Rio Dec 07 | Hello from the Five Star Vagabond

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

March 27, 2015 by David Herd

One of my greatest ever trips

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio

Tokyo London Lisbon Rio NYC, plus Florianopolis, Belnario Camboriu, and Curitiba. In 2007 my 2 month trip which turned out to be one of the two best around the world journeys I have ever done.

Anyone for coffee?

Food, food and more food, you gotta love Tokyo. It is certainly one of my favourite cities in the world. In fact I was here for the first time in April this year and loved it so much I’m back in December.

Joan and Bill from Wiltshire

In fact we were having dinner in Bath, I was travelling to Dorchester the next day with Bill to visit his brother Alan who was a guest of Her Majesty.

Gold Hill, Shaftesbury

Gold Hill is a steep cobbled street in the town of Shaftesbury in the English county of Dorset. It is famous for its picturesque appearance; the view looking down from the top of the street has been described as “one of the most romantic sights in England

Lisbon

Fado is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Portugal, but probably with much earlier origins.

Lisbon restaurant

Lisbon is a great city for food as you can clearly see. 🙂

Rio de Janeiro NYE Copacabana

December 2007 and the city is winding up for New Years Eve. After a couple of weeks I will go to Curitiba to meet my friend Craig aka Sudzy from Australia, then after visiting a few cities we will head back to Rio for Carnival

Sergio, do you think our ship will ever come in?

Beautiful Copacabana and the first of nine cruise ships arrive for NYE

Curitiba

A nice city south of Sao Paulo however one visit is enough, there are more interesting places further south as you will see.

Curitiba

I met my friend Craig from Australia and we set out for Florianopolis.

Florianopolis.

Florianopolis wonderful Brazilian city, the photo above is Joaquina beach which is famous throughout the world for surfing.

Florianopolis.

Barra da Lagoa Beach has good waves, clear water and a tropical rain-forest, this makes Barra da Lagoa the kind of place you can easily loose track of time! Just sit back and watch the pretty girls at play.

Balneário Camboriú a Brazilian surprise

We had never heard of this place until we were in Florianopolis and what a fabulous surprise it turned out to be.

Balneário Camboriú

A similar statue to Rio de Janeiro. Balneário Camboriú is famous for the cable car which (uniquely in the world) links the two beaches of Balneário Camboriú and Laranjeiras. The town is located 10 km (6.2 mi) south of the city of Itajaí and 80 km (50 mi) north of the state capital, Florianópolis, and has a population of 94,344 (2007 census office estimate), which swells to over one million in the summer.

Balneário Camboriú

Antonio cycled around the world for UNESCO in 1999, on his trip the both times he was robbed was in Australia while the Olympics were on in 2000. And people say Brazil is dangerous.

Paraty

It’s Probably not hard to guess why this is my favourite photo, a rose between two thorns, I don’t think so. Paraty grew in the 18th century as a strategically important port for exporting the gold mined in Minas Gerais. When shipments in nearby Rio began to attract the attention and ambition of pirates and privateers from rival European powers, the Portuguese began using Paraty as their safe port for getting their gold to Lisbon.

Magnificent Brazilian girl

To see more of this beautiful creature just follow THIS LINK.

Take me to your leader

Once a year, when the great Rio De Janeiro carnival takes place, the coastal town Paraty which is located 250 km south west to Rio, holds a unique carnival. In Paraty’s Mud Carnival – (Portuguese: Bloco da lama) the costumes that its participants wear is black sticky mud which is smeared on their bodies. The carnival preserves the ancient local tradition when the Indians smeared their bodies with black mud for medical reasons, and held ritual ceremonies in order to bring cure to the ill. In contrary to Rio carnival where the participants wear marvelous colored costumes, in Paraty carnival the fiesta is based mostly on the simplicity of the junction between men and nature.

Back to Rio for Carnival

After a fascinating trip down south we head back to Rio for Carnival.

Carnival in Ipanema

Ipanema Carnival street party was one of the best nights in my life with my friend Dave Wylie. There was a “bloco” going on in front of the restaurant. A “bloco” is a block party during carnival. There are hundreds of them just in Rio. They are organized by local Carnival groups and the best ones move up the food chain of blocks to become the big samba schools that put on the big Carnival parades each year that Rio is famous for. We had a window table at “Garota de Ipanema” with of course means “The Girl from Ipanema”, and this is the exact spot the song was written in 1962, with music by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes. English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.

With Dave Wylie at Garota de Ipanema

Here I am with my good friend Dave Wylie at our window table at Garota de Ipanema. All night the action was all around us as you can see from the photos. As I said earlier Ipanema Carnival it was one of the best and most memorable nights of my life. Another equally memorable night was 4 weeks earlier, New Years Eve on Copacabana, simply awesome.

Garota de Ipanema

This crazy guy was so funny, he was absolutely smashed and spoke to Dave Wylie who is fluent in Portuguese, he said “Voce sabe quem eu sou?” (do you know who I am?”) “Eu sou o deus de dor da cabesa”) (I am the God of Headaches”).

I love New York

As I said before New York is my favourite city, I like to say to friends, if the cities of the world could be likened to a horse race, New York would win by 10 lengths over the next bunch of cities which would include Paris, London, Sydney, Bangkok, Tokyo, Rome, Budapest, Amsterdam, Rio De Janeiro & Cape Town, not necessarily in that order.