Las Spinsters Storm South America 2010: Part I

I'm finally posting pics from our Spinsters Storm South America 2010 trip.  I know it's old news now as it is two trips back, but since I don't scrapbook or journal I figure I'd better make myself blog it.  

I already gave some trip details here but now I'm finally sharing some pics.  So, without further ado... 

Okay, well maybe a little more ado first.  My friend Kate met me in Fortaleza.  My parents were gone to a training seminar in Sao Paulo so Kate and I had to entertain ourselves.  We went to the site of the Fortaleza temple, spent Kate's birthday at Futuro Beach, went to Habib's, and took a touristy type boat ride to see Fortaleza from the water.  

Our ship captain.  You'd think we were on a pirate ship, but we weren't, unfortunately.

The coastline of Fortaleza...or most of it anyway.  It just goes on and on and on...kind of like most of my blog posts.  

The sunsets of Fortaleza are quite beautiful.

Ditto

Futuro Beach for Kate's birthday

Kate was only in Fortaleza for about two days before we headed down to Rio de Janeiro on Linhas Azul, aka:Jet Blue of Brazil.  We were most impressed with their snacks.  

When they came by with the snacks I asked them what the choices were and this is what they gave me.  I guess they didn't want to try to explain in English what all their snacks were.  It was great...Kate and I were still eating Azul snacks several days later.  I highly recommend flying Linhas Azul...especially if you are hungry.   

I think that the flight into Rio is one of the most beautiful commercial flights you can take.  You can see Sugar Loaf, Christ, and the beaches all from the comfort of your plane seat.  

If you look to the far right of this picture you can see Santos Dumont Airport, which is where we flew into in Rio.  The runways are super short and end in the water.  I've been on shorter runways out over the water before (in Panama) but never when I was in a big plane...kind of scary.  And, FYI, Santos Dumont is the name of the man who Brazilians say invented flight.  I guess the news of the Wright brothers hasn't made it down to Brazil yet.  

Beautiful Rio.  The cross looking thing up on the right is actually the big Christ statue.  This is the view from Sugar Loaf (aka: Pao De Açucar).

Just another view...

Ditto

Double ditto

Proof that I was there

One of my very favorite views of Rio.  It really is the most beautifully situated city...maybe in the world.

More proof I was there.  And proof that I should have been wearing my sunglasses so I wouldn't look so squinty.

A slightly different view

Me, with that slightly different view...obviously, I LOVED Rio.  I took a ton of pictures there.  

This is the place where they have the big Carnival parade.  We got to Rio just after Carnival ended.  We planned that.  We didn't want to be there during Carnival.  But, we got to see them taking down everything and cleaning up.  And, I saw some of the floats too.  So, it was a win win situation.  I got to see the floats but didn't have to see all the basically naked people dancing on the floats.  

We got to try on some costume parts...and boy was that headpiece heavy.  I don't envy those Carnival dancers at all.   

The Christ Statue on Corcovado Mountain.  It is 130 feet tall (per Wikipedia).  They were putting up scaffolding to start restorations.  It's a good thing those construction guys had Jesus looking over them as they assembled the scaffolding because their methods sure didn't look OSHA approved. 

The view from the Christ statue. It was cloudy when we were up there but the view was still amazing.  The tallest bump out in the water is Sugar Loaf.  

Next we went to Maracana stadium in Rio where we took this very special picture of Kate and me.  

I stood in the footsteps of Pele.  He's pretty much the only Brazilian soccer player I know by name so I'm glad his footprints were there to stand in.  

Later that night Kate and I went to a Flamengo soccer game at Maracana stadium with some other girls from our hostel.  The Flamengos are a big time team in Brazil and sadly it took me about half of the game to realize that the team wasn't the Flamingos.  I kept wondering why their uniforms weren't pink. 

We got there WAY too early, as you can tell.  The game didn't even start until 10 PM or something.  I think we got there around seven.  It wasn't really that great of a game because the team that the Flamengos played wasn't a very good team so the Flamengos didn't even have to try.  We left early.  But, I'm glad we went because I couldn't miss out on the opportunity to go to a soccer game in one of the world's most famous soccer stadiums.  Besides, we took the subway to the game and nobody killed us, so it was nice to gain a little traveling confidence.  

I think all we ate in Rio was street food...mostly delicious fresh fruit juices.  One of my favorite mixes is pineapple and lime...sounds weird, but I promise it is great.  We went to this same little juice bar so much that the guys there knew us by name.  Sad.  Oh, and the reason I look so ugly is that we were on our way to Copacabana beach and I don't wear makeup to the beach usually.  Oh, and I had to make the thumbs up sign because thumbs up is to Brazilians as the peace sign is to Asians...they love to give the thumbs up sign, especially in pictures. 

Well, that's the end of part one.  I loved Rio and hope I can go back there sometime again.  It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.  Maybe I'm just saying that since no 12 year-olds with knives robbed us or anything but it really wasn't too bad.  If you aren't carrying anything valuable and aren't in stupid places after dark you should be fine.

I think one of the greatest lessons I learned on this part of the trip was just how useful a bra can be for hiding money and credit cards, etc.  Kate at one point even had her camera and ipod in her bra.  So, maybe bras aren't all that bad.  I'm guess I'm glad I'm not a hippie or a granola.

Well, with that helpful hint I think I'll end "Las Spinsters Storm South America 2010: Part I"...stay tuned for more.