All over the world many of us are glued to our screens watching the Fifa World Cup in Russia. Four years ago I was lucky enough to get tickets to the World Cup in Brazil and an added bonus of having the tickets was I didn’t have to pay of a visa. Over the many years of travelling getting to Brazil was one of the longest flights I’ve ever taken. It took my friend Steph and I at least 36 hours from Australia to get to Brazil’s capital Brasilia. When we arrived we literally got to our Air BnB quickly freshen up and headed to the stadium to watched France vs Nigeria. Me and Steph couldn’t believe we were in Brazil let alone watching the World Cup. The atmosphere was just incredible you just had to be there. In the end France won 2 nil. We didn’t get up to much after the game, as there is not a lot of do in the capital.
We flew out next day travelling to Rio. We decided to take the bus to our hostel and our bus driver was very kind that when we got off the bus he made sure we were heading in the right direction. We stayed about 20-minutes walk from Copacabana beach which had a great set up for the World cup with massive screens on the beach. The following day in the afternoon we took a tour to the Favela’s, which translate to slum. I would highly recommend getting a tour if you like to get to know how some of the locals live. We got to check out some of the local artist artwork, which I bought one of their paintings of the Christ the Redeemer. The highlight of the tour was some of the local kids got there drums out and played us some music. I won’t lie but at the end of our tour just as we were getting back onto the tour vehicle, some gunshots were fired not at us but our guide got us out pronto. That was probably to only time we felt a little unsafe in Brazil but I’m not sure if it was because of the mass security they had for the world cup, I felt quite safe walking through the streets any time of the day.
That evening we headed out to a street party with a couple of guys from the hostel. We got to try the local drink Caipirinha, which is Brazil national cocktail. The ingredients of the cocktail are cachaca (sugarcane liquor}, lime and a fair few table spoons of sugar. The cocktail was super strong and since I had a few throughout the evening I ended up going to bed the following evening because of the sugar high. I really enjoyed the street party from drinks being made on the streets to having random people come up to you wanting to dance.
When we booked our trip to South America and knew we were going to Rio, the one thing I wanted to do on this trip was to go paragliding. The day we had t booked in was the morning after we went out to the street part. Don’t worry I wasn’t hung over and plus I had someone with me on the glide. Once we fill out the paper work he headed up the mountain and there was a bit of the wait because of the lack of wind. The most important thing you need to know when you paraglide is run straight off the mountain without slowing down. When it got to my turn I won’t lie I did slow down a little creating a little dip but once in the air the view of Rio was just breathtaking. You got to see everything from the Christ the Redeemer to the Sugar Mountain to the Favela’s.
We unfortunately didn’t get a chance to get to either the Christ the Redeemer or the Sugar Mountain but out of the two from the people I met a lot say to go to the Sugar Mountain instead. I believe the view it just spectacular and possible not as crowded.
One piece of advice before travelling to Brazil, insure that you has cash on you as we had problems with our bank cards and we only found one atms that allowed us to take cash out. If I ever get to come to Brazil again I would love to go to the Amazon as well being in Rio for Carnivale. If I haven't said before out of all of t he continents I have travelled to so far South America is my absolute favourite so I have no doubt it will be the last time I’ll be in Brazil. Hopefully one day in the near future Australia will have the opportunity to host the World Cup until then I’m heading off to my first adventure for the year so I’ll fill you on in next month’s of Evade magazine.
