It’s now been just over a month since we landed on Australian soil but when I recap our movements since arriving home I question whether we’ve actually landed at all. Apart from currently living in all of 3 houses, actively catching up with everyone we haven’t seen in so long, sending out CVs for anything and everything, reacquainting ourselves with sunny old Sydney and me starting a new career as a barista, we’ve not even had time to attend to the most important thing in our lives; capping off this epic blog!? :)
When we last left you, Nic was vainly performing the caliper test on her arse (she broke the calipers actually – “tight like a tiger”! :)) and we were entertaining romantic visions of sipping cocktails as we sunned ourselves on Ipanema beach. What a glorious way to have spent the last two weeks of a 2 year world trip we reckoned! As is so often the case however, fantasy and reality do tend to be two starkly different things and in keeping with the theme of not bullshitting ourselves too much, perhaps we ought to admit that thinking that a tropical paradise at the beginning of the wet season would be anything but wet – with a little (or even a lot of) rain thrown in for good measure – was always a bit deluded.
Having said that, after arriving in Rio de Janeiro in a downpour, our first morning gave rise to a beautiful day and without even realising how lucky we were, fortunately we managed to take full advantage of it. We’d decided to stay in Botafogo – which is a kind of a nothing (meaning cheap!) suburb that’s conveniently located smack bang in between Central Rio and the beaches – and given that we were virtually right at the base of Sugar Loaf, we headed straight up for the most famous and arguably most stunning view of Rio first thing that morning (or approx 10am in our case :)). And what a magnificent view it is... I think I’ll just let the picture tell the story here... though I will add that anyone who thinks that Sydney or any other place for that matter is anywhere near as impressive from the air ought to take a good look at themselves... it’s not! (Though, I’ll return to this point later).
We only spent a couple of hours held captive by the view down onto Rio, taking no less than a couple of hundred photos and meeting the local rain forest inhabitants for the first time (the Sagui monkeys), before eventually descending and making our way out to the beaches for an afternoon in the sun. Walking through the back streets of Copacabana and out past the neoclassical Copacabana Palace Hotel, we were out on the famous black and white mosaic promenade in no time and thirstily in search of our first caipiriniha on the beach.
Now, given that we’d been avoiding being ripped blind by anyone and everyone for the last 3 months, perhaps we should have been less eager to have that drink and more discerning about the price but within moments of stepping onto the beach we were accosted by an all too eager to please ‘barraqueiro’ called Phil – just one of the many favela guys that run beach stands or ‘barracas’ along the beaches of Copacabana and Ipenema – sat down and promptly made our cocktails. Disarmed by the big man’s beaming smile and his constantly telling us how much he loved us (it was it just a little bit confronting too to be constantly hugged by this big man), not only did we not even think to suspect that he was charging us triple the going rate for our drinks but we actually insisted on tipping him for his outstanding service. Beware of these overly friendly Brazilians I tell you! If they’re not trying to rob you chances are that they already have :).
Wanting to break up our stay in Rio with a few day trip down the Costa Verde, the following day (again in abysmal weather) we headed off to a little Portuguese colonial town called Paraty – though pronounced Parachi for some reason? Forgoing the fact that Cariocans (or natives of Rio de Janeiro) seem to speak Portuguese with a very strong Sean Connery accent (why that is I don’t know – maybe they’re just real big fans :)), let me just add how confused my usage of Latin languages had gotten upon arriving in Brazil here anyway. I’d tried rather hard to pick up as much French as I could our first time around in France and given my interest in learning the language followed this up with 10 weeks of False Beginner’s French in London. Thrilled with actually making some progress and for the first time understanding what it meant to conjugate a verb (let me just thank the Australian education system for that one), upon our second time around in France I was doing quite well parler-ing in my broken French I thought. As this was of course my first foray into foreign languages however, the moment we set foot in Latin America, almost instinctively, I’d found myself parler-ing in my broken French again – much to the confusion of the locals. A week of Spanish lessons later, followed by another month of getting my ear into Peruvian Spanish and just when ‘como se llama’ and ‘dos cervezas por favor’ were starting to roll off the tongue quite naturally, of course we crossed over into Argentina. Here ‘pollo’ (or chicken for the turkeys among you that only speak one language) was no longer ‘poyo’ but ‘posho’, which later became ‘pojo’ (which is to say that the accent as well as certain words started to change throwing you right off) but you could still somehow manage to get your head around this and communicate in a very simple Tony Yugoslav (“give me my money faarken!”) kind of way :). Enter Sean Connery speaking Spanish badly and that’s where I’d started to lose the plot however – this is Cariocan Portuguese! Even ‘gracias’ became ‘obrigado’ or obrigada’, depending on whether you are a man talking to another man or a woman (though we never actually worked this one out) and all three languages together with multiple accents started to meld into the one unintelligible dribble. But most sadly perhaps the next time I’d found myself trying to engage a couple of Frenchies in their native tongue all I could come up with was “si... shaken not stirred”.
Anyway, only just managing to communicate where the hell we actually wanted to go at the bus station (Paraty and ‘Parachi’ aren’t the same place it would seem when you’re speaking Goulasz Portuguese) we eventually arrived in this gorgeous little town some 300kms south of Rio. This once major port – used to export gold, coffee and other commodities to Portugal in the day – was virtually forgotten in time from the late 19th century and thus now provides one of the best examples of Portuguese colonial architecture in the world. The scenic old town, with its cobble stone streets and quaint little whitewashed dwellings was a great place to hang out for a few days and is definitely a must see for anyone traveling to Brazil. We were even afforded a morning’s sunshine which allowed us to get out into the bay on a beautifully refurbished 19th century ketch, stop at a number of the various islands and beaches (there are some 65 islands in this bay) and even go swimming in these pristine waters before the heavens eventually opened up at around 2pm – just on time to end our little boat trip.
Despite the weather presenting another challenge to our tireless pursuit of a good time, having befriended a small crew of likeminded cohorts and recalling seeing a little bar doing 5 real caipirinihas the prior evening, we wasted no time in changing tack and opted instead for an afternoon/evening of gasbagging and grog. As it would seem too, there’s always some know-it-all Dane called Miki that happens to speak 7 languages in any random group of strangers and apart from having a great time with our single-use friends, he managed to impart loads of Brazilian history to us and most importantly, informed us that Paraty was famous for producing some of the best sugar cane liquor in Brazil (if not the world). Further to this, perhaps it’s quite fitting to note that our Frenchie friends, Stefan and Marie (who happen to have a better blog than us the bastards – check it out if you like at www.byebyeparis.fr... we’re very jealous) had just as much trouble as me confusing their Latin languages (or at least Stefan seemed to empathise with my saying that I did) and that caipirinihas are in fact shaken and not stirred, whether or not one is trying to speak bad French, Portuguese or just trying to put on his best Sean Connery accent :).
Nursing some pretty serious hangovers the following morning (too much lime and sugar we reckon) and vaguely recalling someone saying that Paraty was famous for making a decent drop of Cachaça, we decided to abandon plans to head down the coast to the beaches of Trinidade (no points for guessing why – ‘twas pissing down again wasn’t it!) and instead booked ourselves in on a distillery tour. Aside from being stuck in the back of a ’68 Wily with the dullest bunch of Swiss kiddies we’ve ever had the pleasure of coming across – the 4 of them managed to communicate all of maybe 3 words to us over the course of the entire tour – we also managed to have the ultimate Brazilian tour guide experience; a day on Brazilian time with trusty Tiago. Now, I know what you’re thinking (hey I’m thinking it myself) – Is this relevant? Well, yes frankly! It’s relevant as we’d been on so many tours in South America and had so many tour guides (some of whom were really good) that it’s important to note the worst one of all of them! I mean how Trusty managed to get that 4 year tourism degree he suggested he had we still ponder but it’s unbelievable just how little information this guy had to offer. He couldn’t recall the names of any of the native rainforest plants that we recognised; he had no idea how any of the falls had been formed; he nearly forgot that we were actually there to do some Cachaça tastings (I’m not kidding here!); we only went to half the distilleries that were told we would (and these were some of the lesser known ones too); and in fact the only thing he was apt to do on the tour was hold back a few palm leaves for us... and this he wasn’t much good at that either! Completely faarken useless I tell you! And he’s probably still wondering why we didn’t tip him!
Having given our ‘Worst Tour Guide on Tour Award’ to the lovable Trusty Tiago, the following day we were back in Botafogo. We had hoped we’d spend a day or two frolicking on the unspoilt beaches of Ilha Grande before making our way back to Rio but you know (there’s a little theme developing here if you hadn’t noticed), the tropical cyclone that had decided to taint our Brazilian experience was kind of out to get us that week so we opted to seek the shelter of the city instead. The next few days generally involved lots of indoor activities; we’d befriend randoms such as Jeremy, Cedric, Victoria, Steve and Matt (and others), with whom we’d drink copious amounts of Lorenzo’s caipirinihas (and other concoctions) at the Hostel (a pretty cool change for us really as we’d generally endeavoured to steer clear of the backpacker trail wherever we could); indulge in Beto’s all-u-can eat dinners (though this proved somewhat difficult for me in the last few days of our stay there as I found myself having to compete with 6’4” 17 year old female volleyball players for 2nd and 3rd helpings – you should have seen these girls and moreover you should see these babies shaking their booties in some out of pretty out of control movements... in fact you will as we’ll be adding a video of them to this last post!); generally have a great time; and on occasion even braved the rain to see different parts of the city.
On one such excursion we found ourselves out on a tour of a favela called Rocinha with a serial free hugger called Ara from Melbourne – irrelevant I know but I thought to throw it in just for our reference... and yes he decided to confront people with free hugs the very next day outside of the very busy Carioca metro station at lunchtime – big balls for a little Armenian-Australian (particularly given the size of the blokes in Rio). In any case the tour of this shanty town of some 300,000 inhabitants provided us with an important insight into the conditions in which a quarter of all Cariocans live. We learned here how 20-something drug lords run these neighbourhoods and saw first hand how teenagers armed with automatic weapons controlled the peace and protected their interests in these slums. This tour also highlighted how these illegal settlements – sprawling up most of the hillsides around Rio – have become an integral part of the economy as well as highly sought after inner city real estate – complete with residents seeking to build on top of one another and free electricity. Bonus... though pity about that ever so strong smell of shit – with no sewerage system, waste flows down the narrow pathways between the dwellings all the way to the more affordably priced rentals at the bottom of the hill.
On a subsequent occasion, having been waiting for days for a slight break in the weather, the moment we got a glimpse of blue sky we headed straight up to the top of Corcovado to see Cristo el Redentor (or Christ the Redeemer) – one of the ‘new 7 wonders of the world’... bet you didn’t know we now had ‘new’ wonders of the world wonder of the world did ya? It goes without saying too that the iconic 38m high statue of Christ protecting the city below is amazing (it was sculpted by a Polak – it’s true, look it up) but so is obviously the view down from this 700m high vantage. Still second as far as I’m concerned to that from Sugar Loaf but nonetheless breathtakingly spectacular.
The next Friday night, given that Rio celebrates the start of the weekend by having a big street party in the old town suburb of Lapa, we thought it was culturally imperative that we partake in these festivities. So, well primed for the occasion by the El Misti all you can drink caipiriniha special that evening and with our partners in crime Paddy the Irishman and Drew from Coffs (insert nasally accent here – ah yeeaaah!) we were soon mixing it up with the locals. As Irish luck (or should we say Paddy) would have it too, before we knew it we had all hooked up with a random Cariocan girl by the name of Ilena and proceeded to party the night away. And following many hours of what was a very authentic local experience we found ourselves still out as we welcomed in the new day.
Following one hell of a night out, with virtually no sleep and excited to be seeing the sun for the first time in what seemed like months, we wasted no time in heading out to the beach to nurse those hangovers and get our first taste of weekend life on the beach in Rio.
Only a few hours later however it was time to for us to experience the Brazilian passion for 'Futbol'. We’d always wanted to go to a game in Rio but as it turned out we really couldn’t have done very much better than to go to see Flamengo play at Maracana Stadium on a Saturday night! To give you a little heads up on what this means to Brazilians generally and perhaps Cariocans more particularly, firstly let me just state for the record that Maracana Stadium is the largest stadium in the world with a capacity of 120,000. Secondly, Flamengo is the one of the biggest clubs in the world with an estimated supporter base of approx 40 million. In fact it’s also known as the ‘people’s team’ having developed off the back of a players revolt back in 1911 and that its supporters would literally kill for their team – many have too as I understand it... in fact we were also told by one tour guide and staunch Botafogo supporter that she couldn’t openly display her team allegiance (a Botafogo tattoo across her back) in certain places around town as it wasn’t ‘safe’ for her to do so. And lastly, this particular game had been sold out for days. Suffice to say it was a big game. As it turned out of course our tour guide Ronaldo – no not that Ronaldo... he plays for AC Milan and this one would have surely had a heart attack if he had to run half the length of a field – happened to be running on Brazilian time... or some 45 minutes late and totally oblivious. What is it with these conscientious Brazilian tour guides? As a result we only just managed to get to the game just before kick off and due to this guy speaking Sean Connery Spanish with a real bad slur we had absolutely no idea what was happening as we were being ushered into this monsterous stadium. Once we had found our seats however, the energy of the crowd just consumed us... the chants, the waves, the flags, the atmosphere was something that’s just beyond description – absolutely electric. Despite this awesome vibe the next 90 minutes didn’t amount to the most exciting game of football that I’ve ever seen. In typical Brazilian style, the home team played a hero-like game with the odd unsuccessful break and pathetic shot at goal and had their defense broken by the stronger team on the night, Atlético MG, 3-0. With Ronaldo in tears on the way back to the hostel, the only disappointment from the night however was that we couldn’t cheer for the scoring team for fear of losing our lives.
Graced with sunshine again the following day, we were back out on the beach to soak up the vibe. But as luck would have it our last day ‘on tour’ wasn’t altogether without drama either.
Has to be said here too before I forget, that yes Alex, you were completely right! And whilst not a substitute for ‘dulce de leche’ (which rocks too!), Açai became a daily addiction of mine in Rio and something that I was deeply depressed about never being able to have again when we were leaving (though I will add that you can find the stuff all over Sydney as it turns out which is pretty cool). As this needs some explanation, my mate Zom – a crazy Brazilian who for all intents and purposes will never leave Clapham... must be the weather or something :) – when giving us some must do recommendations for Rio suggested that we’d have to try this drink (thing?) called Açai. Now, I guess if this had never been pointed out to us we would have never known any better but this stuff is the bomb! Açai, as my Google search indicates, is a superfruit! A palm tree berry, that grows deep in the Amazon jungle, has some amazing nutritional properties and is snap frozen and sent to virtually every juice bar around Brazil. Here it’s blended to make a dark purple slurpy that tastes of mixed berries and chocolate. Absolutely awesome! And something that you really just can’t go without having at least once a day, if not morning, noon and night.
The drama, as many dramas do, revolves around money – though perhaps more specifically the Brazilian banking industry? No, I’m not going to lecture you here about finance and how excessive leverage was always going to end badly (it’d probably go right over your heads again anyway :)). Rather, I just wanted to say that the Micky Mouse banking infrastructure in Brazil often results in interbank communications being down and if you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself penniless on one of these occasions you ain’t got a hope in hell of getting your Açai fix while stretching out on the beach – or do you? We happened to be confronted by this unfortunate tragedy on our last day in Rio, so we have some experience of this. Somehow though, after being approached by countless Açai salesmen (there are all sorts of salesmen and women on the beach... you really don’t need to go anywhere but the beach in Rio! Zom was right again?), we managed to come across one guy who was willing to negotiate in the only currency that we actually had – Argentine Pesos. In an ironic twist of fate, while no Brazilian bank would exchange this bankrupt currency, this buff Açai salesman took pity on my hopeless addiction and agreed to take my last 10 Pesos in exchange for this fantastic drink. And contented we were able to enjoy our final afternoon in Rio in glorious weather, finally able to catch some rays on Ipanema beach.
Following a great last night out at a local Churrascaria, where we ate arguably the best barbeque we’d had in South America, the drive out to the airport the next morning signaled the virtual end of our grand adventure. Having booked our flights home (as well as every other ticket) online and giving ourselves ample time to make our flight etc, we never envisaged having any problems. But as it turns either entering or exiting South America is always a chore. There at the check-in gate at opening, with flight number and booking reference in hand, we were being advised that we were in fact booked on another flight that we had already missed, at and altogether different airport, with connections that we couldn’t physically make? I mean how this eDreams booking reference didn’t match the flight number that we were given we’ll never know but there we were with credit card in hand, trying hard to relax those rectal muscles in preparation for what was surely about to come. Following a lengthy explanation of the situation however, you can imagine our relief when the bookings lady simply said “that’ll be alright, I’ll just transfer your tickets to this flight you should have been booked on in the first place”.
There was of course one last thing that happened as we were leaving South America which still makes my blood boil... and I still don’t know who it is that’s to blame. Whilst we’d put a couple of bottles of grog in the backpacks at check-in, we’d always planned to pick up some duty free wine on the way home. So prior to getting on the plane in Rio, we asked what the alcohol limit into Australia was and having been told it was 2.25l per person we proceeded to pick up a few Luigi Bosca Malbecs and Cabernets (Luigi Bosca is known for producing some of the best Alta Vista Malbecs in the world so we were obviously very keen to bring some home with us) and a bottle of aged Cachaça – approx $150 worth of stuff all up. Now, with a few hours to kill laying over at Santiago airport, when we thought we could maybe get another bottle or two to get us right up to our alcohol limit we caught wind of the possibility that we may not be allowed to bring any alcohol onto the plane? How this works we still don’t know but we were given an Australian Government brochure talking about how it was illegal to carry any liquids beyond 150ml on the plane and said something about how it was impossible for us to board the plane with our sealed duty free bags of alcohol given that we were transferring through Auckland? (Though this was later denied by Australian Customs so go figure). While I cried, caused a massive scene and cursed our insane bureaucracy, 15 minutes later we boarded the plane having been forced to gift the LAN cabin crew our fine liquor. And nearly beating the 75 year old man seated behind me to a pulp – largely on account of this event (though also because he was being entirely too belligerent for his own good) – some hours later we entered back into Australia.
It needs to be said here too that particularly in the last couple of months of our little world trip we had become blatantly intolerant of, and in fact went out of our way to avoid, that Australian arrogance that seeks to assert (at the top its voice and in a strange nasally drawl whilst bringing embarrassment to the rest of us) that Australia is the best place on earth. There are some other pretty farken cool places in the world! We know! And Sydney is so far removed from the rest of the world that it really does need to get over itself! So I guess it was with a degree of hesitation that we were returning home. Not even a week into being home however, we had our mate Phil, the Val d’Isere Kiwi, arrive on our (or more correctly Nic’s mother’s) doorstep and spending the next few days playing tour guide in our home town was the best way we could have hoped to reacquaint ourselves with this amazing city and to start to settle back in. Visiting many of our old haunts and seeking out those things that we’ve always loved most about Sydney (the food for example) was an important means of properly appreciating the diversity, richness and beauty of this place and getting over any of those regrets about being back. Most importantly however, with special thanks to Mick and Bel for hosting our welcome home bbq, it was particularly great to be able to catch up with everyone we hadn’t seen in so long and to feel so welcomed by family and friends.
Since then one could say we’ve entered into a state of ‘uniform motion’. Our pursuit of those full-time marketing and investment jobs has been unrelenting and we remain undeterred in the face of that convenient financial meltdown, which coupled with Australian industry generally moving into Christmas mode, has been making things somewhat difficult for us on this front. In response to these challenges we’ve recently taken up casual work and are now quite able to deal with the reality of these exorbitantly high beer prices here in Sydney, so all is good – our busy social schedule comes with a hefty price tag you know :). While my initial attempts at selling myself as a full-time Somellier were disappointingly unsuccessful (had they not been I would have already abandoned any thoughts of re-establishing myself as an Investment Analyst/Soothsayer for a more balanced and likely much more interesting life), I’ve managed to convince a French patissier to give me a go at being a part-time barista. And having constantly boasted how coffee in Australia has to be some of the best in the world (just crazy when you note that there are some 4 coffee schools training baristas in ‘Abstract Latte Art’ here in Sydney – I’m not kidding either) I’m pleased to say that mine is arguably the best coffee on Planet Mosman – if I’ve suggested too that Sydneysiders can have their heads up their arses a bit at times, you should see the sort of Mosman women I have to deal with on a regular occasion... Planet Mosman is definitely the centre of the universe as far as this mob’s concerned! Nic on the other hand has just started doing promotional sampling work which has similarly been proving a bit of a laugh... she’s recently been ‘mystery shopping’ which involves testing certain sales strategies which are being implemented in various retail outlets around town – all of which is riveting stuff! In any case, while many could have thought that following such a grand adventure we would necessarily have to come down to earth, we’re proving that being constantly busy results in a ‘special relativity’ that has no dramas defying Newton’s 3rd Law!
Lastly, a big thanks to all of you who have taken the time to read our ramblings and have virtually travelled around most of the world with us over the last 2 years. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog as much as we’ve enjoyed writing it and we look forward to inviting you on a subsequent adventure in the future.
‘Til then,
The Goulaszes
