Finally something vaguely interesting.

Recently life has consisted of trying to get enough work done to appease my students and fixing the ever ailing car. Also I'm trying to write some papers and grant proposals, so I'm afraid I've not been writing the blog.

Rhea has decided to go back to Britain. She's leaving on the 20th. I think it's the right decision for her, but I will miss her terribly. As a result I decided to take advantage of the strike turmoil (and ensuing reactionary turmoil) at the university and go away for a week. As you can probably tell from previous posts, we both love swimming, so I thought we'd attempt the 2 day journey to Trindade - a place which promised lots of peaceful and beautiful beaches. It was a choice between here and Trancoso in Bahia, and I decided on the former as the roads were better and less remote, and also we could stop in Ouro Preto on the way - the old colonial gold mining centre of Brazil.

We decided we'd leave on the Sunday morning as early as possible. I spent Saturday going to the breakers yards in Taguatinga haggling for ventilators and head gaskets, and then subsequently fitting them just before the sun went down. Changing a head gasket and radiator ventilator is not a particularly difficult job, but I was sorely missing my tools - in particular the best screw driver set in the world which Matthijs gave me for my birthday. Rhea fixed the headlight too with great skill and I tentatively declared the car ready for action.

We managed to set off at 6:30 and reached Ouro Preto at 4:30 only stopping once for petrol. I was exhausted - driving the older roads here is a bit like driving a long distance rally. You're coninuously having to overtake and keep your speed up, because under no circumstances can you drive at night. This feeling is not helped by the fact that when there are roadworks men come out and wave different coloured flags at you - sometimes I expected the safety car. During this I was continuously monitoring the temperature of the car and fiddling with the heater to try and make sure it didn't overheat.

Ouro Preto is an incredibly beautiful and spectacular town, which used to be the capital of Minas Gerais - now it is Belo Horizonte. You can understand why they changed as the roads that leave the main square are all down completely absurd inclines. I was worried I would overheat trying to walk up them. The whole place is cobbled and covered in churches. As is usual here the churches traditionally served different parts of the community - the rich, the middle classes and the slaves. They are all in more or less ornate traditional portuguese white and very beautiful. The buildings are all in the old colonial style too.

We went to a cool kilo place for dinner which had some nice cheeses so I was very happy. It wasn't the usual red meat feast so there was even something for Rhea too. We had a couple of beers there and then moved on to a very cool balcony which was playing some slightly odd, yet cool, jazz and drank some more beers. As usual the local traders tried their luck with us and we ended up chatting to a poet who invited us to a gig with a group playing samba and MPB (Musica popular de Brasil). There was a percussionist, another percussionist and one of the most incredible guitar players I've ever seen. When he played the popular stuff everyone loved it and danced, but the stuff he played which noone really noticed was breathtaking.

We set off the next morning at 8 and made our way out of Minas Gerais and into the state of Rio de Janeiro. The drive down to the city itself is a steep and very windy descent through humid forests - the moisture was such a pleasure after living in the cerrado without rain for so long. The road was beautiful and good and the rally idea persisted as all the cars took the racing line on the curves including all lanes and the hard shoulders. The car was happy - it was cool and it was going downhill and for the first time for a very long time the temperature gauge was below normal. I was feeling relaxed and confident, and I thought we'd make our destination with no problems - we were even talking about stopping in Paraty and then going on to Trindade. Then we hit Rio. I am here to tell the tale, but only just. The signposts are distributed on a bell curve of uselessness. The majority tell you nothing unless you know the names of all the favelas off by heart. Somehow we managed to take all the right turnings, some by educated guesswork, but most by luck. It was starting to rain and the clouds were thick. The sun seemed a long way away. We started on the road to Trindade now convinced that it would be too wet to camp on the beach and ready to get a cheap Pousada in Paraty, hoping that the weather would turn the next day. It was so good to finally see the sea, and we passed many stunning places.... and a nuclear power station. We passed a sign to Paraty saying 38km which didn't seem right but I was very happy. I can only imagine now that it should have been 138km.

When we arrived in Paraty we found a really amazing old port. Because of the rain most of the town was closed, and there weren't many tourists so a lot of bars were remaining shut. Our Pousada and where we ate and drank were in the new town away from the tourists, which was a whole lot cheaper, and a lot less pretentious. The place was absolutely amazing - even in the rain - but clearly very geared towards tourists, probably more so than anywhere else we'd been. I think that this is because of its proximity to Rio.

After the next rained out day which we spent wandering around slightly disheartened, I heard a bloke at Pousada talking about the weather and he said it was going to get worse over the next few days. That sealed it for me - the most important thing was to make sure Rhea could get to the airport on time, and I knew that bad weather could possibly mean a three day journey. The first day of driving was quite eventful - I lost it on a bend completely covered in water, but managed to regain control without hitting anything. The shortcut the woman at the Pousada verified turned out to be blocked by an accident and so we had to turn back. Then another accident completely blocked our routes out of southern Rio de Janeiro, and the only thing we could do was sit and wait. After a while we made it to Rio's outskirts again and this time I made a calamitous error and ended up going the wrong way with no apparent way to turn round on the main route into Rio. Much panic and a big risk later and we were back on the windy climb up out of the state. All was going relatively well although very slowly on account of the rain and suddenly the car started to swerve violently all over the place - clearly I had blown out a tyre at the best and needed to stop. I managed to stop in the last place before the single lane section of the roadworks and changed the tyre with some haste. We made it as far as possible before nightfall but discovered that the hotel we were heading towards was closed. Thankfully I got a suggestion of somewhere good to stay which was 9km up the road - finding a hotel in the middle of nowhere in Brazil is not necessarily an easy business as many seem to be motels which you rent by the hour, and you really don't want to stay there. On the quick 9km up the road we discovered why not to drive at night. Anyway we made it to the very special Hotel Cupim and rested relieved for the night. The next day back in to Brasília was very long indeed, but pretty much stress free.

We rested for a night and decided that we should head inland for one night of camping and swimming, as it was such a shame we couldn't swim at the coast. I discovered in the morning that the other rear tyre now had a puncture, which I duly got fixed at my local Borracharia (tyre specialist in portuguese, something like "house of drunkards" in spanish I imagine) for 5 Reais. They all think I'm mad there as I always change the wheel. The way it is here, if you're not the worker you just wait until the work is done, but I hate that and would much rather they do the clever stuff mending the tyre and I'll do the unskilled work. We arrived at the camping at Salto de Corumbá at about 2 and went for a swim immediately. The place was beautiful - I wasn't sure as these campsites can be full of people playing terrible music very loudly out of the back of their car, but there was noone and we camped right by the river. We spent the night by the river in very bright moonlight drinking wine. Today we woke up very early and went for a swim again, went for a walk to the top the biggest waterfall which was spectacular (sorry no photos). The craziest thing about this camp site though was that it had a big water tube going down one hill which was pitch black inside. I reverted to being 10 years old and went on it lots of times before other people started to climb up to it noticing it was open. We were the first to go on it and it hadn't been on for a week so I was a bit concerned about what had potentially climbed inside it, especially as as we arrived they were fishing enormous toads out of the pool at the bottom. Thankfully I don't think we encountered anything nasty on my way down.

You can see a fair few photos of my usual quality here. I had also written a huge political diatribe about my outrage about the New Orleans thing which I was going to put up here, but I decided against it as I am not a good enough writer to express my ideas and I expect I would only be preaching to the converted. That's the only small excuse I have for not having written anything here for ages.

Lecturing C

My apologies to my devoted readers for the lack of entries on my blog - I have been extremely lazy. Basically I've been very busy with the mundane every day necessities of preparing enough material to appease my students. One course is fine - I'm basically lecturing mathematical logic and some automated reasoning. The other is programming in C. Thanks to Mark I now have two brilliant books to learn from, and I'm trying very hard not to tell them anything wrong. What is slightly difficult is that a lot of them program in C for a living and are now taking it as a subject at university. This means that the boring syntactical parts of the language are much more familiar to them, so if I print a float out as an int they are all onto it like hawks, but try to get them to understand a recursive solution to the towers of hanoi and I could literally be here all year.

Anyway - it looks like the university is going on strike over salaries. This means two good things - possibly I can prepare the course now slightly better, using my new shiny literature, and also I might be able to go to the coast on a trip, which would be fun, and provide more photos of water, crazy insects, trees and the like.

More Brasília

Apologies for not having written for ages - no excuse but laziness on my part.

Recently the search for flats has begun. There aren't many available in the residential districts so we're mainly looking in the commercial districts at what they call "Quitinetes" here. One big room with a shower room off. We did see a really beautiful flat, but it was a bit away from the University and it was quite a lot too... still if it's still in the paper on Thursday I'm going to ring up and try to haggle again I think.

There are several really cool thinks about being here. One is the weather obviously, which is not too hot and not ever really cold, although it can sometimes get about as cold as a hot summer's night in scotland during the early hours of the morning, which is when you see all the scarves and jumpers come out. Another is the way cars are fixed. I had a problem with the alarm on the car which I didn't understand despite my best efforts (involving virtually dismantling the dashboard). I went to the big road where all the garages are, parked the car in front of some place, a bloke walked out with a mean looking screwdriver and an ambitious pair of hands and with very little grace had it all working in about 3 minutes.. bit of insulation tape here... undo that... take that off... hit that bit... 20 Reais and I was off. Been fine since. I quite enjoyed that.

I particularly enjoy the self-service lunch bars here. You pay by the kilo and have what you want. It normally works out at the equivalent of a quid fifty for an enormous plate of food. The best thing though is the variety - there's usually loads of salad (if you go to a decent place), and always loads of different meats from the Churasco (bbq). Also of note are the really cheap bars. I think my favourite so far is "Bar Por do Sol" from which you'd have to be about 50m tall to witness the setting of the sun, but disengenuousness aside it's unpretentious and has a good lively atmosphere. People normally come round and sell peanuts for virtually nothing. I haven't yet overindulged on the beer as it tends to give you a hangover before you get drunk, but I have certainly overindulged on the peanuts. Worthy of Special mention is the one next door, which is quieter but open more often - "Meu Bar" is run by Ze, who is normally drunk and to be found playing pool in the room next door. I haven't yet had the courage to follow the protocol at this bar, but in general it seems that if you want a drink you go and get it yourself and leave the money when you leave. I quite like it here as there are lots of wobbly old regulars, so it reminds me of the good Edinburgh pubs.

Pirénopolis 2 - Rhea's Birthday

It was Rhea's birthday on the 10th June, and we went off on the evening of the 9th (with the permission of my boss) to Pirénopolis again. We stayed at a really posh pousada with pool and palm trees and crazy lizards, and headed off the next day for the most incredible waterfall we have yet seen. As it was a Friday and not the weekend, the place was virtually deserted. There was a real sandy beach and the clearest water you could imagine. You can see a picture of Rhea on her birthday standing in front of the amazing Santa Maria waterfall here. We were joined by a huge group of screaming kids a few hours after arriving, but it didn't matter as there was another waterfall a mile down stream... not as good for swimming in or pretending you're in a Timotei advert but none the less pretty amazing. On the way back we saw a cool spider. We got quite drunk that night, nestled into a bar drinking Caipirinhas and listening to some cool music.

We went to another Cachoeira the next day - Bom Sucesso, where we spent a while in the sun and jumped in and out of the water, which I particularly enjoyed. On the way back we saw a cow which looked a bit like jaja binks - or so I thought. I liked the cow.

Needless to say we got quite drunk that night too and ended up staying on until Sunday. You can see the rest of the pictures from that weekend here.

Rio Quente and Caldas Novas.

We made the mistake of going camping on a bank holiday weekend. It was packed with people having car stereo contests with the worst music they could find in their Dad´s collection - or so it seemed. First we went to Lagoa Quente - a place which offered a campsite with access to 5 swimming pools, including one which had water directly from the lake, so was quite hot. Very pleasant indeed for lazing about in. I wouldn´t necessarily describe these pools of water as swimming pools, as they were designed with people lazing about in mind. The furthest you could swim at a depth of more than about a meter was probably 4 meters, so a real swim was out of the question. We realised at this point just how ill-prepared for camping we were in comparison to other people. We had no television, 4 piece dining set, stereo, fridge etc.... In the morning we left, much to the amazement of the staff there, but the "entertainment" was just beginning and I think it would have just been too much fun for me to take.

We went on to Rio Quente where there is a huge water park which I liked the look of.... until I saw the price. So we went to a cheaper version down stream, and camped at a place which was right next to the river. It was fun to swim about there, and we felt proud for having chosen somewhere which clearly was upmarket. I have to admit that it wasn´t the tranquil image I had perceived, but good to experience none the less.

On the way back we went to a place called Piracánjuba, which was a pretty little town which sold all sorts of Artesenato from around the place. It wasn´t from there exactly so I decided to leave my shopping until we go somewhere nearer to the point of manufacture. Also I have to figure out a way of not looking and sounding so foreign so that I can try and bargain myself a reasonable price.

It was a long hot drive and probably not the most relaxing weekend ever, but nonetheless it was good to travel about a bit and get to see some more of Brazil. You can see the only picture that was taken that weekend here.

Chapada dos Veadeiros

On the weekend we went to a huge national park 3 hours drive away from Brasilia called "Chapada dos Veadeiros". We arrived on Friday afternoon and decided to break ourselves into the camping experience by going to the recommended camping ground on the edge of the park. There was a waterfall 100 meters away, and it had all been well thought out and there was plenty of space.... well we were the only people camping, so we were a bit spoilt for choice. In the evening we decided to go to the "games" room and play some table tennis and pool. We put the Groove Collective on the stereo, drank some beers, and inadvertently annoyed the people staying in the posh Pousada rooms next door, as there were external speakers as well; something you don't realise when you're inside.


The next day we packed up and headed up the dirt road to São Jorge, the town next to the entrance to the park. This area used to be a crystal mining area, and when they closed the park to make it a heritage site they retrained all the miners as guides. When we arrived it was early and we tried to get some breakfast - most people were already drinking in the bars. We ended up getting breakfast and then heading of to Raizama - a forrest reserve with loads of canyons and waterfalls and the like. After lazing about in the water for a bit, we went back to São Jorge and managed to pitch our tent in some bloke's back garden for 5 reais (about a pound) - as we were pitching the tent the people next door were listening to loud reggae and doing the sorts of things you do when you listen to loud reggae - they were friendly, and so were the dogs. For one reason or another my portuguese decided to vacate my brain that evening and things became quite difficult trying to converse with guides to take us into the park the next day. I hadn't realised that in effect this would be a lecture, and the bloke bargaining with us was not the friendliest in the world and I felt we would leave it until we found a more chilled guide who might be a bit more tolerant of my lamentable portuguese. We headed out to various cool bars and restaurants that evening - the town transforms itself by night.



After a very good sleep accompanied by all sorts of strange noises from unknown animals and various multicoloured frogs, we headed up the road to the Almega waterfalls. These were truly amazing, the best yet, the first in particular being brilliant for swimming in. You can see some pictures from our stay at the Chapada here.

Brasilia (slight return)

I'm going to try and describe to the best of my abilities what Brasilia is like. It is a 1950's vision of a modern city and was designed with the motorist in mind. The city is formed in the shape of a plane, hence the main town being called "Plano piloto". There is the fuselage, along which the huge "Eixo monumental" runs, surrounded by the ministeries and parliament buildings. On each wing there is an "Eixo Rodoviario" which is the main artery of traffic to and from the "centre". There is no real centre to speak of, just districts which serve some purpose or other. Nearer the meeting of the two main Eixo's where you might expect a centre to be, there is the main bus station, and around it the banking and hotel sectors. Along each wing the blocks are made up of numbers. The even hundreds are always on the east side of the Eixo Rodoviario on that wing, and the odd hundreds are on the west side. There is a south and north wing, and so if you know the address then you can find it without needing a map. For example 203S would be on the south wing, the first commercial district east of the Eixo Rodoviario about a kilometer along. What makes things harder though is that you can't turn left off any of the main roads - so you have to go past the exit, turn at a designated "Retorno" and then turn right. Taking this to its most absurd is the problem of going into town on the north wing along the Eixo Rodoviario from the East side of the wing. You have to go west underneath the Eixo, turn right onto the retorno so you are now going into town on the Eixinho West, turn off and go round both retornos until you are out of town on the Eixinho West, now do one more retorno onto the Eixo North going into town. This is probably better demonstrated by the following diagram, for which I needed all of my exemplory cartography skills to achieve the obvious clarity. Just follow the pink spots for the path of the vehicle.

There are of course cool bars and places to go in the commerical districts, but unfortunately nowhere to just walk around and peruse. I don't really want to make any subjective judgement about whether I think this is good or not, as I prefer a place with a town centre which you can walk around. People here love the way Brasilia is set up. Presumably once you know the place well you just know where you're going and you drive there and don't really feel the need to walk. The problem I have with this is twofold: Firstly, there is the obvious environmental issue of making it an absolute necessity for everyone to have a car by constructing the city like this (even if the buses were good it would be hell to get around as every shop you want to go to is miles apart from any other); secondly noone walks anywhere for fear of attack since there aren't that many people on the streets. If there were more pedestrians the whole place would be very safe to walk in, but the design of the city produces the vicious circle that noone wants to walk because noone else is.


The architecure on the Eixo Monumental is quite impressive - indeed the Cathedral is spectacular, but this is not continued in the residential or commercial districts where most of the buildings are quite delapidated, apart from in the posher areas. On the East side of the city, there is a huge lake, and you can see the truly enormous houses of the wealthy on the other side. This is another world, and demonstrates the vast difference here between rich and poor. It is one thing that makes me feel uneasy here - the tolerance of this divide by the rich. I have not had the feeling before of being in a society where I exist in a different class altogether from someone else, and that somehow there is a well defined divide between us. I don't really want to say too much on this before I am able to consider and experience it some more. You can see some pictures of Brasilia here

Pirénopolis

Finally I managed to buy a car. It is not something I really ever envisaged buying, but it seems to be ok, with the odd little thing to fix. It is a 93 chevrolet monza, which sounds impressive, but in fact it's basically just a vauxhall cavalier. I would have loved to buy a beetle, but it seems that beetles that work are in fact more expensive than I'd thought. The car we have is naff, which is probably a good thing as we're fairly inconspicuous in it. It has air conditioning, which is a comfort I didn't expect, but turns out to be quite pleasant. You can see it, parked at the disreputable place where I bought it here. I looked at, and broke, several million cars before buying this one, and I have to admit that it was mainly out of extreme boredom and exasperation that I eventually went for this car. Had I reached the same level of boredom earlier on, I may well have opted for something entirely different.

The upshot of this memorable and important event is that we were able to go to Pirénopolis - a truly beautiful old colonial town about 100 miles outside Brasilia. The drive there was an experience in itself, and I arrived in need of some refreshment, which we quickly found in a very cool little place. As usual we tried to ask for one meal to share, but they assured us it wouldn't be enough, so we bought 2 and left 1 and a half. The food here has many beans, much rice, and generally large quantities of meat. This was a particularly good lunch. We found our pousada (or hostel), which was really beautiful and headed off to this waterfall. You may not believe me because I have no evidence as yet, since my camera ran out of batteries. The road there was arduous to say the least - when we arrived we noticed that everyone else were driving jeeps. I had to cross a river and nearly grounded the car on many occasions. When we did arrive though it was virtually deserted and we went straight into the water. Being a sarcastic git, I'm not really sure how to enthuse sincerely, but it truly was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. The whole area is covered in these waterfalls, and you can probably only manage 1 or 2 a day, so I'll try and make sure the battery is charged for the next one we go to. On the way back from the waterfall we had to stop in front of some sort of countryside police heist. Six youths in a fiat uno had been asked to get out of the car and were being searched. The police had their guns drawn and it was quite tense. We had just crossed the river again and the car was quite hot, so the fact that there was loads of steam eminating from the engine didn't make me any calmer. Eventually the police moved the cars so we could just about squeeze past on the dirt road, and I was very relieved.

At night we went out to eat and drink. The main road had now been well and truly opened and there were beautiful young people posing all around. They were quite annoying, and definitely from the bigger cities. We wandered out of the main centre to a cheaper bar, where the locals had clearly been drinking profusely for some time. This was much more like it - people turning up on horseback and leaving almost comatozed trusting the horse to take them home. We drank quite a lot that night.

In the morning I was delighted to see that the mosquitoes had left us well alone. This delight was shortly followed by the realisation that they had probably done that for a good reason, and I stumbled nursing my head to the little garden outside the pousada where we had breakfast... coffee, bread, pastries... really nice. Next time I'm going to go to bed sober. We made our way next to a fazenda called Vaga Fogo, which is a kind of nature reserve where they make all their own food and so on. Here they had bits of the river you could sort of swim in but mainly it was just for lying around in the water. It was a really beautiful place, we stayed for a long time trying to pluck up the courage to leave. The hammocks weren't hastening our departure.

Pictures from our stay (unfotunately not including one of the abáde waterfall) can be found here.

Health service

I decided I would include this small section to illustrate both the efficiency of the Brasilian Health Service, and quite a significant event in my life. In order to sign my university contract, I had to go for a medical exam. As many of you may
know, I have not been very well for some time, and the doctors in Edinburgh basically told me there was nothing very much wrong. However, it transpires that after one day, the doctors here diagnosed that I had a parasite which I must have got while swimming in the countryside in Mexico - 3 and a half years ago. It's not very nice and it enters through your skin, and ends up in your lungs giving you bronchitis or pneumonia (which I had shortly after returning), and then after that sits in your stomach eating your blood and making your immune system weak and your iron levels incredibly low. It basically explains the kidney infection - the trouble eating, the loss of weight etc.... When I went to get my certificate of healthiness, the nurse gave me the results verbally in front of all of the other patients which is an experience not to be missed, especially if she has to repeat the portuguese of "YOU HAVE WORMS" very many times at the top of her voice, because I didn't understand the technical name for it (strongyloides stercoralis).

Here ends the brief personal aside....

Brasilia

Brasilia is a new city - one not intended at all for pedestrians. As a result I am going to refrain very much from describing our experiences here until we have a car. Finding a car here is not an easy task. The first one I test drove ran out of petrol, and I managed to break the handbrake cable of the next one. I'm hoping to have better luck soon, but we'll see. So far I've managed to do all my tax, police, bank and contractual bureaucratic requirements by bus, but it ain't easy and I have a mountain of important papers and stamped documents which have to accompany me to most places. Lectures are going ok - the students often laugh at my portuguese, which is fair enough, but I'll get my own back eventually. We're staying in a shared flat, with mainly latin american women, who are very keen on scrutinising our eating and drinking habits. They are all quite shocked by the amount of beer we consume, for which I am unwilling to make an apology. I will write more when I have more to tell and when we have a car and will have been to more exciting places. As for now I will leave you with pictures of the cars I have so far declined.....

Rio

It is generally advisable when arriving in a new country and culture to have your wits about you, and to be aware of what you are likely to face on arrival. Having had probably the most unpleasant flight we have both imagined, we arrived tired and slightly delusional to be confronted by an army of taxi drivers, airport "assistants" and many other unidentified yet uniform clad people, worryingly overexcited by our arrival. Everyone else on the plane was either in a pre-organised tour group, or seemed to be Rio veterans. During the completely incomprehensible exchanges of no particular language which ensued, if became apparent that being terribly polite and british is not always best. Eventually I managed to get to the information desk where a very nice young man, keen to practice the english he had clearly learnt from Noel Coward, gave me an impressively inconcise and confusing description of what I should do. The plan was to change money, leave most of our luggage, book internal flights to Brasilia and to find the bus to Ipanema beach. No worries - all very straightforward. Well, it would have been had my brain not have been construcing sentences in a language which had no contiguous structure or recognisable vocabulary. Rhea managed to remain typically calm and unphased through all of this, which was an immense help to me, as I was starting to get narky and I didn't like the way the policeman was looking at me through his opaque sunglasses. Having successfully negotiated the ticket buying, luggage depositing and dodgy money exchange with a man who had some money and a very persuasive way about him, we got on the "REAL" bus to Ipanema. It was only on the motorway that we really started to get an idea of how immense Rio is. Not only that but for several miles before you actually get off the motorway and start to reach the main districts, you pass enormous complexes of favelas, which are quite shocking to see, and you get your first taste of guilt for being quite as well off as we are in Britain. I don't want to talk about the favelas too much because fear of the third world in the west is such that violence and poverty are the first associations that many people have. Probably the most horrific thing we saw in Rio was an advert for tourists to go on a bus tour of the favelas, where the rhetoric of the advert was one of voyeurism akin to that you might find at an old fashioned freak show. The bus eventually dropped us off in Leblon - about a mile away from the hotel, but a pleasant enough stroll back along the beachfront. For me of course the main attraction was the sea. The first day when we swam it was quite strong, but nothing like it can be. It is much more dangerous to swim there than it appears and most people linger tentatively in the water near the shore, and never go beyond the breaking point of the waves. Of course, we did, and discovered soon why people don't do this very often. It's really very difficult to get back into shore again the currents are so strong. Rhea managed with relative ease, whereas my 20 a day habit had clearly taken its toll. 15 years ago I was in similar sea and I remember it being exhilirating. This time it was just exhausting. However, over the next few days we managed to get more used to it and worked out where the good and bad currents were. We wandered around Ipanema a lot, sampling the food and beer. We only had two whole days there so it was hard to do everything and I wasn't in the mood for power sight-seeing. We managed Corcovado, from which the view is pretty incredible, and Santa Theresa which is an incredibly beautiful older part of town which you get to on an old rickety tram. As you go up the hill the people who live in the favelas nearby jump on and off happily getting lifts up the hill - it's like a free form of transport for them essentially funded by the tourists. I really enjoyed the atmosphere in this part of town - it was like a bohemian little village right in the heart of this huge city. Some not very good pictures are here.