Adventures part 2

Oi, tudo bem?

Hope you're all well. I'm in (probably) the most beautiful city of the world right now, Rio de Janeiro, lucky me :) It is impossible to do justice to this city with words, but I'll do my best to describe it a little.

I'm staying with the mother of a friend from mine, who I met in Shanghai, on a very good location, on the main shopping street in Ipanema, with a view on the sea, the lagoa (the lake) and the Christ that overlooks Rio. Amazing. It's also much safer then in Salvador, where I was before, I wouldn't have a problem walking home alone here. People speak english (!!) and they are so friendly. I'm really happy I finally got to Rio :)

Now to describe the beauty of this city... The beaches, the mountains shooting out of the ground, the buildings and the people... it's seriously like a fantasy city haha. Even the favela's look pretty at night, with the twinkling lights shining over the lagoa. The first night we went to the Modern Arts Museum in the center and afterwards we watched the sunset on the harbour with the Sugarloaf on the background.

Only really went out once here, but we went to a really nice club, that used to be a vintage furniture shop and is still decorated like one. Down stairs had a live band playing old samba songs and upstairs had a DJ who was trying to imitate Tiesto, but still, thre was very nice relaxed admosphere. Very mixed crowed, but because it was so ridiculously expensive, only rich Carioca's (people from Rio) and tourist's/expats.

Before all this, we did something even more adventurous though. We tried to take on Chapada Diamantina, which is a wildlife park 6 hours west of Salvador by bus. Dear god, those mountains got me down, they were "muito forte" as our guide told us. We went into the wild for 3 whole days, me on my allstars/havaiana's and backpack that's acutually not at all suited for stuff like that, but more for nice airplane rides to easy destinations. It was incredibly beautiful though. The mountains were all plateau's, and eventhough it sucked to go up and down the whole time, the views were beautiful. We visited quite a few waterfalls, and peeked down a huge cliff (have to show you the picture, can't really describe it) that looked down on the tallest waterfall there, the Fumaca.

We slept outside the whole trip, in caves and under the stars. I have never seen more beautiful stars in my life, but sleeping in caves is just scary!! :p Especially since our guide threw a big ass (yes, dangerous :p) spider way to close to us just a few hours before we went to sleep, and told us afterwards: actually you should watch your step here, the snakes here like to come out and enjoy the sunshine on these rocks. Luckily I wasn't the only one who had trouble sleeping considering these creepy-crawly's, 2 of the other 3 guys i went with also admitted they checked their sleeping bag a few times :p

As I was the only girl who went on the trip, and there was this macho Brazilian outback-Jack who went with us too, ofcourse my bag was a lot lighter by the next day. Which I actually did not appreciate that much haha, I almost started a cultural conflict next to a slippery river... So in the end I just let them help me. Didn't like it though. And ofcourse I tried to be a tough girl haha:P but i still fell quite a few times. My feet still hurt :p The most embarrising one must be the one where I twisted my ankle 1 hour before we arrived back in Lencois, the city we were staying at. I couldn't walk anymore, so our poor guide decided to carry me back as far as the next waterfall and then have a horse pick me up. As you can imagine it was not just my ankle that was hurt :p

But it was worth is, I would not have wanted to miss out. But next time will be different :p

The volunteering project was over quite quickly. The first week we got to do a lot with the kids, which was really nice, but I didn't feel very usefull to be honest... Then the second week, after another girl from Germany had joined us, they found a job for us: sorting out receipts. Aparently people in Salvador don't donate money, they give their receipts, probably has something to do with tax reducing? or maybe a way to show their support, as in: more receipts=more support from the local community=a reason for more subsiding/permanent subsidising of the local government? We thought of a lot of reasons, but still didn't manage to figure it out.... Anyway the job description was basically: sort out 2010 from 2011, get rid of 2010, find 25 of  the 2011's and staple it together. 5 hours a day. As you can imagine we liked the first week better.

I'll tell you more about Rio, the Iguacu Falls and Sao Paulo next time, with some more pictures of the really touristic places we have yet to visit :)

Tchau Menina's e Menino's,

xxx and love from Rio