a bit, looking at how houses were constructed, and how people got electricity, water and satellite TV (of course).

Then we went on to a much smaller favela called Vila Canoas where we visited a school the tour company helps sponsor and walked around the unbelievable narrow alleyways (reminded me a bit of Fez in Morocco, but with more graffiti). In the end, we felt like this had been a great chance to see something of the way so many people in Latin America and really in the world live. It was definitely a view you don´t always get as a tourist. The contrast between the favelas and some of the richest neighborhoods in Latin America,which are just minutes apart walking in some cases, was really amazing.

Anyway our time in Rio came to an end on Sunday when we boarded an executivo-class bus for Campo Grande, way out in the West of the country. After 21 hours on a VERY bumpy rode, we bravely boarded another bus (regular class, unfortunately) for the five hour trip to Bonito, a tiny little town in the Brazilian state Mato Grosso do Sul known as a great eco-tourism destination.

And that´s where the most expensive day of our trip so far comes in, which would be today. We hired a taxi for the day to take us first to the Blue Lagoon Cave, where we climbed down into a cave with an extremely deep, pure blue lake. Then we headed to the Sucuri River for a little hike and some snorkeling in the icy cold rain. The water was warm though, so the cold wasn´t so bad, and it was fun to just float along the river and look at some amazing huge Amazonian fish. All of this did not come as cheaply as I´d hoped, but we felt it was worth it.

Tomorrow we get up before dawn to take a bus to Buraco das Piranhas in the heart of the Pantanal for a 3-day stay at the Hostelling International lodge there. The guy who I booked the tour with told me three times that the lodge was "very basic", so I´m not exactly sure what to expect but that´s for the next entry, which I´ll probably write from Bolivia!