Brazil

My arrival in Brazil was greeted with rain; lots and lots of rain. I decided to take a taxi from the airport because it was dark and I would have got soaked. The streets of Sao Paulo were packed with cars and it seemed like the driver had a battle on his hands to get us through the onslaught. 

During my three days in Sao Paulo, I visited a museum with a very interesting social project called "The 6 Billion Others", saw a little of the Royal Wedding, which even the Brazilians seemed to be interested in and sipped Caipirinhas (Brazil's National Cocktail). My overriding feeling of Sao Paulo is that it is just too big. It doesn't have the character of other cities because it is a vast, swarming metropolis, home to more than 20 million people. Nevertheless, my experiences were most pleasant.

Rio is another story altogether. I have been staying a stone's throw away from Copacabana Beach and close to Ipanema. Unlike Sao Paulo, there is a tangible atmosphere here, which seems to be infectious. On Tuesday evening I found a bar playing live samba music. Now, trying to dance samba is very difficult and I'm sure I looked ridiculous, but I had a great time. You have to move so quickly and it's very tiring, but I was up to the challenge. Today was spent on the beach at Copacabana enjoying the sun and the sea; the waves were remarkable. If you didn't time your dives just right, you would get dragged along the sea bed by the current. I took a few blows to the head but it was brilliant.

It hasn't been all perfect though. Until today the weather had been quite cloudy and views from the mountains have not been very clear. I did manage to achieve the impossible of taking a picture of the statue of Jesus Cristo Corcovado without any other people in the photo. Unfortunately, Jesus is barely distinguishable, so I'm going to go back if I can one day. 

I have also found that I can read and understand quite a lot of Portuguese, but speaking is very hard. There are similarities with Spanish, but the accent is not one of them. Somebody told me that "Portuguese is like Spanish spoken by Sean Connery". I'm beginning to think that they had a point...

This evening, in preparation for the biggest match of my life next week, I will hopefully be going to a Brazilian Cup match in which Ronaldinho should be playing. I've heard that the atmosphere is crazy so I'm very excited for that.