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110 Degrees with Pete and Cath

Rio de Janeiro and the Costa Verde Oct 17, 2009

In the past 3 weeks we’ve been travelling down the Costa Verde (Green Coast) from Rio de Janeiro to our hammock in Florianopolis where I’m currently swinging gently and typing an update! Tough times.

If each leg of our trip had to have a theme then this last one might have to be rain. Unfortunately the constant grey skies and drizzle has been a dampener (chips the pun) but it has by no means silenced the fun alarm.

The trip from the Pantanal to Rio was not short by any stretch of the imagination (48 hours) and gave us an appreciation for the size of Brazil. This time didn’t come without its own memories however as Stompie found out the hard way. As the story goes (or at least the way he tells it, you can draw your own conclusions...) he drifted off to sleep on the second night of our 36 hour bus trip and proceeded to dream of someone special and their romantic time together. Clearly in his dream things were progressing nicely and it was when he placed his hand on the leg of the nice Brazilian guy sitting next to him in the bus that things really got interesting! Needless to say the Brazilian guy got off at the next bus stop and although embarrassing, Stompie thought this story too good to be kept a secret and we laughed our way into Rio at his expense.

The City of God is all it is cracked up to be and so much more. As one of us might have mentioned, it’s like Cape Town on steroids! The many jungle-covered mountains rise right out of the sea and the city wraps around them like a meandering river of urbanisation. It was also in Rio that we met up with Brother Robbie and it wasn’t long before he settled into the life of a Travelling Wilbury like us. He’s promised to grow his beard until we head home in December and I (Pete) wait with baited breath to see if it turns red like mine!

In another stroke of luck, they announced that Rio had won the 2016 Olympics on the afternoon that we arrived. In true Cath style she turned and said: “Wow, the Winter Olympics, that’s amazing!” Where Brazil would host the ski-jump and slalom race in a country almost entirely covered in tropical jungle remains a mystery!

For the announcement Copocabana beach was covered in Brazilian G-strings and the party atmosphere was amazing! Stompie soon found the tequila stand and so we began the slippery slope to a morning hangover.

Other highlights of our time in Rio included watching a local derby soccer match between Flamengo and Fluminense with a capacity crowd of 80 000 people! As Robbie was overhead saying: “this makes Chelsea v Fulham look like tea on Sunday!” The atmosphere was quite indescribable and we were soon jumping on the seats and swinging our shirts above our heads in true South American style!

A morning spent hang-gliding over the city will without doubt be a memory not soon forgotten. A nervous 8 “Gringo’s” met on the take-off ramp which literally drops you off a cliff above the skyscrapers of Rio. We all went through many emotions that day including, excitement, fear and finally denial. It’s not natural to run off the end of a mountain with nothing but some canvas strapped to your back in the hope that it’ll ‘catch!’ To top it off, the 20 second introduction by a crazy Portuguese-speaking adrenaline junky is hardly the preparation you need. But the feeling of flying silently 500m over a massive city like Rio is beyond description and we won’t even try. We have attached photos in the hope that they might tempt anyone reading this to give it a go.

After Rio we made our way down the coast stopping off at Ihla Grande, Trinidade, Ihla do Mel and finally at Florianopolis. We held a massive Stompie farewell party in Ihla Grande in customary ‘dress-up’ fashion and the video evidence that Zack managed to accumulate is gruesome at the very least.

Pips also left us after Ihla do Mel and so although picking up a hairy hobbit (Robbie) we’ve lost the dwarf (Stompie) and the Blonde Bombshell (Pips) which means we’re back down to six. Thankfully Matt has moved his flight later so as to include the wine region of Mendoza, Argentina which is coming up in the next 2 weeks!

So, off to Iguazu Falls tomorrow which we’ve been really looking forward to and after that into the beautiful expanse of Argentina that lies to the south of us. Onward to Cape Horn we go.