So all carnaval festivities have finished =( Last night was the last night of the carnaval in Rio. So I won’t be dribbling on any more about my escapades after the sunhas well and truly gone down.
In other news: We shifted hotels today and Penny is here!!!! Albeit a bit dusty and flat batteries! She is here. A huge weight off our shoulders just to see her again and running like she should. Today marked the beginning of our next chapter. The beginning of 43 odd days with the 28 other teams on the rally. Farewell to the relaxed-carefree-holiday-mode-James and hello to James-the-Driver.
Today will be a drivers briefing and scrutineering and tomorrow we have a 45km trial run and then Saturday we finally pull out of Rio and head for the wilderness that they call Brazil!
It looks like I am the youngest on this rally by at least 2 score and 10. I don’t even know what that means but I think it is a lot of years =P That’s ok, I’ll bring a bit of youth to the table, show them how things are done.
I know a few Brazilians would look down upon me for saying this, but I think I am almost all samba’d out. Carnaval here in Rio has been hectic awesome fun, but I am allllmost had my fill of samba.
Righto, lets back up a few days first. We slogged through a 6 hour layover in Santiago by heading into the city and having a quick peak around: pretty cool city, very tired, didn’t see much, back to airport.
Trundled over to Buenos Aires for only 2 short nights. Well, one short night and a very long second night for me. Our first full day we did the classic hop on hop off bus tour around the city; always good value. And saw the worlds largest necropolis/crypt things in one spot. All the stonework and decorations/statues were just cool.
Thursday night Buenos Aires: For dinner I met up with Mim (Ola Mim!) whom I went to school with and new lives in BA. We had great catch ups and a great meal, very handy that she speaks spanish. When I found out that only a few blocks away there was a Pub Crawl, I had to do it. I had an outrageously awesome night meeting all sorts of tourists from around the world on the organised pub crawl. That was the long one, I didn’t quite see the sunrise so I suppose I returned back to our hotel at a respectable time. (I would like to think my jet-lag somewhat assisted in powering through, but I think it was just how much fun it was meeting people)
RIIIIOOOOOO
DE JANEIRO was the next day. I was excited. I was not let down. Rio rocks. Had the best weekend before a change of style that the rally beginning will bring. Christ the Redeemer was epic. Pretty surreal that they built the giant 38meter statue in 1931 overlooking the monstrous city of Rio. Most of our Rio weekend was a pre-organised tour package thing which made it easy. Morgan (Sup Morgan!) spent her birthday in Rio and after we got chatting a bit more I learnt she was from Perth (other side of the country to Brisbane) and has more or less a heap of mutual friends as me from Cottesloe and Mosman Park. Small world! A shout out to Max and Dan and the perth girls is in order in that case, “Hiooo guys!”
Sambadromo is where the actual competition parade of the samba schools go through and it started at 9pm, still didnt get back to sleep till 5:35 this morning and it wouldn’t have finished at 6:30am anyway, I piked early! I can only describe the sambadromo in single words; EPIC, samba, MONSTROUS, awesome, samba,people, samba, people, floats, dancing, colours, flamboyant, extravagant production, samba, FUN! I will never forget how great it was, meeting brazilians speaking little english.
;
85,000 spectators is all I can really say as well.
p.s. beers were $2 in the stadium and vodka smirnoff mixers were $3, and staff wandered the stands selling them from eskies (chilly bins/coolers for non-aussies). Just thought I would rub that in to my mates at home paying 3-4 times that price.
Penny has been confirmed to by in Rio! Good news. Wednesday we re-locate to rally hotel and will progress from there. T-minus 2 more sleeps now.
Much love amigos!!!
Talk soon
James
p.p.s Sorry mum, I think I got a little sunburnt, Not as burnt as everyone else though. And the spongebob (bobbysponge in portuges) makes it look worse =)
Sydney at the moment, next stop Santiago, Chile, where a very very unwelcomed 8 hour layover waits for us before a bit of a skip across to Buenos Aires. Some serious excitement hit me last night when I finally got my self organised enough to pack my bags. Collecting the few clothes I need and tossing them into my rucksack. Then in went my new goPro Hero 3 camera to my backpack and I thought to myself, “this is gonna be awesome!” I didn’t get to play with it much before I left but here is numero uno goPro snap. I’ll work out all the other cool things to do with it on my 15hour flight across the Pacific.
Cool story 1 of 687 to come: It turns out a girl I went to school with lives in Buenos Aires and has done for a few months so I will have someone to catch up with and show me the friendly city and its inner workings. Sorry father dear, you’re on your own thursday night. Can someone tell him that for me please? I’m not game enough. hahaha I kid, he will be fine on his own.
“Attention remaining customers, flight QF27 to Santiago is in the final stages of boarding, please immediately make your way to gate 12!”
See you later Australia. Catchya on the flip side.
Confused all ready??? Don’t be. Monkey Wrench is just the song that I am listening to right at this moment. However, in keeping of style, we do have quite a few monkey wrench’s in our tool box. Let’s hope we don’t need them.
Ok, so this is the beginning of another outrageous adventure. South America this time. Welcome to my blog if this is your first time, my last website was www.pennytocapetown.com if you want to check out me and Dad’s last long distance vintage car rally in Penny. Welcome to all my old friends and welcome to any new and future friends. Welcome all. I’m James. And Dad/Father dearest/Fahzer/Daddums/Big-daddy/The-good-navigator/The-navigator-who-dropped-our-route-book-over-the-edge-of-the-car-man, his name is Max, my friend and partner in crime.
Timeline: today is the the 1st of February. We leave Aus on the 6th of Feb and do some regular touristy stuff in Argentina/Brasil for a few days and the actual rally start is 14th of Feb.
So what happens on here you ask? Well, as you may know, Dad and I are rallying Penny almost 15,000km’s around South America. Over the next fortnight (2 weeks for you American folk:) ) I will just have updates on general run-of-the-mill shenanigans and cool stories as well as updates on how Penny is when we collect her in Rio. After the rally event has started I will try to write some interesting update of the day’s happenings and stories and if I am not in a wifi area you will just have to wait another day or so to find out what mischief we have got into.
Some highlights and sort of things you can expect on here from last years Africa rally is: hitting a bus in Egypt, seeing giraffes, vintage car drifting and of course me getting semi-arrested in South Africa.
Why are we doing this? Well, ummmm, because we can. Who wouldn’t want to spend 6 solid months repairing/preparing a 90 year old car to ship across the other side of
The world to race for 15,000km’s only to ship the car back and have both car and drivers very tired and in need of recuperation’s. Well me and Dad love it! I cannot resist going to the complete unknown of culture and country to jump into the deep end and do something awesome! It all boils down to one fact, this trip will be LEGEN, wait for it……. DARY.
P.s. most of my blog titles will be some form of a movie/music/entertainment play on words. I love puns.
Stay tuned B’s and G’s. Don’t forget to subscribe so you can be the first of your friends to say ‘I SAW WHAT JAMES DID FIRST’
RIIIIOOOOOO
