Brazil - Rio de Janerio & Paraty

We left Iguacu and took an internal flight east to Sao Paolo. The city was not on our itinerary per se. However we got good views from the plane. Sao Paolo is one of the largest cities on the planet with a population of in excess of 20M. We have never seen a city so huge. It seemed to go on forever.
We landed and took our transport and headed straight out to the country.

Paraty is the opposite to somewhere like Sao Paolo. It is really small and quite remote. We drove 5 hours from Sao Paolo airport to get here. The idea was to see the rural side of Brazil. We took a boat for the day. Above is a view back onto the village as we sailed out. We were able to pull into various small coves and jump off the boat to swim in the warm water and enjoy a few cold beers on deck.

The streets of Paraty are narrow and cobbled and closed to traffic. The houses are old colonial style, brightly painted. All in all this is a really laid back kind of place.

L exploring the streets.

A must do in Brazil is to get to a football game. The country is football crazy. We went to a game in the Maracana Stadium. This is the largest stadium in the world. It holds 102,000 people. The game was between two of the biggest clubs in Rio - Flamengo and Vasco.

Yes, that is a Leinster shirt in the picture..

The game was fast moving and exciting. The fans sang the whole way through.

The score at half time was 1- 1.

Athmosphere inside the Maracana stadium was great. The Fans really know how to party. The game was between two of the biggest clubs in Rio - Flamengo and Vasco. Flamengo won 2-1 courtesy of a penalty midway through the second half.

Concrete Modernistic styled Cathedral in central Rio .....

D in downtown Rio de Janeiro .....

This is the Sugarloaf mountain from the midway cable station. You can see the top cable station in the background.

Views of Rio at sunset from the sugarloaf mountain.

View of downtown from the Sugarloaf.

This is the classic view of Rio. You can see the Statue of Christ the Redeemer on the Corcovado mountain in the top right corner of the image. One dissappointment was that we did not get to go up here. We did try, but all roads up here were washed away in the recent floods and landslides. The afternoon we arrived in Rio was a deluge. 153 had been killed in the city in landslides in the previous couple of days.

The various neighbourhoods of Rio are separated by high sheer mountains. Many of the main roads linking these districts are via tunnels through these mountains.

This is the famous Copacabana beach. We stayed just off the beach and managed to catch Leinsters Heineken cup Qtr final victory on ESPN in a bar here. This was huge surprise. Rugby is not played in Brazil!!

That's it from Brazil.

Next stop Peru..............