Around Sydney

My priorities were to open my bank account and get an Aussie mobile number which I achieve.

Unfortunately a bite I got in England which had swelled up huge- so I got my first experience of a n Australian medical centre and pharmacy.  I need to sign up to Medicare since there is a reciprocal agreement.

In the afternoon the weather was good so went to the CBD, Hyde Park and did a walking tour.

The long journey

It seems obvious that Australia is quite a long way- so the journey was to be long.

A while ago I had booked on Ethiad as it wad the cheapest one way (excluding China Southern and Malaysian).  I was also keen to fly on an A380 as I am a bit of a plane geek secretly.

I was impressed with the A380 and had a smooth flight to Abu Dhabi.  There was a seat in the middle free which was a bonus.  The seats were comfortable, the windows large, the plane was very modern and also the way it was compartmentalized meant that it did not feel like a big plane- except when you look out the window at the wingspan.  Unfortunately at 6hrs this  was much the shorter of the flights.

I did not rate Abu Dhabi airport at all.  There was no where to sit until they opened the gate and kept having to go through multiple security layers.  It seems in the Arab world they only give a s*** about you if you have loads of money.

The long 13 hour flight was less comfortable. The 777 seemed old and cramped compared to the A380 and a bad seat selection by me probably didn't help.  When I made it to Sydney there was a long queue for passports.  However once I got through it was easy.  So long as you don't try and bring organic matter in there is no hassle.  The train to town was easy and took 10 mins.  Handily the station was also next to my hostel.


Overall a long but in the scheme of things not too painful journey.  I thought Ethiad were okay but not nearly as good as they think they are.  Granted the food was good and they take surfboards.  But I don't want to watch videos about Man City or a stupid advert about the airline before every film or tv program.

I'm off to OZ

I am at Heathrow, waiting to begin a long journey to Oz.  Many months of planning finally coming to a head.

Final Days in and around Rio

It’s clear that I haven’t updated this blog in a while.  In this time Chelsea have even won the Premier League (YES!!!).  Now waiting at Galeo Airport gives me the perfect opportunity so I will cover off the last three days.

On Friday Maria had a day off thanks to a national holiday.  In the morning I headed for a casual surf down at Arpadoar.  There was a big swell hitting the whole coast.  I had avoided going in the day before as it had been raining heavily, and as mentioned in the last post rain equals sewage due the lack of proper sanitation in much of the city.  The left was working really well but with a crowd of 30-40 on it I opted for one of the ‘peaks’ further down.  It was still croweded and dirty but managed to score a left.

The weather was great and later on headed to Bar do Bacano- ‘my favourite bar in Rio’.  I hadn’t been there since my first trip in 2013.  We had to wait to get a seat but it was worth it.  I unintentionally managed to order 2 600m bottles of Orignial and had Maria’s Caipirhina- needless to say ended up pretty wasted.

Afterwards we headed to nearby Parque Large for a quick stroll around.

When the weekend arrived we agreed to hire a car and drive down to the national park around Prainha and Grumari.  We had done this before, but this time instead of exploring we were heading for cleaner beaches and a mini road trip.  After picking up a car at Localiza it was a fairly easy and scenic drive.  

Passing Prainha the waves were much bigger than expected and the paddle out looked brutal.  Prainha is certainly exposed- on a 5ft swell the waves were well overhead.  We carried on to Grumari where we got lucky on the parking space and also the waves.  A decent clean left was running right down the first part of the beach.  Grumari is the beach featured in the beach scene of ‘City of God’ and is probably the nicest in the immediate Rio area.

Waves were really good- with fun lefts and the odd shorter right.  You will have to see pictures Maria got of much better surfers than myself (below) to get the full picture.

Following a while on the beach we headed for a late lunch down at Guaratiba.  Unfortunately the restaurant, which did fish Bahia, style was not so good and quite expensive.  Generally I would avoid eating fish in Brazil- they seem to have a tendency to deep fry the whole thing and serve it with paste.  It ends up being far to heavy and lacking that fresh flavour.  This seems to have happened every time we have gone for local fish on our trips.  However at the town we saw another wave in the across the river mouth which was pretty small and clean,b ut had some shetler from the wind hitting the exposed beaches.  Clearly an option for big and stormy easterlies.

We had such a good day at Grumari we kept the car and headed back the next day.  Waves were smaller but still fun.  After hours on the beach we headed for luch in the restaurant by the beach, which was definitely and improvement on the previous day.  The only issue with Grumari and the area around was a large and aggressive bee population (they are everywhere).  Maria got stung and I certainly came close a few times.

The car journey back was pretty smooth and was even able to get a parking space very close to Maria’s flat.  I was so knackered and despite applying strong sun block ended up somewhat burned.

Sitting at the airport this concludes a great trip in Rio and around South America.  Now many hours on TAP await before returning to London.