Sunday, September 04, 2005

Survived Rio

After a long couple of nights in Copacabana drinking and partying we went for a nice sightseeing tour. I took Gabor to the take off and then we went along the top of the mountains surrounding Rio to the big Christo that stands 700m above the ocean below. We took lots of photos and then decided to head back down to the big city before it got dark. Stupid me did not look at the map before leaving and about 15 minutes later we were driving through a favela in the back streets of centro, one of the worst spots in Rio. After some adrenilin pumping sights we finally made our way back into the beach of Copacabana. we stayed one more night there then went and stayed with Marcelo who lives on the top of takeoff in small little hut. We did some sightseeing of the beaches to the west and it was very beautiful. Marcelo decided that he wanted to take us on a favela tour the worst one in town just next to the takeoff. It was 1 am in the morning and we got stopped by the police and searched even before we entered the favela. He then persisted and took us into the deepest darkest streets of Rio untill we went past anotehr police man going down a one way street the wrong way. They quickly pulled out the automatic guns and stopped us dead in our path. Once again there was a full on search all of us out of the car hands in the air, a full body search and also the car inside and out. The police asked what we were doing in the favela's at this hour of the morning and Marcelo told them that we were Aussies and he wanted to take us on a tour. Well the police told him that he was absolutely crazy and that we should not have been there at any time of the day let alone at 1 am.. Once we got out of there alive we ended up at a street party with hundreds of people and we had a couple of drinks before returning home still in one piece. We now just did the 5 hour drive to Sao Paulo were we are staying at Menins house so gabor can have one last party before jumping on the plane tomorrow to return back to the great land of OZ..