Travelling, Rio and more madness!

17th May 2012

Travelling, what madness! Thank goodness we are in days when the world is much smaller but there are stll drawbacks to modern travel! My first Adlantic flight was an interesting experience, you could have made it into a comic sketch. The gentleman infront of me had his seat fully reclined for the duration of the trip. This made eating my two meals an interesting experience, as I trying to lean forward to eat my food kept hitting my head on the back of his seat. In the end I had to go to the precarious practice of bringing the food on the plastic fork a great distance from my dish to my mouth. I was pleased I only dropped a bit of it on myself, evidently I think I have the eating skills of a 4 year old... maybe I still do. I struggled to sleep, probably got 2 hours, however i did watch the adventures of tin tin and half of war horse... which made up for it! We arrived in Rio from Paris (the small flight from London to Paris was uneventful!) at 5.50 Brazil time. That meant we had a day to explore Rio  before flying out to Manaus at 8pm roughly.

What I have learnt is that travelling with the elder generation has it's privilages in Brazil. As an elder citizen my travelling friends managed to get  us through customs in Brazil first, even though I myself am not elder citizen. My travelling friends use of the language managed to work magic! The only issue was that due to my lack of language it left me open to attack from one of my travelling friends, who as a joke tried to set me up with a travel attendent. He failed but he did manage to embarass me greatly. He assures me this is the way Brazilian humour works, I am not to sure...

We hired out a car for the day and proceded to explore Rio. What an amazing place!

It truly is  a beautiful city but boy is it mad! It is no wonder this city has produced F1 greats Ayrton Senna and Rubens Barrichello. Driving in the city is just sheer madness, the policy is - if there is a gap, no matter how small, I must go through it! Weaving from sidde to side and buses exceeding the speed limit meant there were many near-death experience. In summary you get an adreniline rush in a car in Rio, but for all the wrong reasons!

We saw the sites, but only from a distance as the traffic was not the best. By the time we started travelling in our car it was rush hour - which needless to say was not nice. However we went to some quieter spots overlooking the city which were great. I drank chilled coconut milk and had lunch at a pay-by-weight resturant. I had lotts of Brazilian food there - it was all nice! I can't remember all the brazilian names for the food so that is why I am just saying it is nice.

I am very lagged at the moment so if none of the above makes sense I am sorry! What I have seen of Manaus so far is amazing, but ill save that for another post.
Sorry there is no pictures in this blog, I have been having trouble uploading photos because of the connection, I will try to get some up soon.

Thanks for all your prayers, I am here  safe!

Dan