Well that was Rio. Not as bad as I was expecting, but still people, especially locals were always chirping about the violence. Maybe we were lucky, but didn’t see any and never felt threatened. Downtown is riddled with homeless crashed and hanging about, some were a bit lairy but nothing I haven’t seen in other world cities, including that there London. The place we stayed was in Santa Theresa up the almost vertical hill from Flamengo beach and it was cracking beautiful old colonial houses up there in various states of (dis) repair. That was until we went to leave at 5 this morning and there was a bloke crashed out on the pavement outside oblivious to the thunderstorm that had just finished. Fuck knows what some of these cunts are on but they are seriously cabbaged. Away from the city and this area much of Rio is a bit of a shittip to be fair, not helped by the concrete monstrosities they have build - like a cross between the worst Stalinist excesses in the old eastern bloc and Albert Speer’s work.
Anyway, we’ve just docked in Curitiba - the difference could not be greater. Colder for a start, but much more European in appearance. As are the people - they’ve been getting progressively whiter the further south we’ve travelled- I’m expecting them to be transparent by the time we finish heading south.
