parati

The first trip on the great big yellow truck. Talk about identifying yourself as a bunch of tourists, possibly flush with cash and a ready target for a highway robbery or more mildly, a suitable bride possibility for corrupt police. This is South America afterall. The truck (it is not acceptable to refer to it as a bus or coach!) is a sturdy, comfortable and appropriate mode of transport for the 45 day journey, across roads of various quality, from Rio to Lima. Atlantic to Pacific.

Our first stop was the old pirate coastal town of Parati. A very pretty place that retains much of its Portugese architectural heritage. It was designed with a fastinating feature. At the highest of tides, the sea water flushes through the streets and cleans the town entirely. Regrettably the high, high tide wasn´t happening when I was there but one could see how it worked. Clever civic planning. Suffice to say it is a quaint place. It has an Irish pub too! What a laugh. It is as Irish as the samba.

This was the first camping night of the tour. 40% will be camping. Two to a tent. No problem. Where I experienced a problem is that the group was divided into ´cook teams´. Anyone foolish, like me, to admit to previous cooking experience would be collared into leading a team. I like cooking but the ingredients available were pitiful and my team were in charge of the first group meal. I freaked out (silently) a little as I did not want to be respònsible for cooking a stir-fry where carrots would be a principal element! Added to this was one of my team members was a complete b*tch who sneered and offered pointless suggestions. I readily offered her the role of cook-in-charge. She fell silent. My first bust up. I cooked it as best as I could and it was passable.

The realities of tour group travel were starting to sink in. Tents pitched, off to bed. One of the group snored like a fog horn. His tent was ten feet away! I couldn´t endure it so I left my tent and trailed over to a well, under a tree hoping that the big yellow truck would act as a good sound barrier. It didn´t. Instead I had ants crawling into my nostrils all night while wrapped in my sleeping bag!

But it must be said that I did enjoy our outing. A boat trip around the vicinty of Parati. Snorkling, swimming at various locations and all with the background of the beautiful Brazilian coast. It was a fantastic day.

rio de janeiro

The flight wasn´t as bad as I expected. I endured it given my fever. The movies were crap though! The stopover in Frankfurt was interesting. I had to hang around for three hours and observe all the World Cup passenger activity. It was nice to use the euro again too.

So 26 hours later I arrived in a place I always wanted to visit, Rio De Janeiro. The airport was deserted at 5am apart from taxi touts. My guide book said the tourist information point would be open at 6am. It opened at 7am. Brazilian time, I suppose. They sorted out my hotel booking (it was fairly sh*te) and off I went on a bus into Rio. Past the slums. I was knackered when I got to the suitably named Hotel Touristico. There I experienced significant linguistic problems. Me, with a smattering of Portugese, struggled.

So the first objective was to venture out in the city and find a phrasebook. I researched online where to find an English bookshop. During the course of the day I dropped by the three of them. Why they parade themselves as English bookshops is anybody´s guess as they stock few English books. Needless to say I didn´t find anything remotely resembling a Portugese phrasebook. You see, ask a Brazilian a simple thing like ´an orange juice, please´and instead of dutifully running off and getting you one, they will bombard you with a series of counter-questions! I found this very frustrating and it remained so for the next seven days.

But I had arrived on the day of Brazils first World Cup game. To say maddness is an understatement. Coming from Thailand with its yellow shirt King orientated fever, it was just incredible to see the yellow shirt football fever of Rio. The whole city seemed to reverbrate like a football stabium. It was unworldly. Such energy. I watched the first game in an Irish pub. How typical. But when Brazil won and the game was over, a spontaneous street party, the like of which I have never seen, erupted. Young people, old people, everyone, dancing in the street.

The underground system served me well. All I had to say to the ticket people was ´duplo, por favor´and soon I was navigating the city with ease ( I found that the less I spoke Portugese the better). Seeing the great big statue of Christ was simply amazing, and the sugar loaf, and the Saint Teresa area. I enjoyed the city durng daylight. But come nightfall, certain parts of the city take on a very real and edgy menace. The central district is deserted apart from hoodlums and bums. The great beach areas of Ipanema (I hummed the song while walking along it during the day) and Copacabana are somewhat sinister. Walking along Copacabana one night, while feeling angry at the blantant constrast between the uber-rich and poverty struck folk, I was approached for a shoe shine. I declined but gave the bloke a couple of dollars, possibly spawned from my white man guilt. He kept following me though telling me I am his friend. Then I noticed he had shrayed sh*t on one of my shoes and was keen to remove it for me! Such is Rio. Not a very nice place in some ways.

So after seven days of faulting attempts at communication it was time to join my tour. I booked it some 12 months ago in London. The rationale behind booking a tour is that I figured, that after eight months of independent travel I would be tired of arranging everything myself. It would be good to have someone else do all the basics. Plus it married well with my ultimate objective of my áround the world´thing; to visit Manchu Pinchu. I was pleased to see the group was small. Five blokes (me, three English, one Polish) and five girls (two Irish, one Korean, one English and one Austrailian). Accompaning us in a great big modified yellow Mercedes truck would be two Austrailians, our driver and tour leader.

Things were looking up.