Ken's Travel Diary: Pictures galore

I had a great time last night. The barbecue place was great - nice buffet style thing with all sorts of bits and bobs you could eat, and they brough all the meats around on giant skewers to the tables where you sat and then cut off a bit for you. I actually lost track of what they put on my plate, but it included steak, roast beef, roast pork, wild boar and ribs. I didn't really do it justice at all despite being pretty hungry, and only managed a plateful while the 4 German chaps next to me seemed to be polishing off 2 cows and a pig each.

My driver "Roger" picked me up at 7:45 at the hotel, and then we went over to the Barbecue place. He left me there and talked to some of his friends outside. I was finished by about 8:45 and then we drove over to the Bohemian district of downtown Rio. We went to a club called Scenarium. They had live bands playing samba, jazz and bossa nova, and it was in an old building with MASSIVELY high ceilings. There were 3 floors with a open area in the middle of each one allowing you to see down to the stage where the bands were playing.

You got a card on the way in on which they marked all the drinks you had, so you paid at the end. Apparently if you lost the card you'd have to pay something huge like $500. The club was fairly busy, and was filled with all sorts of eclectic things, from a glass cabinet filled with old dolls, to a collection of old cameras, an entire 3-wall section from an old pharmacy complete with glass bottles with labels made in typewriters. It could have easily passed for a museum there was so much stuff. We stayed until about midnight and then Roger drove me back to the hotel.

This morning I got picked up by Roger again to take me on a half day trip up to the top of Sugar Loaf mountain and to the top of the Corcovado. It has been fairly overcast all day, and for a while the top of Sugar Loaf was actually not visible, let alone Corcovado which is 300 metres higher. Fortunately by the time we got to the top of Sugar Loaf by the massive cable cars that take you up, it had cleared up significantly.

After a while up the top where we saw a few monkeys (unfortunately I wasn't quick enough with the camera to get them), we went down again and drove over to Corcovado to take the funicular up to the top. It was a nice trip through fairly dense tropical jungle, and we saw a bunch of nice butterflies, and these massive spiky looking fruits that grow a couple of feet long hanging from the trees.

Up the top the view is stunning as you'll see from these photos, and there was a bit of wildlife too. We had some kind of fruit juice which is a local specialty and then the guys who worked at the cafe up there (obviously a slow day) clambered over the railings and inched along a small bit of rock next to a sheer drop off to coax out a lizard and some other thing so I could take photos of it. Pictures are below...