TNT Travels

Ipanema

We stayed in Ipanema which is right next to the other infamous beach, Copacabana.

If your budgies have gone missing we have located them in Ipanema. 50% of people are guilty of smuggling budgies. It’s rife here. Ipanema is a hotspot for male couples sporting more lycra than the Rio Olympics.

To put the amount of budgie smuggling we saw into context, think about the colossal impact on a nation that a Brazilian drug lord could have had if he applied his trade to small parakeets rather than drugs.

This could be a turning point for El Tel, serving as outfit inspiration for when he is back in The Bulls Head (good job it won’t be winter).

To be fair, it wasn’t just the men. Women were mad for lycra wear too. Apparently 10 o’clock at night in a restaurant wearing just a swim suit and a fascinator is perfectly acceptable. Anything defo goes in Rio. Not sure if it’s down to carnival or the norm.

It also seems acceptable to ride around with a skeleton on your back or dressed as Predator. The dog on a moped in Bogota seems so normal now!

What I find thoroughly inspiring is the fruit counter in a supermarket being accessorised by booze!

Le Pule

A great little restaurant just near the square in Ipanema. Food and service is 1st rate. 1 meal is enough for 2 as is the cocktail!

On another night, we booked a table at Aprazivel, up in the hills of Santa Teresa. A popular restaurant with great panoramic views of Brazil. Fortunately you can reach it via Uber rather than a cable car.

Unfortunately, it took 1hr 50mins for our mains to arrive. I ordered a starter, the only one they didn’t have. I then ordered a main but they didn’t have my 1st choice or 2nd. We then asked them what they didn’t have. Apparently, just the 3 things I wanted. 4, if you take into account the bottle of wine I ordered, 5, if you throw in the dessert that Terry asked for.

On the bright side the restaurant had a lovely view!

We got a bit of light entertainment when a lady on the neighbouring table seemed to be massively concerned by the giant moth dive bombing her like something out of the dambusters. El Tel decides it’s funny to jump up, point at her leg and go “shoe-shoe” flapping his arms about. Needless to say she freaks out and is screeching like a banshee because she hates birds and insects with wings (which we learned after). She ends up in an ‘el tel’ bear hug after forgiving him for being an eejit!

During the day, the skies are full of helicopter rides over Ipanema, Copacabana, Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain.

I was happy viewing all of these tourist attractions from the ground. After the last helicopter ride I went on in Vegas, for mine and the girls 40ths, I vowed never to go in a helicopter unless it’s part of an air sea rescue mission

Our hotel was a 10min walk up a windy (as in bendy not flatulent) hill, on route up to a Favela. Again, we felt totally safe and were kept entertained by the constant thud of bass which is a regular Friday/ Saturday night occurrence.

At the bottom of the hill was a great little locals bar. It had a lovely feature wall separating it from the neighbouring bar.

It felt like being on a mini freight container.

We got chatting to an older chap there who was Brazilian but had lived in LA for 8 years. He started the conversation by asking if we liked poetry. I’m not sure he realised we are more your dirty limerick type people rather than Keats.

Beach Club

Food was fab and very reasonable especially when you throw in a couple of beach chairs and a brolly.

We sat people watching for pretty much 5 hrs. Just one week after the Super Bowl we were privileged to watch another global sporting event …, the World championship finals of selfie taking / taking photos of your friends. Competitors are mainly 20/30 something females taking photos of each other or if you are a bigger schmuck, a boyfriend being dragged along the beach taking photos, which are then carefully vetted before having to retake them.

Evidently the trick is to lean against a palm tree, one hand behind your head and not look at the camera. Just look wistfully out to sea. Repeat this pose for around 30-40 times and keep checking your mate still deserves to be chief photographer. Then as soon as the shoot is over, leave. So in fact, your day bared no resemblance to being in a beach club, it’s just a photo shoot on the sand.

Got to love social media and the false reality. Shame really as many people there including us had a great day sitting and chilling, eating and drinking and not worrying how we looked (see photo above).

Obviously whilst travelling for a couple of months you have to watch the pennies/pesos/reals/dollars so El Tel offset the bar bill with a bit of security work

The Carnival FINAL

Welllllllllll! 4 days before the carnival final, I went to download the tickets to find an email saying they had been cancelled. I knew our trip had been too good to be true and I can’t blame Andy Williams. I had a word with our hotel reception to see if they could recommend an alternative ticket company. He said he had a friend that worked for the carnival and would give him a shout. Fast forward 1 hour and no tickets. We then found a broker in Copacabana called Bookers who were outstanding from start to finish. If you ever find yourself in Rio during carnival, they are based in the Atlantic hotel. We got our tickets there and then (in under 15mins) and had to only eat into one weeks budget to pay the extra cost! Never book tickets with riocarnival.net. Riocarnival.org is the best, hands down. Thankfully we booked the original tickets on credit card so should get the money back!

It took us an hour in a taxi to get to the sambadrone because El Tel didn’t fancy the 25min metro ride.

Not sure he was rocking the proper carnival look but £6 in a shop 2hrs before carnival and I bet Antonio Banderas was sh1tting himself!

We had an undercover seated area a few rows back from the route were the procession happens. Think sitting either side of an Olympic sprint track if they ran 400m straight. What wehadn’t realised was that there were 7 finalists representing different ‘blocks’ in Brazil, each taking one hour to travel the distance from 1 end to the other (passing 12 grandstands in total) and each block/district having about 6-7 floats ( I call them floats given my lofty status as Lymm May Queen 1983) and they have about 200 samba dancers in between each of the floats (whereas I was proceeded by 12 beefeaters, aged about 7yrs old trudging around in front of me wiping their snotty nose in their sleeves).

What neither of us were prepared for was how mindblowing the whole occasion is. It is off the map! The atmosphere is nearly as good as the Principality Stadium when Wales beat England. It’s just full on fun and dancing from 10pm, yes, 10pm until 6am. We got there at 9.15, thinking we were late and then realised there was only 5 out of a potential 12 in our little seated area so we were early!

And then…….a married couple from Munich danced in to our little zoned off area. Neither of us are sure about what it is and our ability to meet German male duos (refer to our Medellin blog if this comment is lost on you). Anyway, this dynamic duo ran a hairdressers in Germany, one dressed as a transvestite for the occasion with amazing hair, headdress and an @rse you could crack walnuts with. The other was just cool as sh1t. El Tel reckons he has free hair cuts for life if he ever goes to Oktoberfest. He is also convinced that their salon is called ‘Blow & Go’!

This blog will never do the carnival justice. I will eventually merge all the videos of the processions but ho1y sh1t it blows your mind, especially the samba girls who could shake their booties like maracas. The ‘floats’ were spectacular! A life size whale, a giant turtle, tumbling acrobats, aardvarks and in the grandstand, El Tel living his best life.

Us lightweights called it a night at 5am. This is us at 5.50am arriving back at the hotel. Sunday was a loooooooog day.

Santa Terese

A lovely boho little area full of cafes and bars, mainly kicking out jazz music with a lot of live music being played too.

We booked a table at the Explorer Bar which overlooked the street below where the locals were having a jamming session in the middle of the street.

Taxis had to weave around them but they were too engrossed in having a great time to notice. The only downside for us was being caught in the middle of the clash of the street music with the live band in the restaurant.

QR codes

In Brazil, there is a huge love for QR codes instead of physical menus which could be the thing that tips Terry over the edge during our 7.5 weeks away. Apparently all he wants is to read a proper bl00dy menu! The rant entailed “What happens if you do not have your phone, drop your phone, don’t do roaming, are the same age as my mother …”

Hire car

The day after carnival we had one job to do, collect the hire car at 2pm. All went swimmingly for us but not the woman that face planted in the garage collecting the car before us.

We are now in possession of a white Chevrolet Onix ready for our early drive down to Angra dos Reis to catch the boat to Ihla Grande. I have downloaded the map of Brazil in an offline version via the maps.me app. This handy hint was gleaned from other blogs where people had nightmares with wi-fi dropping out just at the moment when they needed google maps the most. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t always go to plan!

Next part of the trip: the 2hr drive to catch the boat and just the small matter of my ability to navigate us out of Rio and not end up in any favelas.