Her name was Lola...

....she was a showgirl....With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there....At the Copa (CO!), Copacabana (Copacabana)....=)

The Barry Manilow song isn´t really written about the beach but since we landed in Copacabana beach here in Rio de Janiero its been hard to keep the song out of our heads. The ´Girl from Ipanema´ song is the other song we know of which is actually written about the other famous Rio beach but we don´t know any of the words so ´Copa...Copacabanaaaaaa!´ it will remain.

We got into Rio two days ago after a fairly hectic 24 hours of travelling from Buenos Aires. We flew from Buenos Aires into Sao Paulo (the most populated city in Brazil if not South America i think with 14 million in the city and 18 million if you include the surrounding areas)...spent a night in Sao Paulo (we had had enough of big cities i think) before flying to Rio de Janiero...in between the flights (which weren´t actually that long) we spent a lot of time waiting in the airports, catching extremely crowded buses from the airports to the city and practicing portuguese with the taxi drivers (namely haggling over fares!).

Exhausted and a bit sick from the colds we both caught, Rio has been a very welcome break from the travelling. We managed to get lucky and got a really really nice hotel room on the main stretch overlooking the beach. I think because its not peak season some of the hotels do special rates and we ended up paying about 40% less than what the usual room price is. The beach itself is absolutely magnificient and quite clean considering the amount of usage and number of beach-goers. They have an army of cleaners who just go through the beach constantly picking up rubbish. The beach is not unlike Manly in Sydney....a gentle crescent shaped beach with very consistent waves....the afternoon dips have been very relaxing and waking up to a fresh sea breeze after spending the last few weeks in exhaust fumes has been a welcome change!

We´re probably going to spend the next few days chilling out at the beach....perhaps a few beach runs in preparation for the Inca Trail...but apart from the Rio tour (Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf, Historical City Center and some nature reserves) tomorrow to knock out the tourist thing we definitely intend to keep a low profile. We´re even talking about going alcohol free...which means giving up the icy cold Chopps which they serve on tap at about A$1.5 per half pint....tough i know but that´s the sort of ´intestinal fortitude´ you´ve come to expect from the PJWT team! =)

More pictures to come once we find an internet place with USB ports and which doesn´t charge like a wounded bull!


View from our room...nice i know! =)


Copacabana beach during the day...


The beach at dusk...even better view in the surf watching the sun set through the buildings!


The crowd...they love the sunbaking but don't seem to go into the water much...probably know something we tourists don't!


This is the gym on the beach directly below us....on which your beloved PJWT explorers tried a few feeble chin-ups in an attempt to train for the hike...we didn't last long...and we also had the funny feeling that we weren't quite welcome from the dirty looks and comments (in portuguese of course). It really is quite amazing that you don't really need to say "step in my hood again and i'll pop a cap in your ass" for someone to understand you. Being the brave travellers that we are...we quickly left. Checking it out from the safety of our hotel across the road (and using the zoom lens on the camera) we came to the conclusion that these 'homies' did 'business' here! 'Homies' meaning gentlemen and 'business' meaning illegal sale of narcotics.