mais adoro Rio de Janeiro

I think I made a very good choice. I started with Sao Paulo, and then went to Rio. Should I have done the other way around, I might not have liked SP. Rio is just gorgeous. Not only has the sea and beautiful surroundings. It also has very nice historical buildings, and just something in the air that makes it vey special. I definetely add it to my list of top three (the other two are Saint Petersburg and Barcelona). You may wonder about favelas and insecurity. Well, I saw some favelas in certain areas, but most of the city is pretty safe. There is police in the streets, but even when there is none, people walk quite boldly. The same thing I saw in SP. And I noticed quite a number of wallets and handbags easily accesible for pickpockets. So either there aren't many thiefs around, or people are overconfident. Or well, maybe the pickpockets are not the most important kind of crime. Police and civil servants can be quite corrupt too. Just an example: our Sao Paulo-Rio coach was stopped by the police, and after keeping us there for a while, a policeman came in and said that "he was under the obligation" of charging us a certain tax of aprox. 1 Euro per passenger. Just, it turned out that our tickets were saying that the tax had already been paid, so he could not charge it a second time. He tried though, and spent some time negociating with the driver. Some passengers started to get nervous, and even one of them took the drivers seat and started to horn. In the end they just let us go without paying anything.
In Rio I'm staying with some friends of my mother. This is another Galician that emigrated to South America -I told you that there are plenty around- and that has spent here most of his life now. So he is actually more Brazilian than Spanish, although his son-in-law said that he was too serious to be a real Brazilian. In any case, he is being extreamly nice showing me around and I'm also getting the chance to practice my Portuguese. Just they were a bit dissapointed when they learned that I wasn't so keen on footbal. The team you support is one of the first things that your are asked when meeting some Brazilians.
For the rest, I will continue to walk around the city today, and go to at least one of the museums in the afternoon. And next week I will head to the Amazonas. I already got the ticket to Manaus.