Glamor and grit in Rio

Rio de Janeiro is one of the world's great cities. It's hot and gritty and mountainous and green and rich and poor and full of life and music. It's impossible to do everything in one visit, so we settled for hitting some highlights and soaking up the atmosphere.

Ipanema and Copacabana beaches: kilometers of smooth white sand surrounded by dramatic tall mountains and buildings. Deservedly famous in song. We saw the bar where "Girl from Ipanema" was written, and the fashion boutique next door run by the Girl herself. They may be cashing in on the fame, but the beaches are legit. I'm still finding sand in my shoes.

Christ Redeemer: one of the new 7 Wonders of the World. Impressive but too crowded. Great views of the city: we got to see it in night mode.

Carnival: not Carnival season, but we did see the barren expanse of the 700m-long Sambodrome where the main event is held each year.

Fútbol: Brazil's national passion. We went to see local team Vasco da Gama play Palmeiras from São Paulo. Not in the famous Maracanã stadium, but still impressive. The game went comically bad for the home team, to the point that the fans were booing their own players. Tough love. Vasco at least managed to score a point in the second half so it ended a less embarrassing 1-4. No riots, and unlike Argentina they serve beer in the stadium! Non-alcoholic beer.

We stayed in the Santa Teresa neighborhood, on a hillside with great views (great views are everywhere in Rio), perched over a historic aqueduct and a lively nightlife district. Santa Teresa is home to the Escadaria Selarón, a famous tiled stairway that is the life's work of an obsessed artist. He has tiles from all over the world and is constantly replacing parts of the stairway. (Correction: Priscilla corrected me that Selarón was found dead on these steps in 2013, possibly murdered)

Our last day in Rio was great timing: the Santa Teresa trolley service was finally restarted after several years of repairs. We accidentally found the initial celebratory free rides, so we hopped on board and rode downtown across the aforementioned aqueduct.

When we're in a big city, we try to track down showings of new movies that are subtitled in the local language instead of dubbed. Rio didn't disappoint, and we saw "Inside Out". We keep forgetting the title because down here it's advertised as " Intensa Mente" and "Divertisa Mente". Great movie!

We didn't do any poverty tourism or visit favelas. Yes, the taxis at the bus terminal tried to rip us off when we arrived since there was a taxi strike (protesting Uber!) but that's not too surprising (we took the bus instead). You want to be careful when you walk around at night, but in general Rio is less scary than it's reputation.

Working our way towards São Paulo now; we'll be in India in less than a week!

-Peter

Parks and Rec in Curitiba

Our first stop back into Brazil was Curitiba (It's pronounced Curichiba), one the greenest cities in the world. The city boasts some pretty spectacular statistics: 51 square acres of green space per inhabitant, 70% of their waste is recycled, and a super efficient transit system. 

We got to experience part of the transit system by taking advantage of their jump on/jump off tourist bus. It took us to all the major sights and parks. Some of the smaller parks are dedicated to the immigrants of the city. 

The Oscar Niemeyer museum, aptly named after the architect, was much bigger and emptier than we thought. Inside the museum are exhibitions mostly of modern art but it's the building itself that is the main attraction. After all, it is a giant eye (but you can't see out of it).

-Priscilla 

Food for Thought (in Uruguay)

Grappamiel - grappa and honey and probably some other spirits in there. Really nice in front of a fire to warm your insides.

Tannat - most prominent grape in Uruguay. Therefore, it makes a really great wine. It was the only red wine we had while here. 

Cheese - Colonia area is known for cheese thanks to the Swiss immigrants.

Fondue - they also brought fondue! 

Cazuela - soup cooked in a clay pot. The seafood one is particularly delicious. 

Chivito - think hamburger with steak instead of ground beef and an egg. These should be more common in the States. 

Cazón - school shark. Did not realize this was not a fish until we looked it up. 

Asado - an assortment of meat cooked over coals on a parrilla (grill), or bbq. Meatlover's paradise. 

Dogs and beaches in eastern Uruguay

We are in love with Uruguay. It's not cheap, but every place we've been has been fantastic. Relaxing atmosphere, great people, good food, friendly dogs. Our most recent destinations were beach towns. It's winter here, so they're mostly closed and very few people here.

Cabo Polonio: permanent population less than 100. Lots of empty summer houses. No grid electricity or water, but there's some from wind/solar and rain collection. Only two tiny restaurants and a bar open in low season, and we never did find the bar.

The town surrounds a lighthouse on the tip of a peninsula in a national park, so no cars are allowed. Entrance to the park is a bumpy 30-minute ride in a monstrous 4x4. We rode on top and tried not to drop anything.

Not much to do in the town, which is why it's so perfect. We went to the top of the lighthouse, watched the sea lion/elephant seal colony, hiked 10km up the beach to a scenic lookout, watched the sunset, and hung out with the hostel dogs. The night sky is crystal clear: my favorite memory is making glowing footsteps with the bioluminescent algae at the water's edge, under the light of the milky way. Will have to get our star photos off the good camera.

Punta del Diablo: not much to do besides eat seafood and play with our hostel's five dogs. Again, perfect. Our first night we walked down to the beach, but all 5 hostel dogs plus two neighbor dogs joined us. Our entourage waited patiently in the artesian's market while we ordered fish empanadas, which we were then obligated to share with them. Lots of strange looks from visiting weekenders. Only one dog (no one's dog, we named him "Esperro") followed us 2km to dinner, but he waited outside for us.

Today was strange. We rented bikes to go to a nearby national park, but Esperro and one of the hostel dogs (Lola) joined us the whole way. We were worried about cars so we took a tiny access road instead of the main road, and had to keep squeezing through gates and passing the bikes over. The dogs kept chasing cows and horses, and Esperro got stung by a bee from some hives we passed, but he shook it off. We got to the park and dogs weren't allowed, so we decided we were tired and came back. So, the dogs followed us for a total of 30km. Lola's been napping ever since.

It's hard to leave, but we're off on an overnight bus up the coast to Brazil.

Also, pictures added to our previous Uruguay post. It was post #50!

-Peter

Uruguay, a "vacation from your vacation"

I'm writing this from Cabo Polonia, a tiny beach town (<100 residents) without grid electricity or water, yet our hostel has WiFi for an hour each night! Can't seem to load the photos, will add them here tomorrow or day after. More on the beaches of eastern Uruguay later, we still have a few more nights as we make our way up the coast towards Brazil.

We've been in Uruguay almost a week now! Here's where we've been:

Colonia del Sacramento: small town (~2500 people) on the southwestern tip of Uruguay, across the bay from Buenos Aires. Founded by the Portuguese and traded back and forth with the Spanish multiple times. Old colonial fort and architecture, chief attractions are a lighthouse and 5 tiny museums (municipal, Spanish, Portuguese, naval, ...tile?) you can visit around the main square. Popular day trip from BA.

Estancia Galope: a horse ranch b&b! Owners Monica and Miguel pull out all the stops to provide a relaxing b&b experience on a backpacker-tolerable budget, offering "a vacation from your vacation". We had a fondue dinner (tradition of the region's Swiss founders), watched the milky way while taking cool-weather breaks from the sauna, and walked around the surrounding farms.

Montevideo: Uruguay's capital, surprisingly chill and low-key. We stayed by the main square in El Splendido, an old hotel with enormously high ceilings and a charmingly run-down style. We got the best room (the one they use for photos) overlooking the opera house.

We toured the opera house and two excellent museums. The Carnival Museum displays costumes from Uruguay's annual Carnival, the longest in the world at 80 days long.

We also saw a museum dedicated to the 1972 Uruguayan rugby team plane crash. Their plane went off course in bad weather and crashed high in the Andes, killing the crew and many passengers. Rescuers unsuccessfully searched the mountains for 10 days before calling off the search, presuming them dead. The survivors lived at the wreck for 2 months, braving avalanches, crafting cold weather clothing from the seat covers, scouting for a way out of the mountains, melting snow for water, and reluctantly resorting to cannibalism. Two survivors were able to hike out and after 10 days finally reached the outside world for help. On the 72nd day of their ordeal, the 15 remaining survivors were finally rescued.

Our last day in Montevideo we rented bicycles and cycled 30km on the Rambla, the pedestrian path along the ocean.

-Peter

Good Aires

Back from our vacation in Santiago, our first stop was Buenos Aires.  It was kind of a shock to be back on the road with long bus rides, staying in hostels with shared bathrooms, and not having our friends around all the time. BA was either the best way to get back in our travel groove or the worst way to adjust because the city is so energetic with architecture, futbol, tango, and probably much more.

We spent most of our days walking around the city gazing up at BA's magnificent buildings. We also made our way to El Ateneo, a theatre turned cinema turned bookstore.  You can even sit in the boxseats and read a book.

Buenos Aires architecture is..... eclectic. It was like Buenos Aires didn't know what to do so it just copied French and Italian neoclassical forms because it was popular at the time, then added some art nouveau to be cool, and then squeezed a bunch of modernist buildings inbetween. 

Peter insists the historical area is like a mashup between NYC and Paris - they took all the ideas of Paris but then built them twice as tall.  

The neo-gothic basilica of Merecedes Castellanos de Anchorena and the super modern apartment of Corina Kavanagh is a good example of the architectural juxtaposition.

Corina Kavanagh was a very determined daughter of a wealthy family of BA.  But because her family wasn't from any notable European lineage, or "old money", she was looked down upon by the aristocracy.  Unfortunately, she fell in love with the son of Mercedes Castellanos, a Catholic noble who strongly opposed the relationship. She managed to end the relationship by sending her son to Europe. Corina vowed her revenge and reinforced it with concrete. 

Mercedes had built a church for her family across the street of their mansion because the main church 3 blocks down was too far away and this way she could she her pride and joy right from her home.  Corina waited until she went on vacation and bought the land right in front of it with only the intention of obstructing the view from Mercede's mansion. She had to sell much of the family's land to build her 33 story tower of revenge but it was well worth it. The only way to have a good view of the church is walk down the alley next to Kavanagh Building Tower; the alley is also called Corina Kavanagh street. 

We got to experience Argentina's religious pastimes: futbol and tango. 

The ever popular River Plate game that was occurring that weekend was super expensive and it looked like the only safe way we could get in was to go with a travel group. Apparently the only way for Argentines to get tickets is to be part of the teams' club and even to get into that is a 7 year wait. We decided to go to a different game, Arsenal de Sarandi vs Gimnasia. It was really cool being in the stands shouting each time the referee didn't make a call in our favor (Arsenal) while the barra brava sang songs and banged on their drums. We knew a couple of their songs - thanks DC United!

Tango. It is everywhere. 

On our last day we had wanted to visit the San Telmo market and the gaucho market. We started off with the San Telmo market because it was right next to our hostel. We were not ready for how massive the market was. Before we knew it, we had walked from our hostel to the historic center which is about a 1km long, not including the side streets. We never made it to the gaucho market. Of course Peter did what he does best: buy stuff.

-Priscilla