Bloc Parties and Sightseeing
After a rather intense 24 hours, we had all gone to bed quite early the following night. But with a new day, we were ready to make the most of our stay here. It’s a luxury to be able to explore without having to worry about the cats or vans, so we intended to do a good amount of sightseeing while we had the opportunity.
By the time we were all ready, it was early afternoon. Coordinating six people to simultaneously leave the house is a slow process. We had decided that we would go to visit the incredibly famous Pão de Açúcar this afternoon. Even if you’ve never heard of the name, you’d probably recognise the landmark—although you might know it as Sugarloaf Mountain, its English translation. As famous as the huge statue of Christ itself, Sugarloaf is a large, improbable mountain that juts almost directly out of the sea. If you’ve ever seen a photo of Rio, it’s probably on there.
We set off from the house, walking down the road for around twenty minutes to reach the metro station. We bought our tickets and hopped on. It’s a remarkably good price—just £1 for the journey. Unlike London, which charges you depending on where you get on and off, this is just a flat charge to enter the network. You can change lines indefinitely and leave wherever you like for the same price. Due to the fact it was so much cheaper to stay out of the centre, we had a fair journey in, spanning around 16 or so stops. We got off in Botafogo and began trying to figure out where to go. It was another twenty minutes or so to reach the base of the mountain. Here, you have two options: take the cable car or walk up.
Kate was a bit worse for wear after a rather tough few days and didn’t want to walk any more. Stacey went with her to keep her company. That left the rest of us to slog our way up the hill in the roasting heat of the afternoon.
The cable car is quite pricey, about £30 per person. Fortunately, the walk to the top is in the shade, and so the four of us slowly climbed up a steep track through the jungle. By this point, it was getting late, and we were lucky to have made it up with just enough time to take in the view before needing to come back down. We met up with Stacey and Kate, and we all enjoyed a nice cold drink and took a moment to soak in the stunning views of the beach, city, and mountains.
Stacey and Kate went to catch the cable car again, while we headed back to the footpath. It turns out the path closes at five o'clock—not that we realised until we got there and found the gate shut. Fortunately, we had just hit the cut-off, and security let us through to descend back down while keeping it closed for the people standing on the other side who wanted to come in. I guess that means if you want to do the iconic "sunset from Sugarloaf" experience, you have no choice but to buy a ticket for the cable car, although it's probably worth it.
Also, if you buy a cable car ticket, you can then continue up to Sugarloaf Mountain itself. The ascent is in two parts: first, you stop at Morro da Urca, the smaller of the two mountains, which is where we had hiked to. Then you can continue up to Sugarloaf itself (pictured below); there is no way to walk to this second, higher point as it is a sheer rock face. We were happy enough to head back down, though, and we agreed to meet Stacey and Kate at Praia Vermelha (Red Beach) at the bottom.
As none of us had phones with local SIM cards, we had to agree on a specific place to try and meet and then hope for the best. Apparently, there was going to be a block party (bloco) on the beach starting soon, and the place was pretty full. Even the water out on the bay was packed with boats, while the beach was barely visible under the volume of people on it.
We perched on a wall and grabbed another beer while we waited. After a while, the boys went to see if they could spot the girls anywhere and also to see if they could buy some funky t-shirts from a vendor we’d gone past earlier. Neither plan succeeded, though; Stacey and Kate were nowhere to be seen, and the vendor had packed up, too. So, we continued to hang out on the wall and hope they found us.
Eventually, they did, and we could finally start making our way back to the house. Kate was struggling a bit at this point; she’d pulled a muscle when she got mugged and couldn’t walk very far. We flagged down a taxi and asked how much it would be back to the house, but he quoted us well over £100. We opted for plonking Kate on a motorcycle taxi instead, while the rest of us walked to the train station.
After the inevitable hassle of meeting back up once we got to the station, we all got on the train. We thought we’d try to grab a taxi from a train station, deciding to get off a stop early hoping to have a better chance of finding one. Unfortunately, there weren't any around, and poor Kate had to hobble all the way back to the house with the rest of us.
We had planned to go to the neighbourhood’s block party that night. Throughout Carnival, blocos pop up all over the city. The streets close down and fill with food, drink, and dancing. Apparently, there was one just next to where we were staying, so we thought we’d go and see what this—the free side of Carnival—was all about.
We got all dressed up and headed out, though Kate opted to stay in for the night. The party was a few minutes' walk away, and it didn't take us long to see that this wasn't really our vibe. It was more of a children’s party. We could feel everyone watching us, and we must have really stood out. This wasn’t a tourist spot at all; it was a local, family-friendly event complete with a bouncy castle. Every other person was bouncing a baby on their hip. It was lovely that there was a place so inclusive for kids of all ages, but it certainly wasn’t what we were after, so we headed back.
After another heavy night of drinking (with a rather alcohol-fuelled argument thrown in), we didn’t get up to much until the end of the following day. I only mention the fact that Lee and I argued because it was the reason that, at 5:30 AM, he wandered barefoot down the road to another block party that I'm pretty sure was in a favela. Looking at his photos the next day, I’m honestly surprised he still had his phone to show me.
In the morning, despite feeling worse for wear, we decided we must try to make the most of everything, so we headed out again to watch the sunset on the iconic Copacabana beach. Our plan was to go to a party after having a swim and watching the sun go down.
We discovered that taking an Uber actually wasn’t that expensive—between £5 and £10 for the entire 40-minute ride, door-to-door. The only downside was that there were no larger taxis, so every time we needed to travel, we had to order two separate cabs and try to meet up afterwards. Even if we ordered at the exact same time, our taxi always seemed to arrive first. Lee and I were "Taxi Team No. 1," which normally would also include Kate.
We arrived on the seafront and sat down to wait for the others. Kate was having a rest after all the walking the previous day, so it was just the two of us. After what seemed like an age, we managed to meet up with the others. We headed down to the beach, bought some drinks, and sat on the soft white sand. It wasn’t actually that warm; with the sun setting and a fair sea breeze, I didn’t really need that cool-down swim anymore.
I also realised I’d forgotten to bring my spare clothes for the night. And by spare clothes, I mean my other bikini. Basically, everything we did at the time was conducted in a bikini, beach or not. It was slightly odd to jump into a taxi midday in so little clothing with nothing on you except a phone, but you could take solace in the fact that literally everyone else was doing the same.
While part of me didn’t really want to swim, it seemed like one of those moments where you just had to. We ran into the sea anyway, more just to say we had done it than anything else. It was rough—big, choppy waves that churned up the sand and forced it into every nook and cranny. Not only that, but once I was in there, I realised how filthy the water was. Shortly after, I decided I’d had enough of being battered by huge waves full of plastic litter and got out, hastily heading for the beach shower.
While everyone else got changed, I stayed in my wet swimming costume; I figured it would dry out soon enough anyway. We decided to go for a bit of a walk down the promenade, grabbing some more caipirinhas from the endless small stalls selling them. I bought myself a poncho, and the four of us also got some fancy new aluminium wine glasses for the vans.
Jesi, our number one source of information and negotiation, had talked to everyone. We were trying to establish where the party was tonight. There was a huge event space on the beach, so we decided to check it out. It was like the entrance to a music festival, with large metal barriers forming queues and security searching everyone. Behind the gates were beer tents, food stalls, and some kind of stage. It looked like it was gearing up to be something, but at the moment, it was incredibly quiet. We were pretty early, though. We headed inside to see what was going on, making a beeline for the bar. The theme of Carnival so far was to avoid all hangovers by never actually becoming sober.
Inside, the vibe was very chilled. There weren't many people, and the majority were sitting on the sand in front of huge TV screens streaming the live feed of the parade from the Sambadrome. I used the opportunity of free toilets to try and wash some of the sand out of my bikini, and we wondered what to do next. We were expecting a party, but apparently, it was already over. We had thought that the block parties would be at night, but it seems they are actually daytime events. Everyone told us that was it for the day. Still, it seemed wrong to go to Copacabana and be home before midnight, so Jesi was on a mission to find a party.
In the end, we went to meet some Brazilians she’d just befriended. She said they were going to Pedra do Sal. This isn’t so much a Carnival thing as a street-samba weekend tradition. Apparently, it is very popular with tourists and locals alike. It sounded like fun, so we started trying to get a taxi. Eventually, we managed to persuade a seven-seater to take all eight of us for a tip. We piled in and some cans of warm beer were passed around. I declined and focused hard on the road ahead, trying to keep the car sickness at bay.
When we got there, it seemed that the locals didn’t know where they were going any more than we did. After a lot of wandering around and asking random people, we finally seemed to reach our destination—at which point our new guides promptly disappeared. It looked like they had used the gringos for a free taxi ride, or maybe they really had just lost us in the crowd.
The place was so busy it was impossible to move. We wiggled down packed streets lined with food and drink stalls. You couldn’t have samba’d here even if you had wanted to. It was also a little hard to tell what we were trying to achieve. Huge volumes of people tried to move against each other in an impossible, never-ending struggle. We didn’t know where we were trying to get to, but we kept pushing forward. People squashed in from all sides. We tried to keep sight of each other through the mayhem. While the rest of us weren't really enjoying it much, Jesi seem undeterred as she wiggled through the crowd drawing, and it's fair to say enjoying, the attention of a lot of local men.
This all proved a bit too much for Stacey and as we weren't really achieving anything anyway, we decided to leave. We held hands to avoid losing each other and headed for the exit, wherever that was. After having a wee (finally) and grabbing some food, we decided we’d had enough of the cattle market crush. It was already 2:00 AM, so we thought we'd head back.
We spent quite some time trying to do just that. All the Ubers cancelled on us, and the street taxis wanted to charge an absolute fortune. At one point, we stopped at the side of the road and got to see some of the packed-down parade floats heading home. While they weren’t in their full glory right now, it was still brilliant to see not only the sheer scale of them, but how they were built up close. The level of detail and work that must go into creating them is really something.
While we were waiting, Stacey and I helped a very drunk kid who didn’t know who he was or where he was going. After digging through his phone, we found the address of his Airbnb and haggled with a taxi driver to take him there. I hope he made it home safely; I’m sure he’ll have absolutely no recollection in the morning of how he got there.
With us having no luck ourselves with taxis, we opted to take the train home. It was slower, but so much cheaper. Luckily, during Carnival, the underground runs 24 hours a day, and we managed to pick up a taxi when we finally got back to our station. It was yet another night when we nearly saw the sun rise!
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