Although there are direct flights from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro, for some reason my ticket didn’t allow me to fly straight there. So I had a night’s stopover in Sao Paulo (which wasn’t on my bucket list!). As I had to catch quite an early flight this morning it made sense to choose a hotel near the airport thus avoiding a lot of the rush hour traffic. This worked so was good news. The not so good news was that, when I researched the hotel, no mention was made that a) Sao Paulo airport doesn’t close at night and b) the hotel’s windows aren’t double/ triple glazed. OK, there wasn’t a constant noise of aero engines throughout the night but 4 or 5 times I was woken by the deafening roar of a plane passing what seemed to be about 6 inches from my left ear. The first time this happened I truly thought that the aircraft was about to smash into the hotel. It was very loud and a touch frightening.
Although my Spanish is by no means great, whilst I have been in Spanish speaking countries in this continent, I have understood quite a lot and been able to speak a little. In short, I have had no problems getting by. Brazil is going to be very different. Portuguese is a very strange language. There are a few words that are similar to Spanish but many, many more that don’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before (e.g. ‘obrigado’ = thank you. Where did that come from? To my ear the language sounds almost Slavic (e.g. Russian, Polish, Czech etc). I guess pointing at things is the way forward.
The famous Copacabana beach in the south of Rio is a spectacular 4km+ curved stretch of soft sand.
It’s wonderfully clean as well. There’s hardly a piece of rubbish on it although I suspect that might be a different story when it’s sunny and especially at weekends and holidays. 
Today, though, it was quiet so plenty of space for non humans to have fun.
The Olympics beach volley ball competition was played here earlier this year which brought in the crowds but the biggest ever recorded gathering on this beach was back in 1994 when Rod Stewart played to an audience estimated to be 3,500.000!! That’s so difficult to imagine on a day like today when so few people, especially the famous Brazilian beauties are here.
As a result, the drinks sellers weren’t doing a roaring trade either.
Surfing freaks, though, don’t care if the weather isn’t brilliant as long as the waves are good.
There were a few who were making an average mess of things but there was one guy who really looked as though he was straight out of Hawaii Five O!
There’s a lot I want to see here so it’s time to make a plan. It would be good, though, if it was sunny one day so I can just sit in this most famous part of Brazil and soak up the sun, the atmosphere and watch the world go by.
Ate amanha
Phileas
thelasthurrahsite 