I *LOVE* RIO

OK, so I’ve changed my mind about this city.  I’m sure everyone who’s been here knew that would happen.

We spent the first couple of weeks in a tiny studio in a sleazy part of Copacabana with an asshole host.  The refrigerator wasn’t working (he tried to make it out it was, it just “wasn’t very cold”), the toaster oven wasn’t working (he tried to make out that, despite the fact there were clearly two heating elements in the toaster oven, only one of them was supposed to work: “that’s how they work in Brazil”), the apartment building backed onto a favela, the entrance hall stank of sewers, there were cockroaches in the hallways that weren’t cleared away for days, the apartment was humid and dark… I could go on. 

Anyway, when we did complain about the refrigerator (quite reasonably, given we were staying for a month and a refrigerator is ESSENTIAL in 30C-35C heat) he firstly tried to make out it had been working until we got there, we then reminded him he’d said himself it wasn’t working very well when we arrived, he then backtracked and said it was a new refrigerator under guarantee he just hadn’t gotten around to calling the repair service because he would have to wait around for them to come and he’d need our permission, we gave it to him, he then backtracked again and said we’d have to wait, we said “fine, because we need it working”.   Long story short, it took 3 days out of OUR holiday that WE had PAID FOR waiting around for a repair man to service HIS refrigerator, he got very unpleasant when we started getting annoyed, we ended up complaining to the booking website and they rebooked us into a much nicer apartment.

We are now 10 seconds from Copacabana beach in a much nicer part of Copacabana near the Copacabana Palace Hotel, the apartment is still a studio but has at least another 10m2 to it, it’s brighter, it’s not humid, there aren’t cockroaches, the amenities in the flat are old but they work, and our new landlord couldn’t be more helpful and welcoming.

Apart from that, Rio has really grown on me.  Most of the favelas have been pacified – especially near the tourist areas – so all those warnings about safety in Rio are mostly redundant.  I wouldn’t walk around with a massive SLR camera strung around my neck and R$500 in my wallet, but then I wouldn’t do that in London either.  Copacabana beach is a very interesting place to take a stroll of an evening: lots of people out, live music on the beach, restaurants and bars along the front, art and tourist fairs.

I’ve been to the Botanical Gardens, several museums in Centro (especially the National Historical Museum – finally some Brazilian history has been filled in for me), Sao Bento Monastery to hear Gregorian chants at Sunday morning mass, Flamengo Park, Lage Park (it’s like Neverneverland), Petropolis to see the Imperial City, walked all the way around the Lagoon, and had a night out in Lapa.

We’ve got plenty of stuff left like Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf mountain), the Christ, jeep tour around Tijuca forest, the zoo & winter palace, Fiscal island….

Basically, Rio is about more than just sitting on the beach, getting a suntan and sipping a caipirinha.  It’s stuffed full of culture, art and history – and finally I am really beginning to enjoy it.

P.S. I don’t have a reliable internet connection here, which is why I’m not posting so much.

P.P.S. I have taken shitloads of pictures.  Due to aforementioned unreliable internet connection, I am not posting any pictures to my blog until I get back to SP.  I’ll do a blog with a few selected highlight photos later.

Things that annoy me #2

I have decided that this particular blog should be standalone.  You'll see why.

Topic: Brazilians taking the piss when it comes to renting out apartments because you're a gringo. 

This is a message for every Brazilian out there who has a really shitty piece of property and thinks "hey, I won't refurbish it, I'll just rent it out in the state it's in - cockroaches and all - to a gringo who will pay twice the price for it".  REALITY CHECK: WE WON'T.  Why do Brazilians think that tiny/old substandard apartments that haven't been cleaned, painted, properly furnished or kitted out with half-decent kitchen equipment are ok to let out on a short-term furnished basis to gringos?  I mean, they wouldn't accept that level of crapness for themselves, why do they think that we would? 

I come from the 1st world, ok?  Yeah, I'm willing to spend a bit of money but I also want some "vale a pena" (value for money) and there is such a place called THE INTERNET where I can check what the normal market rate is in the area, dipshit.  I might not be fluent in Portuguese but I can bloody well navigate myself around zap.com.br.  I can even factor in the condo fee, roughly how much the bills are costing you, and add a bit more for the fact the place is furnished and work out a fair price - with a profit margin and everything!

We went to see a couple of apartments before New Year's.  One of them was old, seriously dirty, the little furniture it did have was really old and in bad condition, it was missing a bed (supposed to be a 2-bed flat), didn't have a washing machine or a decent table to eat on (Brazilians always have a decent table to eat on in their homes: we know), and one of the bedrooms didn't have a door on it.  No, scratch that, it was missing a wall.  We turned that one down. 

The other one was in a cheap part of a decent area, building was nice, but the place was fucking tiny.  They had clearly taken an ok-ish-sized one bedroom flat and put in an extra wall to make two bedrooms.  Again, the flat wasn't particularly clean, furniture was cheap and tatty, there was barely enough room to swing a cat around in the living room, the fridge freezer was about 20 years old and probably hadn't been defrosted in that long either.  Plus, they wanted about R$2700 for it all in, which was just a joke.

A Canadian guy in our Portuguese class had booked to go to Rio for NYE but cancelled at the last minute because the idiots that he had reserved (not paid, clever boy) an apartment with decided at the last minute to double the price for the weekend, so he just didn't go.  They could have made some money over the period, but because they got greedy (very common here) they lost a paying customer 2 days before NYE.  Dumbasses.

Moral of the story: if you have some money, you want to invest in property, are willing to provide a decent level of furnished & all-inclusive accommodation and you're not a greedy motherfucker, you would make an absolute killing over here.