A Spontaneous Journey

The football match was certainly an experience. The fans were on their feet, moving and singing all the time. Flamengo played appalingly, but they didn't seem to mind too much; they were more intent on making a lot of noise and trying to break the stadium. The standard of football was better than I had expected and I bought a cheap Ronaldinho shirt, which was cool.

The following morning, I went on a Favela tour. The Rocinha Favela is the largest in the world and is home to over 200,000 people. As all the Favelas are built on hills surrounding Rio, we took motorbike taxis up which were a lot of fun. On the way down, in the blistering heat, we saw some great grafitti art and some local drummers, as well as a few guys who were just casually sitting with a machine gun on their lap; you know, as you do. It reminded me of where Cristian lives in the Dominican Republic, just bigger, dirtier and obviously more dangerous. It really is a shame that these Favelas exist as they do. 99% of the Favela population are just trying to scrape a living and stay alive. Unfortunately, the other 1% are the drug gangs and so the police can't go in there to try ad sort it out.  

Friday and Saturday nights in Rio are awesome. The district of Lapa in the north of the city gets completely shut down as thousands of people fill the streets. There are stands selling food, vendors selling drinks and more clubs and bars than you can imagine all in one place. We spent about an hour wandering around before choosing a suitable location. I really enjoyed Rio, but for me Buenos Aires is unbeatable in terms of enjoyment..

On Saturday evening, I was still unsure as to where I should go next; Paraty or Florianopolis. In the end, I went to neither because I met an Argentinian photographer, Victor, who was driving to the town of Ouro Preto in the mining region, north of Rio, and looking for someone to accompany him. He managed to persuade me and so the next morning we set off on a 7 hour drive in his 1972 Peugeot 404. The car attacted a lot of attention as we wound our way through the hills, struggling up and speeding down. We stopped a couple of times so that Victor could take some photos of the views, enlisting the help of his model (a dummy), Clara. 

The city was beautiful. Every building was 18th century architecture and there were churches and statues dotted all over the place. As we drove up through tiny cobbled streets, the roads became narrower and narrower, until we burst onto the stunning Plaza de Tiradentes. Walking around the city the following day, I struggled up several, ridiculously steep hills and again found myself wondering why the Brazilians insisted on building their cities in such inconvenient places; first Rio and now this! I managed to see some architecture by Brazil's most famous sculptor, Aleijandinho, who lost the use of his hands at the age of 30, but continued to sculpt by attaching tools to his arms. And to think, I have trouble with sandcastles...