South America 2015

Exploring Rio continued today. In the morning we took a train up to the famous Jesus statue, Christo Redemptor. The train was quite packed by tourists, so don't know if the 15€ trip was worth it but well.. One more world-famous landmark done.

I have a customer in Rio, so as I was anyway here I thought I could go and say hello to them. After having a buffer lunch (yet another one) I took a taxi to the customer with the girls and visited there, having a half an hour chat with their country manager while the girls waited in the Starbucks downstairs.

Then it was time for something all of us had been waiting for: The sea, and the famous Copacabana beach. Spent the evening there, had some dinner and back in the apartment again.

So far my impressions of Brazil and Rio are positive. Rio is by far the greenest city I have seen, with lush vegetation all around the city. Food is good and everything just feels nice. And tomorrow begins the carneval. :)

By the way.. Some video greetings. :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvhXAT1k6qA&hd=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG6E1V1M5RE&hd=1

As predicted yesterday, today was a lazy day. After settling in our apartment we spent a couple of hours just laying around, showering, making coffee and idling in general. Timo and Kim fell a sleep at some point, and our handy chain reaction was ready: Everyone falls asleep, in turn wakes up, looks that others are sleeping and continues. So, it was late in the afternoon before we finally got out of the apartment.

Even still we didn't do that much, just walk a couple of kilometers to the beach and take a cable car to the top of famous landmark of Rio, the Sugarloaf mountain. We watched the sunset there, took a cable car back down and returned home by hopping on a random bus.

Rio is hot, much more hot than Sao Paolo. Daytime temperature today was around 35-36C and actually now in the evening the weather feels much warmer due to higher humidity. Well, it just takes a couple of days to get used to again.

Uhh.. Second night spent on transit. We just arrived to Rio de Janeiro by a night bus. The bus which departed Sao Paolo at 01AM and arrived to Rio in the morning was actually comfortable, much more comfortable than aircraft seats and I slept well during the entire trip.

The previous night was also spent sleeping on transit, on the flight from Madrid. After landing to Sao Paolo early in the morning we checked in our baggages to bus station luggage storage and met a local guy Leonardo with whom we spent the rest of the day. Leonardo obviously lists "running" as his hobby on Couchsurfing, and that's what the day pretty much consisted of.. Walking 23km (according to Fitbit) through sights of Sao Paolo. Now my legs are pretty much toast, but anyway it was quite fun. Me and Timo as photographers would appreciate a bit slower approach though, not easy to concentrate on photos if everybody else is half a block away in 30 seconds.

In the evening we had some nice Sao Paolo fingerfood and beers with Leonardo and his parents, and a self-service lunch earlier wasn't bad either. At least we are not going to starve in South America, all the food so far has been great. And I love the local fruits, fresh bananas taste quite a bit different than the ones shipped to Finland.

Shorts on. Thats about it. :)

Second day in Malaga was warmer and sunnier than yesterday. We slept long and were lazy to get up and out, as any of us haven't had a proper sleep during previous nights. In the afternoon we finally managed to get everything packed again, stored our bags in the car and headed for a refreshing morning coffee with some tasty sandwiches and icecream. Next door cafe had a breakfast offer, three euros for a cup of coffee, sandwich and a fresh orange juice. Not bad at all, neither the price or the food.

There were only a couple of hours before our flight would depart, so we just walked around the city, visiting Alcazaba fortress on a hill and Picasso museum. Then it was time to start our long, long journey towards warmer climate and Sao Paolo via Madrid. We drove to the airport and checked in our bags, this time taking all chargers to hand luggage after our previous experiences in Mexico. Me and Timo lost multiple chargers and some optics in there last time due to airport workers stealing stuff.. Soon we boarded an Iberia Express flight to Madrid and now have a couple of hours layover here in Madrid.

After midnight local time begins the worst part of this journey, the long haul flight to Sao Paolo. Luckily the aircraft at least seems to be one of the renowated A340-600s in Iberia fleet.

We didn't have any plans for the afternoon with Kim and Timo, none of us had visited Gibraltar before and it was only a hundred kilometers from Malaga so we decided to visit it.

Weather was a bit against us, the nice sunshine of Malaga turned to heavy rain when we reached Gibraltar. But well.. It's British, what would you expect? We drove to the top of the rock and found the famous monkeys for some photos, checked out some other viewpoints and headed back to Malaga for evening. One of the monkeys decided that I'm his father and jumped on my back for a while.

Getting pretty damn tired now, as I only slept a bit on the flight to here.. And still have to stay up to pick up the girls from airport at midnight. Well, maybe a good dinner helps. :)

The flight to Malaga was relatively fast and painless, as after skipping sleep at night we were sleeping almost entire four hour flight. As we arrived to Malaga airport we picked up our cute (and extremely small) rental Fiat 500 and drove to the city for breakfast.

So far not much has been done.. Just breakfast toasts, walking a bit around the city and meeting Kim. Now we just received keys to our apartment and are cleaning ourself up, planning on maybe driving to Gibraltar.

Well, this did not go exactly as planned. I was thinking of going to Timo's place and sleep properly during the night before our 6am departure. Well.. how did it go?

We decided to go have a beer in a local bar next to Timo's place. After a while some random guy came to yell us that the place is already reserved. In a moment he realized he is yelling to wrong guys, we have already been sitting there for an hour and his place was actually at the next table. The guy offered us beers as compensation and turned out to be a nice guy... who we talked with for hours and drank multiple beers with. :P

We checked out another local bar and are now at Timo's place again, less than two hours before our IRC-ordered taxi (a taxi-driver friend) will come to pick us up to the airport. Well, no sleeping this night.

At Timo's place in Helsinki now, our flight to Malaga departs early tomorrow morning. Iryna and Lyudmyla have been all the day on their way to Poland from Ukraine and our Norwegian friend Kim is already in Malaga since today.

So, time to gather up in Malaga tomorrow and start the journey. Vamos. :)

This year our plan is to fly to Sao Paolo via Madrid and travel through Brazil, Bolivia and Peru to Lima in a month. As always, it will be me and Timo again, this time together with two Ukrainian ladies, a Norwegian and a Polish.

It's less than a month to departure, and I started preparing for the trip by taking the first step: Yellow fever vaccination and Malaria prevention drugs obtained.