Brasil - Our last days in South America

Apologies for the long delay in posting. We left South America for Europe and have spent the majority of time with friends and family, so updating the blog has not been our top priority. However, we have a bit of time here in Copenhagen, so we are attempting to catch up.

We left off having finished volunteering in Bolivia and on our way to Brasil for Carnaval....

Goias
From one line in our guidebook about a "joyous Carnaval celebration little known to outsiders", we headed for the small town of Goias Velho. Our guidebook proved correct as we really enjoyed the 5-day celebration in this beautiful town, and we were probably the only foreigners there. The people were super-friendly and tried very hard to communicate with us, even though we quickly learned that our basic Spanish knowledge was of no help in understanding Brasilian Portuguese. We did manage to communicate that Ben was from Australia, which provoked questions such as "Is it cold there?" and "What language do they speak there?". However little else they knew about Australia, they did know that they made it to the World Cup this year. As long as we could somehow relate all of our conversation to the World Cup, we got along just fine. We didn't bring the camera out much as we were too busy having a good time (and didn't want to stand out more than we already did), but we managed to snap some shots of the brightly painted buildings lining the cobbled streets, as well as one night of the celebration. Samba dancing and drum squads everywhere!




Brasilia
After Carnaval, we headed east to Brasilia. Much like Australia's capital, Canberra, Brasilia was constructed roughly 50 years ago in the middle of nowhere, Brasil, for the sole purpose of being the capital. The city contains some really beautiful buildings, most designed by the architect, Oscar Niemeyer. We climbed the radio tower for a good view of the city center with the congress building (shaped like a giant H for "humanity") at the end. We only went in a few of the buildings. One, the Itamarati palace (for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) is surrounded by a water garden and is very beautiful inside, containing gardens, cocktail rooms, dining rooms, and many sculptures. We also went in the Cathedral Metropolitana, shaped like a giant crown of thorns with a ceiling made of stained glass.


We were also impressed with some structures not constructed by Niemeyer. The Dom Bosco Santuary was really beautiful with all four walls filled with stained glass of varying shades of blue and a massive chandelier made of Murano glass. After sitting inside for a while enjoying the play of light through the windows, we exited and were greeted with a world made all of yellow, as our eyes attempted to readjust to unfiltered sunlight. At the end of the day, we made it out to the JK Bridge. The design was inspired by the flight of a skipping stone, and it was named the most beautiful bridge in the world in 2003 by the Engineer's Society of Western Pennsylvania (yay, Pennsylvania!).



Ouro Preto
As Brasil continued to get more and more expensive the further east that we went (hostel accomodations were roughly 5 times more expensive than Bolivia....ouch), we decided to delay going to Rio by heading to another beautiful small town, Ouro Preto. A colonial gold mining town, the city has beautiful buildings lining steep (!) cobbled streets and each hill is crowned with a church (13 in all). The hostal we stayed at was really lovely, with a great view of the city from their bird and flower filled gardens.



Rio de Janeiro
We finally made it to Rio with only two days left in Brasil. We made the most of it by heading to the top of Pao de Acucar (translated as Sugar Loaf) mountain for some views of the city. We were almost thwarted by thick fog that decided to gather only at the top of the mountain, but we were lucky and it blew off long enough for us to take some photos (the buildings lining the beautful white beach behind Ben is the famed Copacabana section of Rio). If you look closely at the last skyline photo, you can just spot the statue of Christ the Redeemer crowning the peak of Corcovado. We also took in a football game at Maracana Stadium (which has held over 200,000 screaming Brazilian fans at one time). We sat in the fan section for one of the teams, so we were surrounded by dancing, clapping, and singing fans jumping up and down and waving massive flags the entire game, which definitely added to the atmosphere.




We flew out of Rio on March 10th, and have traveled through parts of Italy, Croatia, Germany, and now Denmark. We have been staying with the most wonderful people (thanks to all of our excellent hosts!). We hope to update the blog soon with some European pictures.