Rio - take two

We left Ilha Grande on Friday morning. The boat in was full of hoards of Brazilian tourists determined to get away from Rio for the 4 day weekend. I am assuming they are all illegal cariocas or don't vote out of choice because everyone else had to stay in their home town until Sunday for the second round of voting.

I just have to interupt Rio take two with my Idiot American story. So, this very childlike thing decides to come and join me for dinner. The two girls I was with move swiftly away. I'd had too many caipirinhas (see a theme) to notice straight away. The little boy (25 yrs old I later found out) is from North Carolina and is an undergraduate in Economics. So already we had little in common - but nevermind, I can be open minded.....

Instantly he starts complaining about the low standards of education in Brazil. When I asked him "compared to where?" he could only answer "The USA of course" - like that was the only other place in the world. When I pointed out that education levels here are far higher than many other South American countries he continued his rant mainly with regards to tourism standards. I commented that I thought the problem was that the real (Brazilian currency) was overvalued and that they needed to devalue it back to 2009 levels so it's cheaper for foreigners again to boost tourism and he said "but then wouldn't they lose so many jobs as they wouldn't be able to export their goods such as coffee any more". Hummm - economics student I asked???? Brazil has poor education standards??? Oh, and he doesn't vote, as why would he do that? And who is Dilma? And he's lived here for 8 months. Bring back the Kiwis!!!!!!!!!!!!!! At least the only complaint there was Dilma sounding like a man.

Back to Rio. We had a really fun night out in Lapa starting at Sams friends friends flat for drinks and ending in a very dodgy bar around 4am. A day on Ipanema beach where we witnessed a few helicopter rescues - someone drowned (we later heard) - not a good day. And the day before halloween we had a party. "Carnage" is all I can say and you can see photos above. And then I went embora off to airport, for a terrible journey - two flights and a bus to get to Bonito, which is, thankfully, quite bonito - albeit with awful tourism staff.....