Rio do Janeiro, Isla Grande, Campos do Jordao and Sao Paulo

Sugarloaf!

We arrived in Rio at 8am after our extremely early flight. I was slightly apprehensive about this city, people had told us to be careful and the travel blogs we usually read had said it was the only place they felt unsafe at times. There is a huge divide in wealth, which was very apparent when walking down the streets and seeing the amount of homeless people in the same areas as people in expensive suits in flash hotels.
We took an Uber to the area we were staying, found the building, and rang the bell. No answer. Tried again. Still no answer. Not ideal but there was a cafe down the road for breakfast and with WiFi, to try and get hold of the apartment owner. After multiple messages and phone calls, an hour and a half of waiting and still no reply, we ended up finding a nearby hostel which kindly let us store our bags with them so we could actually get out and see some of the city.

Aqueduct now turned into a tram line

Free of our 30kg burden, we started on the first attraction nearby, the Selaron Steps. The story behind them was that Jorge Selaron, who was an artist, started trying to make his neighborhood a bit nicer by tiling the steps in the colours of the Brazilian flag. He spent every free moment he had adding tiles, and once he finished the steps he started on the walls. People started visiting the site and giving him tiles from all over the world to add to the collection. Sadly, in 2013, the artist was found dead on the steps in suspicious circumstances, and whilst the site is now famous and visited by thousands of tourists each day (it also appears in the Pharrell and Snoop Dogg music video for 'beautiful'), but nobody is maintaining it which means it is starting to wear and some tiles are now missing.

'Brazil I love you' written by Selaron

Selaron

We stopped back at the apartment, where the guy was now answering, giving us a chance to drop off our bags and get the keys. We had a chat and a coffee with him, and got some advice on places to go and how to get there.
We couldn't go to Rio without going to visit Christ the Redeemer (even though we still can't work out why it's so famous, it's not the biggest Christ), and it seemed an Uber was cheaper than a bus ticket to get there. We were dropped off at the entrance to buy a ticket which gives you a time to get the shuttle bus further up the hill. We were expecting to have to battle the crowds, but were extremely surprised to find we could actually move around. After chilling with Mr. Jesus for a while and taking advantage of the generous free WiFi he was offering, we went back down the mountain to Santa Teresa, a quiet leafy neighborhood with some cute cafes and artisan shops, and from there walked back to the apartment.

OH LORD JESUS ITS A JESUS

Not a bad view for the son of God to have

The cute neighborhood of Santa Teresa

The following day we had booked a cycling tour of Rio, run by a Dutch company. The guide, a French man, was new to the job and was constantly being scorned for not doing things right. We were given bikes and told that cycling was fairly new to Rio, so other road users may not be so forgiving. It also didn't help that the cycle lanes were 2 way down one way streets, which confused every other pedestrian and road user. We cycled through different neighborhoods, our first stop being an extremely fancy graveyard for the rich and famous, including Carmen Miranda, the guy who built the first airplane to take off by itself, and one of the most famous musicians in Brazil which neither of us had heard of. We then cycled down the coastal paths, passing beaches with lots of people running and using the free outside gyms- the Brazilians like to work out. We stopped for a fresh coconut with a view of sugarloaf hill- a famous landmark in Rio which was nice but not as nice as the tiny monkeys in the nearby trees. After a circuit of the main areas of central Rio, we made our way back to the starting area of Copacabana (home to the hotel where the rich and famous stayed in Rio until everyone else wanted to be near them so built high rises and a main road around it. We researched it and apparently the idea for the song came from staying here but was written about the Copacabana in New York City).

Our noble steeds

Grave of Carmen Miranda

Pretty fancy corpse houses

Coconut stop

Funny little tree dwellers

SO SMALL

We had heard the views from the top of the Sugarloaf hill were pretty amazing at sunset, so we got an Uber to the bottom of the hill, walked up through the forest of the neighboring hill to get to the cable car which would take us to the top. Extremely touristy but it was a good view, Rio is definitely one of the prettiest cities from above. Despite its aesthetic appeal, I was still wary of the city so to lower my blood pressure we decided to head to a less crimey place to the lesser inhabited Isla Grande, or big island. 

On our way up the Sugarloaf

Views from the top

This, we were told, was a 2 hour bus journey and a ferry ride away. We managed to get to the bus terminal and shared a taxi with an American girl to the port, where with 10 minutes to spare we grabbed something potatoey that resembled a lunch and waited for our ferry. Around 5 minutes later, a medium sized speedboat pulled up, not the ferry we had expected, and it cost three times as much, but did get us to the island in a quarter of the time so we were feeling pretty smug about life.

Winning in the fast boat

This island which claims to have some of the best beaches in Brazil (Lopez Mendez beach was apparently in the Vogue top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world, although I haven't found the evidence for it), but is also new to tourism. It had previously been a leper colony, and afterwards became an island for prisoners until 1991, but the promise of a nice beach was worth overlooking the risk of being attacked by any remaining limbless criminals.
There are no paved roads on Isla Grande so getting around the island is limited to hiking or boat taxi. As I had come down with a cold, my usual energy for a 2 and a half hour hike was absent so to Jonno's relief we took one of the boat taxis to Lopez Mendez beach. To be fair, Vogue might have been accurate, it was definitely an upgrade from Brighton.

As beaches go.... its a good one

Sandy pup

The next day was forecasted to rain all afternoon, so we decided to go for a short hike and hopefully be back in time to miss the worst of the weather. It was definitely overcast when we started, and soon after we started walking we bumped into a girl from Bournemouth who, similar to us, had intended to go on a backpacking trip around south America but hadn't managed to leave Brazil in the 2 months since she started, partly because she became involved with a man from Rio (which did not end well) and also because she admitted she was too indecisive to plan a route herself and didn't really like moving around a lot, so it was probably doomed from the beginning. She was heading to a waterfall she was told about, so we ended up walking with her which was further than we intended. We arrived at the waterfall, which was pretty average for our standards, but blew this girl's mind as this was her first waterfall of the trip. The water was refreshing though after the humidity during the hike.

Old Aqueduct along the way

The water is falling

                                                                                                                                                                 
We were due to leave the next day, which was just as well as the downpour of rain was pretty relentless, although unfortunately there was no way of avoiding the 20 minute walk to the pier with all our bags, and then being battered in the face by the rain on the boat ride back. We had checked into a hostel on the mainland for the night as the bus left early the next day, although even when we arrived at the hostel we then had to go back out in the rain to get food. A particularly soggy day.
We had an early bus the following day towards our next stop, Campos do Jordao, an initial 6 and a half hour bus, a 2 hour wait and another 2 hour bus and we were finally there. We arrived at about 6.30pm, took a taxi to our accommodation, which claimed to be a 'chalet' but was actually a standard hotel room. We asked where we could go for dinner, and were directed to an area not too far away. We soon came to realise there was nothing about this place that seemed like Brazil at all, the only giveaway being the alien language. It was colder and the buildings definitely had a German/Swiss theme going on. And all the restaurants were offering fondue. Bizarre.

Not expected in Brazil

Crocodile restaurant, includes crocodile mouth entrance!

Slightly more exposed cable cars

Due to our time constraints, we had one day to fit as much of the Campos do Jordao sights as we could. We had to discount some places as they were too far out, and as there was no easy way to work out the buses, even the nearby ones were a struggle. Also, unfortunately for us, the 'everything shuts on a Monday' rule also applied to a Tuesday here, so the cable car was not in use, and our hour walk up a hill to see one of the famous buildings was fruitless as the gates were shut. We did get to see a monastery (even though half of it was under construction), had a walk through a forest, and saw a quaint but unimpressive man made waterfall, Ducha do Prata. We also became famous over breakfast when a Brazilian couple wanted to record a video with us where we talk about ourselves. The woman then heard I had a cough and informed me I had to cover up my neck and drink lemon and honey otherwise I could get Tuberculosis.

Ducha do Prata

Stunning

Glamorous 

'Silent Forest' walk

In the Monastery (note the pup on a bench, far more interesting)

We walked 2 hours to see this through the bars of the gates

We had one more day to get ourselves to Sao Paolo for our flight to Cuba, which meant we had no time to explore Sao Paolo, although I don't think we missed out on too much. We were not too sure what to expect from Cuba but it would be nice to get back to somewhere where we had half a clue what people were saying to us!

Rio at sunset