PARATI & RIO DE JANEIRO - BRAZIL

Having enjoyed 2 days catching up with my mates Renato and Ralfe in Sao Paolo, I next headed to the coastal town of Parati, located between S.P. and Rio de Janeiro. Despite staying only 1 night, I really enjoyed my visit to Parati and the coastline scenery which I took in on the bus ride to Rio de Janeiro was so spectacular that I considered hiring a car and retracing my steps more slowly so as to capture the amazing vistas in my photos.

Having arrived to Parati after a whole day of short bus rides from 1 small city to the next, I enjoyed just hanging out with a few people at the hostel and playing some cards. I eventually retired to bed in the early hours of the morning and still managed to get up reasonably early and go for a long walk in the hot, humid and therefore rather uncomfortable conditions. After scaling a number of the nearby hills and getting some nice photos of the surrounding region I returned to the hostel and got an afternoon bus to Rio.

Upon arriving at the location of my pre-booked accommodation, I was somewhat disheartened to find the hostel located on a small and very seedy, side-street in the suburb of Botafogo. However, despite my initial aprehensions, I quickly realised that in fact this was to be one of the best hostels I had stayed in. Where it was lacking in appearance and cleanliness, it was more than compensated by the great vibe and the fantastic people staying there. Over my 5 day stay in Rio I met some awesome people and had a great time.

Having visited Rio previously in my 2005 trip, I spent my time in the city just chilling, wandering around and visiting a few more out of the way places such as the Tijuca national park located right in the city centre. Whilst spending a day walking through the park and scaling one of the mountains, I was continually amazed by the fact that I was in a city of more than 10 million people and yet was still able to enjoy such peace and quiet. In addition, the views of the city from the mountain top were quite spectacular !!!

By far the highlight of my trip to Rio was however the FREE Rolling Stones concert held on 18 February. All that day everyone at the hostel was on edge, just waiting until it was time to walk down to Copacabanna beach and take part in what was being predicted to be one of the biggest concerts (in terms of crowd numbers) of all time. Despite an anticpated crowd 3 million people, only 1.2 million (yeah... ONLY 1.2 million !!!) people showed up although on the walk down to the beach it felt like the whole of Rio was relocating. The streets were absolutely full of people and it was fantastic to see everyone so happy.

Surprisingly, a group of us managed to get quite a good position about 100 metres from the stage and whilst I couldn´t exactly see just how well Keith, Mick, Ron and Charlie were doing for their age, I was still astounded by how well they could still sing and rock it out just like in the good old days. I must admit that I was not a massive Stones fan before the gig but was instantly converted after hearing them play. The whole atmosphere of the night with the millions of people, great set up, great vibe and fantastic music really made the event one of my travelling highlights and something that I will never forget. It sure made me feel a lot better about changing my itinerary around and trading off a fair bit of backtracking with being able to experience a spectacle such as this.