The end…. (of our World Cup Adventure in Brazil)

Days 13-15 – Belo Horizonte – surviving the favela with the help of some amazing new friends

It’s the morning of our most exciting airport arrival yet.  We actually have someone meeting us at the gate!!  Granted, we have never met Wagner’s brother Leo, nor do we have any idea what he looks like (beyond dark skinned male approximately 50 years old – a description fitting about 90% of the people waiting at the arrivals section), but we’ve given him a very easy task of spotting us… 2 white 30 something females, one blond, one brunette, both wearing England jerseys.  His recognition is instant and ours follows seconds later.  The other pleasing fact is his English is a whole lot better than we had incorrectly assumed it might be, so the car chat for the rather long journey from the airport flows easily.  Turns out he spent a couple of years playing football in Australia in the late 80s, hence his excellent English – and no doubt, fondness of Australians 🙂  He has a great sense of humour and keeps us laughing most of the way.  He’s also a retired police chief, so definitely a helpful guy to know in town.  He’s not entirely familiar with the area where we’ve booked our apartment on airbnb though, so frequently has his friend on the line (and presumably on google maps) lending a hand.  Once we get within spitting distance, we revert to the Brazilian way – stopping every hundred meters or so to ask an amigo on the street for some directions.  This method has its pros and cons – people are generally very helpful, but the more you ask, the more conflicting the directions seem to become!  Our best source of info turns out to be the guy who actually stops to load up the address on his ipad and show us exactly where we are and where we need to go – now that’s a friendly random!  When we finally arrive in our street, there are mixed emotions.  We are of course happy to have found it on the one hand, but on the other there’s the realisation that this location looks decidedly sketchy – and it’s pretty obvious that Leo is nervous to be leaving us there.

Things start to look up when we enter the front door and there’s an English guy, Alex, sitting at the breakfast table.  Turns out he’s renting the other room in the apartment for the duration of the tournament – and having been there for over a week already, is well in the know on the route to the stadium, buses to town and things to do.  We breathe a collective sigh of relief.  Not only is there an English speaker who actually knows what’s going on (and hasn’t been mugged or murdered yet), but we’ve now got a guy who is also going to the game, who can effectively escort us to the stadium.  Leo seems relieved about this too, and we say our thank yous and goodbyes and make arrangements to see him again for dinner.

The walk to the stadium takes about half an hour.  Of course we could have shaved off 5 minutes had we been prepared to walk through the favela that bordered our block of units, but the unanimous decision is sensibly made to walk around it.  Alex wonders if he’s been over-cautious by doing this each time, but I’d say it’s far from it.  *Favela 101: Any old random is not welcome to just traipse through them.* The weather is surprisingly warm (we’ve been told to not necessarily expect it to be hot here, and it was certainly fresh when we arrived at the airport, so we’ve followed Alex’s lead in wearing jeans – ROOKIE ERROR!) By the time the game kicks off, we’re dripping in sweat from our sun drenched spot in amongst all the English fans.

Even though, like Australia, England are also already out of the tournament before the match has even commenced, the fans are in good spirits, jovially singing “England’s going home” in full voice amongst other songs.  We are excited to see Frankie Lampard has made the starting line-up, but less than thrilled with a few of the omissions – it smells a little of waving the white flag before the match has begun, but on the flip-side, it’s not like the more traditional starting 11 had exactly achieved much this tournament, so what was there to lose by blooding more youngsters and trying something different?  It’ll also be interesting to see this Costa Rica team who have surprised everyone by being the group front-runners rather than the wooden spooners.  Throughout the match, as we strain to see past the giant guy in the row in front (the key disadvantage to being in a section where people stand-up), both teams have their chances but neither are really able to put it away.  England look frustrated and Costa Rica look like they’ll just be happy with a draw – and you can’t really blame them for that, as that’s all they actually need.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised then when the final whistle blows and the scores are still at 0-0.

We’ve tentatively arranged to attempt to meet up with Alex again after the match at the spot where he thinks he might be meeting up with some other English guys he’s met at earlier games.  Before you know it, we have a group of about 16 with varying degrees of people actually knowing each other.  We do have a local with us though, so he leads us to a little shop to purchase a traditional snack, before we head off to nice hostel bar nearby.  This plan suits us to a tee, as the city is not actually particularly close to the stadium, and our apartment is close to the stadium.  We enjoy some drinks and chat and the match, before excusing ourselves to head back in time for our dinner date.  They seem a little disappointed that the only girls in the group are leaving, but what can we do – sometimes it’s tough to be popular.

View from the hostel bar

Leo and his wife arrive a little late due to some washing machine dramas, so we’re quite ravenous by the time we get to the restaurant strip.  Alex also joins us for the evening – a bit hard to communicate he’d actually already eaten some leftovers after Leo very kindly extended the invitation for him to join us.  Leticia takes care of the ordering and we have a delicious Brazilian feast of varying meats and even the occasional vegetable.  Throw in a couple of Caipirinhas and it’s a very pleasant evening all round.

Dinner with our new friends

The next morning Wagner’s friend Marco picks us up to take us for a day trip to Ouro Preto.  It’s a couple of hours drive out of Belo Horizonte so we’re feeling extremely lucky and grateful that he’s making such an effort.  He’s a trumpet player and teacher – and is currently on holidays from the teaching aspect, so has free time in the day which works out perfectly for us.  Ouro Preto was the original capital of Brazil and is simply stunning.  The photos really don’t do it justice. You have to walk throughout the super steep streets to really soak up the magic of this place.  And that’s exactly what we do.  Marco is conscious that his English isn’t very good, but we continually assure him that its waaaaay better than our Portuguese, and besides, we manage to work everything out in the end – and it’s not like any of us are in a pressing hurry!  We are enjoying meandering about and also take the time to go inside a super unique church and check out a museum before enjoying a delicious traditional lunch. After lunch we go on a bit more of a cruise about town, this time with the aid of the vehicle – those steep streets sure can get pretty tiring.  The toll they have taken is evidenced by Jenna and I falling asleep in the car on the way home – it’s a good thing at least Marco manages to stay awake.  Arriving back at our favela, we’re sure he must be sick of us by now (not that we’re not great company of course, but having to play tour guide in a language you’re not comfortable with must be rather taxing), but instead he insists on coming back later to pick us up to head out to some bars in the Santa Teresa area.  And we’re certainly not going to say no to that!

Santa Teresa is a cool area of town with a good vibe and some live music on offer most nights.  We settle on one of Marco and his wife’s favourite spots – a place with a sort of Argentinean theme to the menu – and what a funky menu it is!  One of the waitress’ kindly explains the menu to us in English and it all sounds delicious.  We order an appetiser to share and eagerly await the arrival of Marco’s wife Renata before ordering some mains.  The beers here are going down pretty well too.  Well for the beer appreciator amongst us, it’s a very welcome change from the Brahma anyway.  Renata’s wife arrives and is a bubble of positive energy.  She doesn’t speak any English, but does speak Spanish.  What follows is a couple of hours of ludicrous communication between 4 people speaking 3 languages.  I speak to Jenna in English, we combine this with some charades to speak to Marco, who speaks in Portuguese to Renata who then responds to me in Spanish… and so it continues.  A great night, with some truly lovely people and very scrumptious food.  On the way home they even give us a bit of a night tour, telling us all the things we should come back and try to see the next day.

The multilingual dinner crew

It’s a good thing we’ve had the tour, and sucked some information out of Alex, as for our 3^rd and final day in Belo we’re left to our own resources.  We pack up our gear and get the bus into town, stopping first at the municipal gardens so a bird can poo on us.  We don’t have a whole lot of time, so pick a walking route to traverse across the city that takes in a few touristy sites and gets us to Savassi – a place we’ve been told has a lot of bars and is good for watching the football.  Today’s games are USA V Germany and Portugal V Ghana.  It’s a very open group, with the potential for any 2 of the teams to progress depending on results, which makes for some pretty fascinating dual screen viewing.  In the end Portugal and Germany are victors, though goal difference sees the US go through ahead of Portugal – never have you seen fans so passionately celebrate a loss, but given the circumstances, I can hardly blame them.

At the conclusion of the match it’s time for us to head back to the apartment and jump in a taxi to the airport.  Only trouble is we’ve not been able to get in touch with the apartment owner at all, and we were hoping she’d do the taxi ordering for us (there’s no way I could direct someone to that apartment confidently in English let alone Portuguese!)  So again, Marco comes to the rescue, coming to meet us at the apartment with a taxi driver in tow.  We feel bad that we’re nearly 30 minutes late – owing mostly to the bus stopping to let someone off every 50m, but have sprinted the few hundred metres from the bus stop to the apartment to try to make up for it (only pausing briefly to get by the scary dogs).  He’s super relaxed about it though, and even the cabbie doesn’t seem phased – that would NOT be the case in Sydney!  All in all, we’ve had a great experience in BH, definitely enriched by our interactions with the lovely locals (kindly set up by Wagner, whose partner Clare I used to play soccer with) and equally importantly, we’ve managed to survive the favela.  Next stop Rio!

Days 16-19 – Rio de Janeiro – Order and Progress (and celebrating a hat-trick of world cups with my favourite Elvi)

Rio is another airbnb experiment, but this time it’s looking a lot more promising.  It’s in a good location nice and close to Copacabana beach, the room is very large and well presented, the shower the best I’ve had in months, and the host is hilarious.  She speaks at the rate of knots in Portuguese, but having originally grown up in Italy, is an expert on the hand gestures too – so somehow I understand almost everything she has to say, and even manage to be understood when I respond in my new language of portugish (or maybe its spaniguese?)  The only downside to this apartment is the lack of breakfast, as finding breakky spots in Rio is a whole lot more challenging than we could ever have imagined.  This is partly why we are so late in getting a proper start to our first day there, and consequently getting stuck in the most insane queue-athon of a Christ the Redeemer excursion.  Despite buying a ticket and a spot in the queue from someone who had already queued for 2 hours, it’s still another 2 hours before we even get on the vans, which then take a good 45minutes before we’re dropped at the next queue.  The volume of people there is borderline insane.  Shoulder to shoulder we creep out.  Then attempt the photo… then creep some more in a mission to get to the edge and actually see the view.  It takes what feels like an eternity, but we’ve already queued for so long that it seems ridiculous to leave without properly seeing it all.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible statue perched in a remarkable spot, but there’s just way too many people here to properly appreciate it.

is this meant to be the view?

Just a bit crowded

On the plus side, the crazy amount of time this has all taken does mean we get to experience the sunset up there.  In the end, we actually get full nightfall too – the buses back down seem even more hopelessly organised than the buses up.  They have 3 lines going to different destinations, yet what is clearly the most popular destination, has by far the least buses allocated.  It’s absurd.  And to make matters worse, every 3^rd bus or so that comes up, leaves completely empty.  There are literally thousands of people stranded up here, and buses are departing empty.  Order and Progress my ar$e – these guys couldn’t organise a p!ss up in a brewery!    The crowd starts to get increasingly agitated.  People are chanting COPA  CABANA COPA  CABANA…. but it’s making no difference.  Others take matters into their own hands and skip over the fences and launch themselves on the buses.  And you can imagine what the thousands of people who’ve been queuing for over an hour for said buses make of this!   It’s almost at riot level by the time we finally get on the bus – eventually getting back to our apartment around 8pm – 7.5 hours after we’d started out.

I’m a bit tired from the whole ordeal, but super excited to shower and head out for tonight’s dinner.  Dinner has been booked by Mark and Scoots – the American friends Sam and I made at the World Cup in Germany in 2006.  Unfortunately Sam wasn’t able to make Brazil, but for the 3 of us, we’re celebrating seeing each other at a 3^rd world cup!  We also each have someone new to introduce –I bring Jenna into the fray, and they have a good friend from back home Adam travelling with them this time.  Dinner is at an awesome treehouse restaurant in Santa Teresa.  It would seem Mark is suffering from the plague – Rio has definitely broken him (to think he’d looked like such a healthy Elvis on the Today show earlier in the tourney), but boy has he made an effort coming out tonight, so we certainly can’t hold it against him.  Having spent the entire day trying to get to Christ, I opt for the “sacred lamb” on the menu and it’s a blessed choice.  The wine, cheese bread, heart of the palm and chocolate ganache are also all delightful here.  Mark does his best but in the end has to excuse himself and head back home before we’ve finished – this probably constituting the most sensible decision he’s made throughout the entire tournament… as only more damage was going to be done from this point.

Delicious Dinner in the treehouse

For the 3 “healthy” ones amongst us, the plans are to hit up the street party in Lapa.  Wow.  Talk about mental.  Music is blaring and people are drinking everywhere… in the streets, in the pubs, in the gas station, on the footpaths.  To make things even more insane, cars are still attempting to drive through.  13 year old kids are mixing up toxic cocktails on their little carts.  And we thought the Sao Paulo street party was wild.  Time flies when you’re having fun, and I reckon it must be about 4am by the time we decide to head out of there.  Not to go home of course – there’s more drinking to be done at the beach bars on Copacabana….the sun is just about rising by the time we’re tucking into bed.

Partying it up in the petrol station.. as you do

Lapa street party

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s no surprise that we’re a little slow moving the next day.  We do have an important day of football watching planned though – it’s a packed schedule of South American round of 16 clashes – first up Brazil are playing Chile, and then Colombia are playing Uruguay in Rio.  We don ourselves in the Brazilian attire that we’ve accumulated, and head off in search of a place nearby to watch the match – given we’ve managed to miss kick-off, time is of the essence.  But first a quick stop enroute to pick up a manky pizza slice and get shat on by another bird.

The first place we come across that has a spot for us in view of a tele is one of the beach bars…. But we only give that until half time before deciding we need to move to the backstreets if we want to actually enjoy this one with some locals.  The next place we chance upon has plenty of locals and a very large screen.  It’s not until we are inside the fenced off area though that we realise everyone there is wearing the same t-shirt.  And it seems like some kind of Christian convention.  On the plus side, I don’t think they have it in them to actually ask us to leave… however when the scores are still locked at the end of regular time, we kick ourselves out and pull up a chair outside a bar close by instead.  Tension is building but still no-one can break the deadlock.  This one is going to go all the way to penalties.  When the shootout begins, it suddenly becomes apparent that the take-away place next door is a second or 2 ahead of the TV at the bar, so everyone shifts over to huddle around that one.  The roar of the crowd that reverberates around the entire city when Brazil scores, is only matched in intensity by the silence when Chile do.  We’re really hoping for a Brazil victory here… not only for the obvious partying that will follow, but we’re also not sure what kind of mayhem will result if they don’t go through.  They certainly weren’t too happy about the disallowed goal from the handball call earlier in the match.  Thankfully they do get up though, so the party can continue.

After popping back to the apartment for a quick wardrobe change (there’s only so long one can tolerate bird poo fashions), we decide we’ll head to the Fanfest for the Colombia Uruguay match.  Even just the walk along Copacabana beach to get there is incredible… there are literally thousands upon thousands of people EVERYWHERE.  Singing, dancing, blowing horns, the works.  It’s a good thing they’ve closed the street to traffic as there’s certainly no room for any cars here.  The Fanfest here is a huge screen literally on the beach – quintessential Rio really.  There are plenty of people so the atmosphere is great, but not so many that it’s claustrophobic.  Jenna picks up an admirer who tries to plant a kiss 3 or 4 times in the space of 10 minutes – after which we strategically exit stage left.  Colombia score 2 awesome goals (and do their funky celebration dance) to send the Uruguayans packing.

At the conclusion of the match Jenna is starving (she hadn’t indulged in a dodgy burger from Bob’s at lunchtime like I had), so we set off in search of anywhere nearby that has a table.  With literally millions of people out and about, we figure we can’t be too fussy.  A random Asian restaurant is the lucky winner of our custom.  I let Jenna choose as she’s the hungry one, and we go for a chicken curry, some rice, mixed vegetables and some pork dumplings.  After about half an hour the curry and dumplings come out, the latter of which we hoe into, before looking over expectantly at the wait-staff for our rice and vegetables.   Surely they realise we want this with the curry?  They’re hardly desert items…  Despite several requests for the arroz (we’re prepared to forgive the late arrival of the vegetables on the grounds that we are in Brazil), it’s about another 30 minutes before our waitress comes over to inform us that they don’t have any rice left.  Well, apparently they don’t have any white rice, but we can order the $15 rice with veges if we’re prepared to wait another 30 minutes.   Order and progress. Order and progress.  Of course we agree to this, because there’s more salt in the curry than Uyuni, so we need SOMETHING to help get it down.  Hours later, we’ve finally received and eaten all that we ordered so it’s time to get outta there.  This is the first and only time we subtract the optional tip that has been added to the bottom of the bill… and that’s really saying something.   Whilst we’d originally had plans of meeting up again with Mark, Scoots and Adam, all 5 of us are pretty shattered so we make plans to rendezvous at lunch the next day instead.

Sunday morning we’ve decided is time for an excursion to Ipanema.  We’ll go for a stroll, source some breakky, have a little dip and do some people watching on the beach.  I just love how much is happening on the beaches here – from the football, to the volleyball, to the girls prancing around in their insane bikinis, to the vendors flogging their wares – there really is never a dull moment.  I think I could spend a week just sitting there soaking it all up, but alas, there is not enough time for that on this trip.  The sourcing breakky part of the day again providing way more of a challenge than it should do. Put some cafés here guys!  We eventually come across a juice bar that is serving some food, and order a couple of juices and some bacon and egg sandwiches – simple fare to put a dent in the hunger so we can get on with the morning, or so we think.  Unfortunately this egg turns out to be the beginning of the end for Jenna’s health for the rest of the week.  Iron-guts up to this point, we suspect salmonella poisoning is the likely culprit here.

But she bravely soldiers on and we make it to Arab to meet the boys for lunch and watch the Netherlands Mexico match.  The middle eastern buffet is a nice change up from the usual food, and the beers are going down well (for me at least). We have to crane our necks past the big headed guy to try to see the screen (what is it with big people always being at the front?) but manage to catch most of the key moments in a match that the Netherlands really just scrape through by the skin of their teeth.  We have just enough time for one last drink with the boys at a beach bar before saying goodbye and sit there watching the parade of sad faced Mexicans hiding under their sombreros walk by.  Jenna is also looking a little sad though – her stomach is not having a good time of it at all, so after we’ve said our goodbyes we don’t waste too much more time in heading home for the night (initial plans of a slap up fancy meal to spend the rest of our BRL are shelved, and instead I get pizza delivery for 1 and save the cash for some new sunnies at the airport).

Enjoying the last beverage together (of this world cup)

For our last day in Rio, we intend to do a little souvenier shopping in the morning before being picked up and taken out to Chez de Cox for the remainder of the day.  They have rented an amazingly large house in Barra, complete with a MASSIVE screen in the home theatre room, a 5-a-side football pitch and a swimming pool – what more could you want?!  The kids have been prepped that we’re footballers and are super keen to get out on the pitch from the moment we arrive.  We promise them we’ll get out there later, and first sit back to watch France Nigeria, with a dash of Wimbledon at half time.  Once France have sealed victory, it’s time to put on the proper shoes and get out there ourselves.  The teams are split into boys vs girls – it’s 4 on 3 and they do have North Sydney’s leading goal scorer on the squad (6 year old Ashton), but we’re quietly confident all the same.  It’s great fun to be back out there playing, and true to the world cup style, this is also a very open match – with scores being locked at 11 apiece on full time.  The cool headed girls victory in the penalty shootout causing a bit of a dummy spit from little Neymar – it’s been a big day though.  After cooling off in the pool it’s time to head around to the local restaurant for some dinner and the next match.  It’s Germany up against Algeria and we’re expecting a boring one-sided affair, but it turns out to be yet another great match.  Once concluded, there’s just enough time for ice-creams, charades and Neil’s mojitos before our taxi arrives to take us to the airport and we say goodbye to Brazil.   I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my 5 weeks here – a beautiful country, full of beautiful people (inside and out) – and I feel certain that one day I’ll be back (with some better Portuguese!