Rio again

We flew back to Rio for the last three days to relax and enjoy ourselves prior to our return. We stayed in Ipanema, which is a great place for beaches, sights and walking about. Certainly where I would go for a first visit to Rio. (Ipanema or Leblon. Copacabana is nice and central - but run-down, everywhere else wouldn't give you that beach experience). We sat at the pool atop the hotel and I went bright red. Which was just a bit annoying. T was not in the least sympathetic, which was fair enough.


Corcavado

We went back to the handbag shop T had spotted earlier and bought me a pair of shoes and no handbag. Go figure. Other than that we relaxed. Which was nice.

Our hotel couldn't put us up for the third night (actually, they might have been able to, but the reception staff were so useless that we gave up asking - their loss and, as it turned out, our gain) so we had a scout around for somewhere else to go. I spotted a nice looking place on Laterooms and so we went. It was fantastic. It's up in Santa Theresa (where the tram goes to), so is probably not suitable for a first visit - as the main attractions and the beaches aren't all that close. However, it was lovely and quiet and there was a superb local bar just at the end of the street.

We got upon our last day and took the bus to town. We escaped the bus with our lives and wandered to the cathedral (it was the closest bit of shade to shelter us from the midday sun)


Inside the cathedral

After wandering briefly and posting some stuff home, we had lunch. Opposite or table in the square was a sign which was representative of many that we had seen all over Brazil on this trip. It is some kind of message of hope for the forthcoming Obama presidency in the USA. In Salvador, we saw T-Shirts with a picture of Barack on it and the slogan "Yes We Can" underneath. It's really interesting to observe how the event seems to have had impacts (and positive ones at that) all over the world (or, at least, the bits of it I know about). What a contrast to the experiences I had back in November 2004 when I was in a very despondent Chapel Hill, North Carolina after W had re-claimed the presidency.


Obama-mania

We left Rio on a BA flight at 23:25, homeward bound. Another adventure was coming to a close.

Recife

We had a straightforward flight to Recife and took a quick taxi ride to our hotel which was on Boa Viagem beach. We checked into our 70's themed room and took an instant dislike to the place. The beach outside was pleasant enough - in a Vila Velha kind of way - but wouldn't be relaxing in the slightest.


Busy beach

We decided to get a taxi across to Olinda (the other side of Recife) and had our dinner there. It was a poor man's cross between the bustle of Salvador and the architecture of Ouro Preto. We watched sunset over Recife;




Sunset over Recife

We ate our dinner and then took a taxi back to our hotel through the rank smelling streets of Recife. We decide to get out of Dodge.

This proved to be a little more problematic than we expected due to the fact that the woman at the GOL airlines desk insisted that we pay a small fortune to change our flights. I had a bit of a hissy fit (T got the brunt of it, for the heinous crime of wanting a cup of coffee) and then we decided to go back to the hotel. Rebook the flight and ignore the GOL woman. I redeemed myself somewhat with T by getting a refund for the flights we no longer needed.

We were heading back to Rio for the last three days - staying in a hotel that we had been to before on our last trip.

Goodbye Recife - we didn't give you much of a chance - but you blew it anyway.

Salvador - ii

We liked Salvador. It's got a bit of an edge to it, but it's manageable. It felt to us a bit like Cartagena in Colombia, which we had loved during our last trip.

Salvador is a major, bustling city, but the central part has undergone a tourist-led revival. We were staying in the Pelorinho (the old bit in the middle) which was pretty much completely touristy.


Tourist telephones

We also saw some more Samba drummers. A bit more presentable that those in Buzios, but equally keen.


Oludum drummers

During the rest of our stay, we completed the laundry; got some stamps; visited an old convent - now a top class hotel; saw more funicular elevators; had sundowners on the roof of the hotel; ate in a lovely Italian restaurant and generally chilled.

We arose to get our flight to our last location - Recife.

Salvador - i

We got a pre-paid taxi into Salvador and went straight to our hotel. I'd stayed in the same hotel in October 2007 after I'd sailed across from Tenerife on Bark Europa. I'd really liked Salvador and wanted to show it to T. I'd also really liked the hotel and it was the only one that we had pre-booked from the UK (apart from our first few nights in Rio).

I'm not the only person who likes the hotel "Casa do Amarelindo"; it's the #1 hotel in all of South America, according to Trip Advisor. T likes it too - it's a hit.

Our first afternoon was spent in the Cantina da Lua bar/cafe, which sits beside one of the main squares in the old town. It's a great way to get to see the vibe of this area, as the world passes you by as you sit watching it. We even saw a couple that we had met in Vitoria, but they had passed by us before we recognised them.

We did little but chill out on our first day.

Day two (Tuesday) saw us much more active. We located a lavanderia and dropped off our washing; went to the market to look at tat, look at the cellars and watch some Capoeira; wandered through the rather run down "cidade baixa";


Faded elegance

We got a funicular railway (inclined plane) back up to the tourist bit;


Top of the lift

We bought some anti-itching cream for our mossie bites and some shampoo for T; swam a bit; went to a condomble blessing ceremony (in the first slave-built church in Salvador);


Condomble

We had a pizza and some beers in a bar right next to a square where a band was playing and ... went to bed.

Belo Horizonte - again.

We eventually set off from the hotel and got to the bus station in Ouro Preto to find out that the next bus was full and that we'd have to wait an hour and a half until we could leave. No problem, that's what books are for.


T, waiting for a bus

We got on the bus and had a reasonable journey back to BH (apart from the overheating alarm going off and us having to slow right down each time we started to go up a hill). We arrived at the bus station and went to get tickets for the bus to the airport (our hotel is near the airport - we have an early start). We'd missed one by five mins and didn't fancy hanging around BH bus depot for an hour for the next one. So we got a taxi to our hotel.

Our driver was rubbish. Capping off a really annoying journey, where I had to tell him where to go all the time (like I knew!) he then tried to stiff us into paying for him to go back too. This is quite a common tourist scam and we were foolish to not check with him when we got in that we'd just be paying the fare on the meter. (In our defence, we've not had a single driver try this on us all trip and so we kind of got a bit lax about it.) After making it clear to the bloke that we weren't born yesterday and a masterful stroke of command by T, demanding - and getting - our bags from the boot so that we weren't held hostage to his outrageous demands, we ended with a compromise that suited neither of us. He got an extra tenner from us, but that was nothing compared to what he demanded. He stayed around the hotel lobby bemoaning to anyone who would listen (precisely nobody) for a bit, then drove off.

We checked in.

The room was OK, just. The road outside was busy and noisy; the hot water wasn't; the food was about 90% salt; the "Games Room" had a concrete floor and was directly above our room and the corridors seemed to echo and magnify any sound. Including people leaving at 4:00 am.

And it rained all night.


The road, rained upon

We got a reasonably priced cab to the airport and boarded our flight to Salvador. Even the possibility of seeing Brasilia from the air was ruled out by the appalling weather we had. We weren't in the best of moods as we arrived at Salvador airport and collected our luggage.

Unfinished Business, finished

What were you doing back in Belo Horizonte I hear you all ask. Surely it wasn't just a nerdy need to travel for 13 hours on a train, was it?

No, it wasn't. We had unfinished business in Ouro Preto and, by golly, we were back here to take care of it.

We organised a transfer from BH to Ouro Preto and arranged to stay in the Grande Hotel. It's an Oscar Niemeyer designed concrete square box, the only 'modern' building in Ouro Preto, which has been a conservation area for many years (hence the capital of Minas Gerais being moved to the newtown of Belo Horizonte)

To get a view of the town, we stayed in a suite (which isn't as expensive as it sounds) and we have a lovely two-level apartment with a sitting area and balcony downstairs, a wooden spiral staircase and a mezzanine, bathroom and bedroom upstairs. It is very nice and light and airy. As seems to be the style in Minas Gerais, it is decorated in the seventies, but, somehow, this works. The bathroom is worse than in the Ouro Minas, the bed is OK, the windows don't fit properly but none of that matters. It just feels nice to be in. Hats off to Oscar.


Ouro Preto from our balcony

Anyway, staying in Oscar's house wasn't what we came here for. We had business to attend to. Whilst we were on our tour here a couple of weeks ago, T had spotted a ring that she liked. She'd decided against buying it, mainly because the rest of the people in our tour group were standing around as she was looking at it and trying to decide. Of course, as soon as we were on the minibus heading back to Belo Horizonte, she decided that she really did like it. So we decided to come back. The nerdy train thing was just a Brucie bonus.

After looking at the ring, going for a beer, looking at the ring again, deciding on buying it and then going back for another beer, I was sent to pick it up and pay for it. This I did whilst T sat chatting to a couple of English lasses that we met in the bar. The only English people we've met so far.


Business ... finished

We stayed in the bar until we could hardly stand then stumbled back to the hotel. I managed to fall down one of the hundreds of pot holes and scraped the skin off my knee. Nurse T cleaned it up for me, bless. Apparently I was a bit of a handful and insisted on sitting on the balcony when we got back. T finally steered me into bed where I lay comatose and snoring, apparently. I woke up feeling fine and T feels rough after a practically sleepless night. I've negotiated a late check-out and, as I type this, T is catching up on her badly needed zzzz.

Later this afternoon we'll be getting the bus back to BH and staying in a hotel near the airport, ready for our morning flight to Salvador via Brasilia.

The only ....

The Ouro Minas Palace Hotel is on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte and is a 25-ish storey tower block across the road from a shopping centre. Every piece of hotel branding has (in Portuguese) "Ouro Minas, the only 5 star hotel in Belo Horizonte" emblazoned on it. I reckon that somebody opening another 5 star hotel in BH would probably bankrupt this one, as the rebranding bill alone would cost thousands.

To say the least, we were disappointed. This is, by quite a way, the most expensive hotel on our travels and it simply wasn't worth it. The rooms are dated, the bathroom was probably bleeding edge in 1979, but really showed its' age. The staff were excellent and the common areas were OK, if a little underlit. We had something to eat (as the toasty on the train didn't really keep the wolf from the door) which was perfectly nice.


View up the tower

Breakfast was not included (which is really unusual) and wasn't worth the 8 quid each that we were charged. On the train, we were debating whether to stay there three nights or not. We didn't.

Choo choo train

We got up early to catch our train to Belo Horizonte. After a brief scare, we got a taxi and were zoomed to the train station. Boarding was quite straightforward and we managed to stow our luggage safely and take our seats as the train boomed its' hooter and we set off at a crawl.


Our train

We dozed for the first couple of hours as we headed due North to get to the river that was to be our companion for the majority of the journey.


Rio Doce

At about ten o'clock I walked to the buffet car to try to buy some food. They were most apologetic, as the ovens were fully used heating up some food that we must have slept through the ordering process of.

I returned empty handed. Luckily we had bought some cereal bars and water from a petrol station the night before, so we didn't starve.

Our entertainment for the trip was both external with the amazing scenery and internal with the comings and goings of various passengers and the antics of kids, one cute little girl in the seat in front of us was great value when she wasn't asleep. I'm sure her milk was laced with cachaca, as every time she was fed, she fell straight asleep. She was very well behaved for nearly all the thirteen (13) hours of the trip.

The train was reasonably comfortable (we were in Executivo class - I didn't see what the cheap seats were like). We were the only non-Brazilians in our coach (and, probably, on the whole train) it was great fun and we didn't resort to books or ipods for the whole trip. (except for T doing a sudoku all by herself).

After another aborted attempt to get food, I finally got the impenetrable opening hours of the kitchen right and got us a couple of Misto Quente (cheese and ham toasties). They were edible. Just.

As we drew into the station in the dark we were back on full arrival alert (transportation hubs are usually busy, bustle-y affairs where being alert is quite important) and T secured a taxi from the jostling throng as we got our taxi to the splurge that was the Ouro Minas hotel, the only 5 star hotel in Belo Horizonte, as they keep on and on .. and on about.

New Year

Well, New Year Brazil style. We weren't sure what to expect, so we made sure we had quite a big lunch in case getting food later proved to be tricky. That was a good move.

We wandered out at about 8pm to see what the score was and found the place completely deserted. Not a single shop, bar or restaurant was open. Going back to the hotel, we asked the people there whether this was normal and the reply was in the affirmative. The next beach along would be a bit busier, we were told. After a brief siesta we toddled off to see what "a bit busier" meant.

It meant that there were a reasonable number of people (not thronging crowds, but a steady stream of people) walking to the centre of the beach area to watch the fireworks that would be going off at midnight. We walked all the way up to the centre, bought a beer from the ubiquitous bloke with a polystyrene box and walked back to our hotel where our complimentary little bottle of fizz was chilling in the fridge.

We went to the roof of the hotel and were slowly joined by other guests. There were probably thirty of us up there at midnight. As midnight fell, we were treated to several firework displays. The Iate clube (that's Yacht club to me and you); Ilha do Frado; Ilha do Boi (2); Praia do Camburi and Vila Velha. The last two were by far the biggest and were obscured by geography. The Ilha do Frado one went on for about 45 mins and then started again at 1am. It was pretty.

There was a song sung at midnight, not Auld Lang Syne, and there were muted "Happy New Year"s (Feliz Anno Novo). The two guys next to me shook my hand, but that was about it. I'm sure that the beach party was in full swing, but we were taken by surprise as to quite how quiet the night was.

Just after 1am we left the folks on the roof (who knows, maybe they were waiting for us to leave to start the party proper!) and went to bed. A quiet New Year by any standard.

On New Year's day we moved back to the Comfort hotel and checked into a lovely no smoking room with a lovely view of the beach. T couldn't sleep properly due to the smell of smoke. The ash tray in this room didn't have a no smoking sign!