Hi everyone! Remember me? Well I wouldn’t blame you if you’d forgotten all about Eat Rio – it’s been a shameful 4 weeks since my last post. I’ve never left it that long before and such a long hiatus deserves an explanation. How about tell you what’s been going on since this time last month?
Going from strength to strength. Eat Rio Food Tours are currently sitting at #14 in TripAdvisor’s list of activities in Rio!
One of the perks of having a blog is that you have all kinds of interesting encounters with people who share similar interests. I get a steady trickle of correspondence from people asking for advice on moving to Brazil or wanting a particular recommendation for their trip, but once in a while I hear from someone doing something completely different.
For instance, a few months ago I was contacted by Stacy, who lives in the US. Stacy has a pet capivara (capybara) and was visiting Southeast Brazil on a mission to see a wild capybara in its native habitat. Thus ensued a long and hilarious correspondence regarding the best places to spot the world’s largest rodent.
More recently I met someone doing something that made me green with envy. People who follow the Eat Rio Facebook page will have seen that last weekend I had a very late night and this was due to my latest fascinating encounter: a very Foodish Boy.
That’s not a typo – though I’m sure Alex himself would admit that he’s not beyond a little foolishness from time to time! Read on…
In my last post I showed you some of the culinary highlights of my trip to Australia. Today I wanted to show you some of the other things that caught my eye. I’m aware that this is a blog about Rio, not Melbourne, so I promise that after this we’ll be back in Brazil for the foreseeable future!
With the beaches being such a central part of life in Rio, Mrs Eat Rio was very keen to see how the beaches of Melbourne compared. Although St Kilda was nice, it didn’t really come close to the city beaches of Rio. Once we got out of town we saw some much nicer beaches, but I still think Rio wins this contest!
Along the Great Ocean Road lies the beach town of Lorne. Pretty quiet this time of year and not an umbrella or beer seller in sight!
Nice waves for surfing in Lorne.
Hi everyone! After 5 days in Bahia I thought I’d attempt a mini-post to tell you about how things have gone so far. I only have my phone, so please excuse weird typos…
We flew into Salvador, state capital and first capital of Brazil (replaced first by Rio and then more recently by Brasilia). Salvador reminded me a bit of Panama City – large, rather ugly outer city, surrounding a beautiful, historic area that is popular with tourists. In Panama City, Casco Viejo is a lovely wreck of a neighbourhood full of beautiful crumbling facades. The perimeter is guarded by heavily armed police to keep the rich tourists safe.
Check out the phone boxes that look like coconuts!
Salvador’s equivalent is called Pelourinho and is far prettier and better maintained. Lovely old colonial houses, painted in complementary shades, line steep, cobbled streets. The heavy police presence (coupled with frequent warnings from random people) remind you that there are people who’d like to take your valuables if given the chance, but the overriding sense is that this is a city rich with music, history and culture.
Hello there. It might seem like I am typing this to you from my normal seat (you know, the one at the table in the dining room), but that is actually a cleverly constructed illusion. In reality I am miles away. In another state no less. That’s right, I am finally going to Minas Gerais, Brazil’s state of Cheese and Cachaça (that’s not the official state logo, those are just the two things I’m most excited about).
Though in reality, that is also a bit of an illusion (OK, let’s drop this ‘illusion’ talk, it’s a lie, a straight out lie). Because I am in my normal seat in the dining room as I type this, but using the power of delayed publishing (I set a time in the future for this post to be automatically published), when you read this I will be in Minas Gerais. Basically I’m going to be away from Computer-Land for a while, so I’m writing a post before I go away. Everyone clear on that? Great.
The plan is to spend the New Year holiday in Ibitipoca (sounds like i-bitchy-POCK-a). Ibitipoca, or more properly Parque Estadual do Ibitipoca, is a forest park created back in 1973 and covering 1,488 hectares. You have to buy a ticket to enter the park and the number of visitors is limited to 300 per day. You can camp (we will be) and apparently these numbers are limited also.
That’s a LOT of Coca Cola…