South America - Part 9: Rio de Janeiro Including Parks

[gavin]

Here comes another long, multi-part report which won’t feature anything particularly interesting in terms of coasters, but it’s from a part of the world that doesn’t show up on here often.

My Easter Holiday this year was a few days longer than normal, allowing for a proper long-haul trip. South America hadn’t ever been on the cards as a trip from Hong Kong since it’s such a ballache of a trip from here. I’d always thought I’d be better off doing it from the UK and doing a month-long+ kind of thing, but the older I get, the more the idea of an extra-long trip loses any appeal, so breaking South America into smaller doses seemed like the better idea if I were ever going to get it done.

The trip involved an 8-hour flight from here to Dubai, but with an 11-hour overnight layover after that. This actually worked perfectly as it broke up the trip into much more manageable chunks and Dubai Airport also has hotels in the terminals themselves. You can just check into the hotel directly in the terminal, without having to clear immigration, and then just head to the next flight directly after checking out. Game changer.

Next up was a 15-hour flight to Sao Paulo, but I’d managed to get a decent deal on premium economy for that leg, so it was much more comfortable at least. Sao Paulo isn’t particularly a place I’d ever been interested in, but I decided to do a few days there for some park stuff, also figuring that by doing the least interesting place first, while I was still “fresh”, I’d appreciate it more than doing it at the end.

I got to the hotel at a decent enough time on the Saturday night. I usually prefer to see a bit of any new city first before cred whoring, but some of the places were only open at weekends, meaning that the first day, the Sunday, was the only chance I’d have.

So yeah, my first day ever in South America was spent in Ubers picking up crappy +1s. Stupid hobby.

Cidade da Crianca

Although it’s small with nothing of any real note, this was the most major park of the day. I got there shortly after opening in the morning, and it wasn’t busy. It’s a pay-one-price kind of place, and they sold me a cheap “accompanying adult” ticket - cheaper than a kids’ ticket – even though I was by myself. For 8 quid, you get a booklet of 8 ride coupons. Every ride is one coupon, so it was more than enough for the 3 creds I needed.

The first cred was a Chinese spinner:

Next up was this SBF Visa thing, which had a strangely rough lift hill, but an ok main layout.

More interesting was an inverted big apple coaster, kind of hidden in a corner and looking closed, but luckily not. From the RCDB description:

Magic Bee was built by a guy called Arnaldo in his shop in a town called São José do Rio Preto. He builds a lot of rides to small parks but doesn't have a company name. He is simply known as "Arnaldo de São José do Rio Preto" (Arnaldo from São José do Rio Preto). São José do Rio Preto means "Saint Joseph of the Black River".

I don't take videos as I can't be arsed with the whole thing, but I took a video. Behold:

If this were a pay-per-ride place, I would’ve skipped the ghost train, but it was paid for. Nothing special.

They also had this dinosaur ride. The vehicles cross a bridge and go through a small room with some animatronics. I was on a roll with my amazing videos, so there's one for this as well.

For what it is, and the low price of it, I thought this park was ok. 3 creds are 3 creds.

I was in two minds whether to head out to place called Animalia Park. It would’ve taken around an hour to get to, and while it has four coasters listed, two of those are apparently only open for special events. The park’s website seemed to confirm this since they only had two of the coasters listed on their site, which seemed to be very up-to-date and comprehensive. I ended up not bothering, but kind of regretted it later since I would’ve had plenty of time.

Anyway, Next!

Parque da Monica

This was a shopping mall park which had the actual audacity to charge an all-inclusive entrance fee, which was more than double what I paid at the last place. All for one cred. This absolutely should’ve been a pay-per-ride, rechargeable card kind of place like pretty much every other shopping mall park on the planet. Evil, robbing bastards.

The coaster was an Intamin family thing. It was fine, but not worth the sixteen quid I think I’d had to pay for it.

Back into an Uber and onto the next one:

Neo Geo

This was a proper shopping mall park who realised they were just a shopping mall park and had the good manners to operate a pay-per-ride system accordingly. It was basically just a games arcade, but it had a Zamperla dragon on an outdoor terrace.

And onto the next mall:

Playland Osasco

Another shopping mall, another Zamperla dragon:

Back to an outdoor park, which was across the street from a shopping mall rather than being inside one.

T-Rex Park

This was also just a pay-per-ride place and home to an SBF spinner, the absolute scourge of the coaster enthusiast community. There are no pictures of this place on RCDB yet. I know everyone’s been keeping a close eye on it, desperate for more information, so you’re welcome.

Onto another shopping mall then:

Neo Geo

Yes, another place called Neo Geo. It’s a chain that has facilities in a load of shopping malls, but most of them are just games arcades. This one was much more substantial, with two coasters: one from Vekoma and then another f**king SBF spinner.

I just had one more park on the list:

Parque de Diversões Marisa

Another small, outdoor park in a beautiful location, but at least it didn’t have an SBF Spinner. RCDB doesn’t have the manufacturer of the coaster listed, but it’s probably Pinfari, innit?

By this point it was around 5 or 6pm and I was done. All of these places were open until quite late, around 10pm, so I could’ve fitted in that Animalia place earlier, but by that point I was at the complete wrong end of the city, which is massive, and it was too late anyway since that park was closing at 7. I should have just gone out there earlier, picking up another cred (another SBF spinner) on the way back into the city, while still having time to hit up all those other places. I was kind of happy to be done early though since I was pretty knackered still from travelling.

I’ve also since realised that I missed another small park in the city which could’ve easily been done along with those others, but, again, it only had an SBF spinner. I’m not sure how I missed that one. Maybe it hadn’t popped up on Coast-to-Coaster at that point since the coaster listing on RCDB was quite new, a rookie mistake on my part which I’m quite annoyed about since I'm usually very good at using both sites to plan stuff out.

Still, it was quite a productive day, hitting seven parks and adding ten new coasters to the count, though adding to the count was all it was really since there was little of any note. Could’ve/should’ve been ten parks and fourteen creds though…

Next up, a proper park: Hopi Hari

 

[Climb]

Your reporting is hilarious. Also, thanks for the pictures!

 

[gavin]

Apologies for the delay in getting to the second part of this report – I know everyone has been constantly refreshing the page – but I’ve been busy at work and I can never be bothered to waste time on these reports at home.

After I had already booked flights, I saw that Hopi Hari would likely only be open at weekends, but closer to the time their website had it open for the Monday, so that worked out well to allow for the cred whoring the previous day. There’s a bus that goes out to a town fairly close to the park, but bollocks to that when Uber exists.

I got there at opening and there were already quite a lot of people waiting to get in. I didn’t really bother looking at the park layout, so headed into the “Wild West” area (how original), but bought a fast pass on the way since it wasn’t too expensive and I’ve become rather a fan of throwing money at “one-visit” parks to make things easier.

The death tower hasn’t reopened. Personally, I don’t think it’s ever going to at this point since it’s been over twelve years since the accident.

I didn’t actually ride anything at that point, but came back to the area later. I saw a train testing on Katapul, Alton Towers’ old Thunder Looper, so headed in that direction. It wasn’t scheduled to open until about an hour later though. I also decided to hold off on Montezum, the woodie, until later given that I had a fast pass and it was from RCCA, who are notoriously s**t, and I didn’t want to risk ruining my day before it had started.

The first ride of the day was a Zamperla dragon, but with a car theme which I think is quite recent.

Next up was Vurang, which, for me was the most interesting thing here. It’s an Intamin Twist ‘n’ Turn coaster. They only ever built three of these, and I already had the other two (South Korea and Taiwan). Considering they’re the same model, they’re all completely different coasters. Comet Express (the one in Korea) is a semi-powered coaster with no lift hill, Sahara Twist (Taiwan) is a small, short kiddy coaster, and this one is a decently-sized, long coaster with a regular lift hill.

The queue wasn’t too bad at that point, so I joined it in order to use the fast pass for a reride later. The fast pass was a once-per-ride deal.

It was very good, but didn’t really have much to look at inside and was quite nauseating since I span like f**k on it.

Right next door was Simulakram, which seemed like it could be something interesting from the building and queue line.

Oh. Maybe not then.

The film didn’t even match the theme of the area either. It was just some runaway mine cart thing.

Katapul was due to open soon, so I headed back, thinking I might do the same as I had with Vurang: get a ride in from the regular queue and use the fast pass for a reride. I quickly decided against that idea:

Straight up the fast pass line it was, getting straight on and heading to the back row, much to the dismay of the people in the station who now had to wait a whole extra cycle. Sorry not sorry.

Unfortunately, I don’t count relocations, so this was not a new cred, but I like these coasters anyway and it was nice to smugly think of all the “dey shuld bring bak funder looper” cretins afterwards.

This building had another simulator thing in it, and had no people in line whatsoever meaning that despite the park being busy, I had the entire thing to myself. This turned out to be understandable since it was s**te! There was a very small screen at the front of a rather large 4D cinema which just showed a POV of Montezum.

Some other stuff. The Egyptian-themed building had a fairly decent horror walkthrough, Katakum, with live actors.

Onto Montezum then. The queue line was full and just about spilling out of the entrance at some points during the day, but I obviously skipped this. There’s a semblance of batching riders, but the person doing so sent me to a row that didn’t have any space in it, so I kept walking and got a front row ride. It’s quite an attractive coaster to look at. You get an especially good view on the drive in and out of the park since it passes under the road leading up to it.

It was horrendous, just such a massive, steaming turd of a coaster with nary a redeeming feature. It was just rough as tits from start to finish and solidified RCCA as being the absolute worst ever woodie manufacturer. I didn’t mention it before, but you can/have to take your bags onto the rides with you, including this one. There’s no way people aren’t losing stuff, but I actually quite like this.

I rode the Ferris wheel at some point. For some reason, they were only loading 4 cars. I don’t mean 4 cars at a time: 4 cars in total, which were then sent around three times with all the others sitting empty. It’s always a nice break and a good way to get some photos, but the windows were so scratched up as to render any photos fu**ing unusable. See?

I do love s**t “small world” rides though. There’s something quite endearing about them.

Have some more pictures of one of the worst coasters on the planet:

To finish up the visit, I headed back to the wild west area, doing the rapids, which I’d determined wouldn’t be stupidly wet, and Ghosti Hotel, which turned out to be a ghost train rather than the walkthrough I’d expected.

There was also another attraction, La Mina del Joe Sacramento. This wasn’t an option for fast pass, but the queue wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t late, and I’d done everything I wanted to.

This was another live actor walkthrough with a slight horror element, but done more comically and as more of a guided tour rather than a “move through random stuff while people jump out” kind of thing.

That was it. This park visit was one of relatively few where what I was expecting was pretty much what I got. The park was maybe more attractive than I’d thought it would be, but there was nothing which really stood out in a good way in terms of the rides. I guess maybe Vurang stood out to an extent since it was more substantial than I’d expected, and it’s a very rare ride type, but that was it really.

Operations were mostly ok, but since I had the fast pass, I wasn’t paying too much attention. Montezum and Vurang both had two trains running and the second train, from my very few rides, didn’t seem to be hanging around on the brake runs for too long.

I had to wait a while for an Uber, so I took a few more pictures of Montezum while I was waiting. Dreadful thing.

I had still seen precisely nothing of Sao Paulo. I was staying at one end of Paulista Avenue, a kind of business and shopping area a few kilometers from the city centre, so I got the Uber to drop me off at the opposite end of it and walked the couple of kilometers back to the hotel from there. It was all a bit nondescript really, with the odd point of interest, but was definitely a very convenient area to stay.

I had a full day left the next day, so did a proper sightseeing day then, which I’ll chuck in later.

 

[gavin]

This next bit will just be a bit of a photo dump from a sightseeing day in Sao Paulo. I started off by heading to Independence Park, which also had a history museum in it. The building itself was more interesting than what was inside it to be honest, but the whole area was lovely.

From there it was on to the city centre, which definitely wasn’t as nice as the Independence Park area or the area where I was staying on Paulista Avenue. I went up some tall(ish) building for the views and basically just walked around for a bit. There were a few impressive enough buildings, but not much to actually do. It was all very busy and lively though if that’s your thing.

Also, a couple of areas (around the cathedral and train station especially) felt a bit sketchy due to huge numbers of homeless people, many of whom were clearly mentally ill and/or off their tits on drugs. That’s not to disparage the homeless or the mentally ill as individuals, but when there are large numbers of them, it says a lot about the city as a whole. It didn’t feel particularly dangerous though since nobody was aggressive and there were plenty of people around. Plus, there was a strong police presence pretty much everywhere in the city. I wouldn’t have been hanging around there at night though, and I was glad that I hadn’t booked a hotel in the city centre.

Have a crapload of photos:

I headed back to Paulista Avenue and decided to check out the art museum since I had time to kill and it was only a 10–15-minute walk back to the hotel from there. It was better than I’d been expecting. The main collection was pretty impressive and they had a whole Francis Bacon exhibition as well. Plus, it was free.

And that was it for Sao Paulo. It was all fine, but I don’t think I’d ever have the urge to go back, not that I tend to revisit many places anyway. I think I’d definitely made the correct decision to spend a few days here first instead of at the end of the trip. At the start of long trips, I’m always a bit more forgiving of places that might not be that great and I’m generally in a good mood thanks to everything being new and “fresh”. If I’d have ended things there, I may have ended up disliking it quite a bit I think.

Anyway, I had an early flight the next morning, which wasn’t an issue. Thanks to travel time, time differences etc., I’d been waking up way earlier than necessary, but it mostly worked to my advantage in terms of getting s**t done.

I’ll hammer out the next bit in a separate post. There’s a cred coming in that one.

 

[gavin]

From Sao Paulo, I flew down to Montevideo, Uruguay. This definitely wasn’t part of any coaster trip, but it was close enough to another city I’d always wanted to go to and it was a chance to tick off another country as well really.

There is a small park in Montevideo, but it was, apparently, only open at weekends and I was there on a Wednesday and Thursday. Closer to the time, I realised that the Thursday was a public holiday, so the park should hopefully be open on my second day.

Anyway, I got to the hotel around lunch time. The airport in Montevideo was excellent. No bus bulls**t despite being a budget airline and no immigration queues since everything was done through automated passport scanners. Perfection.

As with Sao Paulo, I wasn’t staying in the city centre, opting instead to stay in more of a posh bit that was definitely more residential than tourists, not that there were really many tourists anyway. That first afternoon, I just took a long walk along the sea front in one direction, then headed back the same way, continuing past where I’d started, on to a lighthouse and round to another small beach. It was all very pleasant.

This had turned into a 10km walk, and I ended up next to Rodo Park, which is opposite the beach I’d ended at and includes the amusement park which was supposed to be closed and that I’d been planning to go back to the next day. It was open though. Yay!

There was no cred in that section though. There are actually two different ride areas at opposite ends of the park, so I walked through it (very nice), hoping that the other area would be open, too.

Behold! Uruguay’s only roller coaster!

I’m willing to bet that it’s not actually the only coaster in the country, but it’s the only one currently listed. I’d done a quick search online / on Google maps to scout out any other possible surprise creds, but I didn’t see anything obvious.

From there, I wasn’t too far from the hotel, so just took the 15-minute walk back there. It doesn’t seem like much, but it was quite a tiring/productive day what with the early morning flight, long walk etc. I’d also got the cred ticked off, meaning that I didn’t have to go back the next day.

Montevideo Day 2

This was just a sightseeing day, starting with the city centre area. I hadn’t looked into it, but that fab, tall, old(ish) building - Palacio Salvo - had guided tours, so I put myself down for the English one an hour or so later. I’m not the biggest fan of guided tours, but it was the only to get in the building and I was quickly realising I needed to find stuff to do to fill my day. I just had a mooch around until then.

The tour turned out to be extremely dull since there’s not a great deal to see. It had been opened as a hotel, failed, and was then converted into apartments. You got to go up to a viewing deck though, so it was worth it for that really.

From there it was a bit more walking around the city centre, which wasn’t very big, so it was all very easy and pleasant to just have a wander. It was also quite chilled, not crowded at all, very clean and had none of the homelessness issues that Sao Paulo had had. At least, not to anywhere near the same extent. The whole place was just a lot more pleasant and felt much safer and more relaxed. Yes, I know, it’s a completely different city in a completely different country, so it’s a bit stupid to compare them; it was just a big difference going from one to the other though.

There was some museum / art gallery up in a different area which had a few other bits and pieces around, so I headed up there, but there was nothing of any real interest to be honest. I had a bit of a walk around and got a taxi back to the hotel around mid-afternoon.

So yeah, Montevideo was all quite lovely, but a day and a half was plenty of time seeing as there wasn’t really a great deal to do. I had a nice time though. The city was really nice, not too busy and had very few tourists from what I could see. Not that I have a problem with tourists, I obviously am one, but it’s nice to feel that you’re not just following the crowds sometimes.

Next up: Buenos Aires

 

[gavin]

From Montevideo, I took a ferry across to Buenos Aires, Argentina, which took a little under three hours. You get a decent view of the CBD when you arrive:

It was early afternoon by the time I got to the hotel in the Recoleta area, so I decided to stay around there for the first day. The hotel was right across the street from the Recoleta Cemetery. There was pretty long queue to get in, so I considered just coming back early the next morning since I was only a 2-minute walk away, but decided to just suck it up. It didn’t actually take too long and didn’t seem too busy once I was inside since it’s pretty big and everyone was spread out.

The “highlight”, which I somehow managed to hit with very few people at first but seemed to have a constant crowd otherwise, is the Duarte family tomb, which houses Eva Peron. Considering how ostentatious some of the tombs were, hers was very unimpressive and tucked away.

I’ll just chuck in some other pictures of the cemetery. I do quite enjoy wandering around some of these famous cemeteries for the whole over-the-top aspect of them, but apart from Eva Peron, I didn’t know who any of the other people were.

What was also quite cool was that quite a lot of the tombs had been abandoned:

From there, it was a bit of a random wander around the area, calling into another art gallery, which was ok but nothing particularly special.

I thought this was fab though:

I finished up the afternoon at a bookshop, which has been converted from an old theatre and seems to pop up a lot on clickbait social media videos. It was very impressive to be fair.

So yeah, my first day in Argentina was spent in a cemetery, an art gallery and a bookshop. No. No, I’m not fun at parties. Creds in the next bit.

 

[gavin]

I had two more full days in Buenos Aires, so the plan was to just do some sightseeing on the first day and some cred whoring on the second, but I ended up heading out to some “maybe” places on the first afternoon.

I started off down here:

Then it was across to the back of the Casa Rosada and round to the Plaza de Mayo. For anyone who’s not homosexual, the Casa Rosada is where Eva Peron made her famous speech, which turned into the song Don’t Cry for Me Argentina in the musical Evita. For the film version, they allowed Madonna to film it on the actual balcony.

From there it was mostly just a walk down one of the main roads, Avenida de Mayo towards some other stuff.

This looked familiar. Turns out it was the sister building of that one in Montevideo a couple of days earlier.

And some more stuff:

I wanted to see inside the Teatro Colon since I do like an old, over the top theatre, but you can only do that with a tour, there was a huge queue and the online booking system had everything as sold out anyway. Compared to Sao Paulo and Montevideo, Buenos Aires had a lot of tourists.

Nearby was another public square with an obelisk thing. By now, I was thinking about the “maybe” parks. I’d started the day really early thanks to still waking up well before any alarm I’d set, and had seen a fair bit of the city by that point. There were other areas I could’ve checked out, or some museums and stuff, but I wasn’t in the mood for that at all really.

There were a couple of small parks about an hour away from the city, and there was a regular, direct express bus. I checked beforehand, and buses don’t take cash, so I needed a travel card, which turned into a massive faff to get. Apparently, you can get them at “most convenience stores” (nope, I tried four of them) and “any metro station” (again nope). I don’t know if was just station staff being c**ts, but I didn’t manage to get a card until the 3rd metro station I tried. It hadn’t taken me too long to be fair, but I couldn’t understand how something as simple as a travel card, which EVERYONE in the city uses, could be so f**king difficult to get hold of.

Anyway, the bus was easy. It went out to a town called Lujan, and dropped off very close to this pretty impressive cathedral:

Parque Lujan

One of the parks was directly behind the cathedral, meaning that their crappy Mecpower spinner had quite the impressive backdrop.

The second park was just a few minutes’ walk across a bridge, or you could use a chairlift. I took the bridge.

Argen Park

This place had a powered dragon and a Zyclon thing. There was also some quite strange, old spinning flat ride (closed) and a quite large building which looked like it could have housed a dark ride or walkthrough, but which had clearly been abandoned.

The bus back didn’t pick up at the same place it had dropped off, and I couldn’t be bothered to walk the 15 minutes to the bus stop, so I got an Uber back into the city, heading back to Plaza de Mayo to see it better (the sun had been on the “wrong” side that morning,) and then heading back to Recoleta.

Yes. Yes, I did spend around 4 hours altogether to get three crappy +1s – stupid hobby – but it would have been more annoying to leave them sitting there knowing that there’s pretty much no chance that I’ll ever be back.

More cred whoring in the next bit.

 

[Hutch]

Ha, love those random creds chilling next to some big cathedral. After all that effort, that must've been a nice surprise to see upon arrival.

 

[gavin]

Ha, love those random creds chilling next to some big cathedral. After all that effort, that must've been a nice surprise to see upon arrival.

Yeah, it definitely made the effort seem slightly more productive.

 

[Ollie]

Those chair lifts look sketchy af. Glad you chose to live

 

[gavin]

Those chair lifts look sketchy af. Glad you chose to live

Where the f**k did you suddenly pop up from?!

The next day was a park/shameless cred whoring day, starting with the only proper park in the area.

Parque de la Costa

There was a train station right next to the place, but the money saved by using public transport over Uber wasn’t worth the mild extra faff and time involved from where I was staying. That’s kind of how I weigh things up these days; is the money saved worth the extra time and effort? It usually isn’t.

I was there on Easter Sunday, just before opening, and there was a pretty substantial line to get in. I booked the ticket online on the way, thinking I’d save a bit of time, but these days that’s what everyone does and there was literally not a single person lining up to buy tickets on the gate.

Remember when booking online was a bit of a hack and would get you straight past any queues?

Once inside the park, it wasn’t really too busy at all. There are various ticket options. I’d gone for the full “passport”, but a lot of others seemed to have gone for different packages or entry-only stuff, so there were actually very minimal queues for most things.

The park’s amazing one-two punch (in the face) is a Vekoma SLC right next to a Vekoma Boomerang. A sign out front had already informed me that the SLC would unfortunately/fortunately be closed. I mean, yeah whatever, but it’s a cred. Apparently, it’s been closed for a few months already.

The Boomerang was pretty terrible, with a very strange jolt after the train gets released from the backwards spike. It’s recently been repainted, seemingly by Ronald f**kin’ McDonald.

There were some Chinese rides, including a Beijing Jiuhua spinner, which span more than any other Chinese spinner I’ve been on. This isn’t an endorsement.

This was a walkthrough horror thing which wasn’t particularly good.

This thing was also a horror walkthrough, but extremely short with almost nothing in it, and nothing remotely dinosaur connected.

The final coaster was, arguably, the best one there: a Zierer Tivoli with a semblance of theming.

The park had a nice enough location on the river, but a HUGE mosquito problem. It was honestly quite ridiculous. I needed to take a phone call about some flight booking f**k up (the booking site I’d used had completely different airports listed than the airline did), so stepped behind some shed thing, onto some grass, to get away from the park noise, and within seconds, dozens of the lil’ bastards were all over me. It’s not the park’s fault obviously, but still.

I did a reride of the Tivoli, but decided to leave at that point since I wasn’t interested in any of the flat rides. There was some big show, which seemed to be a big selling point if the posters around the park were to be believed, but it was only on once, in the late afternoon, and I wasn’t going to hang around, especially with the mosquito issue.

It was a bit more of a major park than I’d been expecting, but it’s a bit sad that this is the best that Argentina has to offer. They don’t seem to have added anything in years, and having your signature attraction down for months – and not getting it back up and running for a holiday weekend – clearly isn’t a good sign. Yeah, for us coaster nerds it’s just an SLC, but it’s still the most notable coaster in the country.

From there, it was Ubering to pick up some shopping mall crap. I can’t be bothered to go back and check which malls were which because who cares? This’ll all look very quick, but there were some decent distances between places.

First one:

Shameful.

Second one:

Bollocks.

I wasn’t too far from Parque de la Ciudad. There used to be an amusement park here, including a very early Intamin coaster – Vertigorama – but the whole place closed down due to some corruption scandal or something. The coaster, having never opened, is still there, but the whole former amusement area is fenced off, so you can’t really get to it. Mosquitos here were also right bastards.

The next shopping mall park was actually quite impressive. Well, the huge building it was in was at least. Just another powered dragon (but not a dragon) though.

At this point, I tried to buy some insect repellent, knowing that I’d be spending the next couple of days in nature, but weirdly couldn’t get any anywhere. Between the area of the mall above and the area around my hotel, I tried two huge supermarkets and six, SIX, very large pharmacies, but the answer was always “No”. No explanation as to why a huge pharmacy chain didn’t have it, just “no”. Any idea where the f**k I might be able to find any? “No.” In an area with a very clear mosquito problem, this made no sense to me whatsoever.

Anyway, despite that, and the silly faff doing something as seemingly simple as getting a travel card, Buenos Aires had been my favourite of the three cities I’d been to up to that point.

 

[gavin]

While planning this trip, I’d decided against trying to squeeze another country in, but had also ended up with a couple of days to fill, so decided to head to Iguazu Falls, on the border of Argentina and Brazil. This first involved a domestic flight to Iguazu from Buenos Aires. I chose one very early in the morning in order to hopefully get to the falls before it got too busy.

To save on faff, and because I’d have luggage with me, I’d booked a driver to pick me up at the airport, take me directly to the falls (I could then leave all my s**t in his car), then take me from there when I was done across the border to a hotel in Brazil.

When you get into the park, there’s a train to take you to a couple of different points. Unfortunately, the main attraction, a viewing deck above one of the major falls, was closed thanks to flood damage of the footpaths and train track. This meant that waiting for the train proved to be completely unnecessary since it only went to the first stop, about a 10-minute walk away.

Anyway, you end up at the stating point of two walking trails, upper and lower. I did the upper trail first followed by the lower. I took absolutely loads of very similar photos, so here’s a load of those.

It’s in nature, so there are animals as well.

And here are more pictures of water:

It kind of goes without saying that the pictures don’t really do the place justice, but it was gorgeous. I think I’d been there about 4 hours when I messaged the driver to pick me up, driving the short distance to the Brazilian border (easiest border crossing ever) and then getting picked up by another driver (all organised with the same company) to get me to the hotel.

All of these distances were pretty short, and it all would have been very doable with Uber for a fraction of the cost, but it was worth it to just have it planned out in advance and not have to think about luggage storage at the falls.

I chose the hotel based on the location since it was close both the falls on the Brazilian side and the airport I’d need next. The original plan had been to leave the luggage in the hotel, go to the falls, go back for luggage and then to the airport. This would’ve been very easily doable, but it didn’t cost much to just add this onto the car booking from the previous day.

The hotel was right next to a big shopping mall that supposedly had a cred (that one would have been super excluse), but it had been removed. Gutted.

Anyway, on to the Brazilian side of the falls. For this one, the walking trail was much shorter – only one way to go really – but it was still amazing. You get an excellent view of the waterfalls that you walk above on the Argentinian side (most of the falls are in Argentina) and then get up really close to the main falls on the Brazilian side.

Again, amazing. I was so glad I’d opted to head here since it turned out to be one of my favourite places to visit. The airline had changed my flight time a few days prior, so I had some time to kill. There’s a bird park across the street from the main entrance to the falls, so I just headed there for a bit and got the driver to collect me from there. It wasn’t very big, was pretty nice, with a bunch of different walkthrough aviaries.

Next up was the final stop of the trip, Rio de Janeiro.

 

[gavin]

Let’s hammer the end of this out then. I’ll shove a few days into one long post with lots of repetitive pictures. You’re welcome.

The final part of this trip was just a short flight from the Brazilian side of Iguazu Falls up to Rio de Janeiro. The previously mentioned change in flight time meant I arrived later than originally planned, so I just headed to the hotel and that was it. I chose to stay on Copacabana Beach, which was a convenient location, but meant having that awful Barry Manilow song constantly in my head for 3 days.

There was a nice view from the hotel roof terrace. I was too cheap to get a room with this view though.

Rio Day 1

On the first morning, I headed to the cable car for Sugarloaf Mountain, getting there as it was opening to try and avoid any crowds. It was all fine; not too many people at all so no wait at all for the cable car. It’s actually two cable cars, one to a lower hill first, with some restaurants and shops, and then the second up to Sugarloaf itself.

After heading back down, I just had a walk along the seafront near that area.

From there, I got an Uber up into the city centre. I wasn’t really expecting too much from the city centre, given that Sao Paulo hadn’t been great and that Rio is much more well-known for the beaches and mountains. It was really nice though. I wandered into a couple of grand-looking buildings, not really knowing what they were, and ended up being shown around some government building even though it was supposedly closed to visitors at that time.

Here’s another pile of pictures, which I won’t be explaining, partly because I can’t be arsed and partly because nobody really gives a s**t let’s face it.

I was seriously flagging by this point, and almost skipped this next place. It was in a bit of a crappy area and not particularly close to other stuff, but I walked over to have a quick look anyway and was glad I did since it was fab. It’s just an old library really, but it was very impressive.

There were some creds to be had in Rio, in parks that were only open in the evenings. I was originally planning to go that night, but if Google Maps was to believed, which it probably shouldn’t be, one of them wasn’t open that evening. I was knackered by that point as well, so decided to call it a day and do the parks the next night.

Rio Day 2

Along with Sugarloaf Mountain, the other main tourist draw was of course the Christ the Redeemer statue. There was a very easy minibus option a couple of minutes’ walk from my hotel. Despite getting there earlyish, it was still pretty busy up there. It was also a bit too cloudy to get a decent view, but it was easy to see the statue itself. ‘Twas a rather impressive pile of concrete.

I had an afternoon to kill, so got the same minibus back down to Copacabana and took a long walk along that beach, around a fort and then onto Ipanema Beach around the corner, which replaced one annoying song in my head with another.

I ended up heading back to the hotel for a couple of hours and then heading out to get a handful of +1s, none of which were particularly close to the beaches or downtown area.

Hotzone

Thanks to being a fair distance, along with crap traffic at that time in the evening, it took over an hour to get here. Yep, it’s just a games arcade with a cred. Interestingly, they also one of those stand-up flat ride things which I think I’ve only seen at Tokyo Joypolis – who’ve made a game out of it – and a couple of places in Turkey.

+1. Next!

Play City

This place isn’t listed on RCDB. They have an old, defunct listing for it at an older location, but it seems to have moved. It’s basically a semi-permanent travelling fairground, but it pops up easily on Google Maps and Uber, so it must’ve been there for some time already.

This next place was going to be the final one for this trip:

Parque Shanghai

They’ve got not one, but two, powered Zamperla coasters: one single-helix model and one double. What a treat!

I still had time, so decided to knock off one more +1, which I wasn’t going to bother with, at another shopping mall.

T-Rex Park

There are no pictures of this up on RCDB yet, so you’re very welcome. The whole mall, including the “park” (another games arcade with a cred) was dead, so I was almost expecting to find it closed, but nope, all good.

Considering the size of the city, and the fact that it’s a major tourist destination, Rio really deserves a decent park. The fact that a semi-permanent fairground in the car park of a shopping mall is the best that they currently have is quite sad.

Rio Day 3

My flight out on the next day wasn’t until late afternoon. I’d seen a load of helicopters flying up and down the coast and looked into that since I’d never actually been in a helicopter and Rio seemed like a good place to try one for the first time. The price wasn’t too bad at all at a bit less than 150 quid for a 30-minute flight, which actually turned out to be more like 40 minutes. I also got a free upgrade to a “doors off” flight to fill up some space on that. It was just a very small helicopter, so I ended up in the front seat with a French couple in the seats behind.

Final batch of pictures:

And then it was to the airport for an extremely long and somewhat faffy journey back to Hong Kong. This had been an excellent trip all round, though obviously nothing special in regard to parks and coasters. I’m glad I took the route that I did (Sao Paulo – Montevideo – Buenos Aires – Rio de Janeiro) since each place was, for me, progressively better than the last. If I’d ended in Sao Paulo, I doubt I’d have liked it much, if at all.

Park wise, Hopi Hari in Brazil was the only “proper” one (ok, maybe Parque de la Costa in Buenos Aires as well) and has potential, but not much seems to be happening there. The woodie is in desperate need of attention and the drop tower sitting there, obviously never to reopen, is quite a sad reminder of an awful accident. Otherwise, it really was a trip of +1s, but coasters were never the purpose of it anyway.

I’d definitely head back to South America at some point if the holidays worked out like this again. Yeah, the distance means that the travel isn’t the most pleasant, but you kind of forget that by the next day anyway.

I’ve got literally no more trips lined up at the moment, so that’s probably your lot from me for a while unless I do some random China stuff before the summer.