Copacabana....the hottest spot north of Havana

Barry Manilow was partly right but "......north of Havana......?" has me thinking a bit.....but, we are definitely on the beach at Copacabana. There is lots of water and lots of pretty girls...you are supposed to say that when residing here at Copacabana Beach but a stroll along the sand this afternoon opened some eyes, mine especially. Dress code in this corner of Brazil is a sort of code where this is no code. As I mentioned, while strolling, we, (my first wife and I), encountered a lady (in the broadest sense of the word) dressed in a g-string affair with an acreage of flesh that would have required two bottles of SP50 to cover and there would have been some parts missed due to lack of access. Fortunately my lunch was well settled otherwise things could have been really messy. 

Yesterday we started a day tour with a visit to Christ the Redeemer. There must be a lot of sinners about this side of the World as the place was packed with people presumably looking for redemption. Either they have been sinners or captive at sometime. As I haven't ever been captive (not counting 38 years of marriage, but don't tell Diana that I said that)...redemption only took a few seconds for me. Christ was a fairly impressive type of statue, over 30 metres tall and looking out over almost all of Rio de Janeiro. While some people walk from the bottom up, we took a cog train most of the way and walked the last 250 steps....some of the group took a lift for the last wee bit, however Diana and I are above average fitness for our tour group......but only one of us has had a heart attack!

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 We have had a good look around this interesting city, huge, seems quite safe so far, streets are clean and the people seem pretty happy. We are called "gringos" and I'm not sure if that is derogatory or not but we don't get molested at all. We took a cable car to the top of "Sugarloaf" and had more fantastic panoramic views of the populace and the buildings. We have also been four wheel driving in the jungle which involved a drive through a restored man made forest on a tar sealed road! Hardly needed a 4 wheel drive and the "jungle" did not expose one snake! A couple of friendly monkeys and a toucan but not really a serious adventure.....none the less, it was good fun and nothing like home. Some meals are paid for on our trip and one that we have had here in Rio is a Bar-B-Cue restaurant wher you get yourself salads from a buffet bar and meats are brought out straight off the BBQ. At these dinners they bring out every part of the bullock, every cut possible. At one we even had the "hump" part of the brahman steer. This is boiled for three hours then BBQed and it was very tasty. I thought it might have been full of water or gristle or worse still pus......but it wasn't.

 

Choice meat. We walked in and rolled out...very satisfied.

The Devils Throat

Yes, the Devils Throat! But more about that later.

Our last day in Lima was as good as any we had in Peru, even though we visited two museums before our flight.  Sometimes

museum visits and the spectacle of a heap of old stuff, often broken and decaying in a glass fronted cupboard with signs of "Don't Touch" and "No Foto" tend to wear one down, but it was ok in Lima. Our guide understood the mental telepathy of our group and kept things moving fortunately. Peru was a great country to visit, the Spanish speaking non practising Catholic community all seemed very happy and the towns we visited were clean and safe...the economy is far better than Argentina. The people would have to be the shortest race on Earth....all half backs. A lady walked past me and must have been a little taller than my waist...she wasn't a dwarf person, just small, middle aged. Many of them are like that and I didn't see anyone as tall as me. 

We had a 5 hour flight from Lima to Iguazo National Park in Brazil and our five star "Bourbon" hotel. Free drink on arrival wasn't a bourbon at all but a lime drink that must have been 90% alcohol with a dash of lime....but we all knocked one back.

Our main reason to stop here was to visit the Iguazo Falls, reportedly the best in the World......but don't they all say that? We've seen waterfalls in every country we have been to, we had them on the farm when I was a small boy, waterfalls? just how many do you need to see in one lifetime....I'll tell ya....just ONE!. And with out a doubt (of mine) it is Iguazo Falls. Spectacular would be selling them short. We walked and photographed them from every imaginable angle. Apart from covering 5500 metres on land, walking mostly but also bussing, training and 4 wheel driving, we also traveled by boat right into one and got thoroughly soaked then took to the air for a 10 minute Eurocopter experience.....just fantastic. We got up close and personal with the Devils Throat, the Salto Belgrano and the Salto Adan y Eve and photographed everyone of them. The whole experience really was magnificent.

We saw a lot of water falling over cliffs and I did a bit of googling. This is the number 1 waterfall in the World however our Sutherland Falls in Fiordland made it to number 10 (that's according to Mr Google) Guess I will just have to go and see for myself. So a bit of catch up sleeping and washing for our small team, dinner at the "Buffalo Branco" (white bull) in town tonight then we head for Rio tomorrow with a hotel on the famous "Cocobanana Beach"......is that how you spell it?