Initially, the idea was to travel in the Americas for a few months and return to Europe after summer to settle myself somewhere at the southern edge of the continent. Within the first week of my Latin American travel ball, I decided, that there would be no such thing as settling down just yet. Why would I play four-seasons, if I can have an endless summer. Some time in November I came across a digital nomad retreat in Rio de Janeiro, to be held in January, filled with surf, yoga and fantastic vibes. Since I had been missing some sort of community-feel on my journey and was wondering where all the other travelling workers were hanging out, I reasoned it would be great icing on my travelling-lifestyle cake.
Mellow Days in Rio
The retreat would start on 5 January and I planned to arrive on or just before that date. The issue was, that checking about 7 weeks in advance, flights from Bogota to Rio around that date cost an absolute mint. The price of air fares from one (Latin) American country to another can be a quite shock to the system if you are used to European budget airlines, where a flight to another country can be cheaper than your trip to the airport. After a fair amount of searching I found the most reasonably priced ticket- yet still not cheap- flying on 31 December at 10.30 arriving in Rio at 7.30 the next morning. I guess flying on New Year’s Eve is not that popular, but the other side of the equator has summer holidays, so it’s a busy time of the year. I arrived at the hostel in Rio, located in the neighbourhood of Botafogo, at around 9 in the morning, ready to crash. New Year’s Day is being milked to the max in Rio and my hostel bed cost four times the normal price, which was just terrible value for money, especially on a day when almost everything is closed. The first days of the year I spent my time in bookshop cafes and the local Starbucks. Besides visiting Christ the Redeemer, Rio’s famous Jesus statue overlooking the city, I didn’t do any touristy stuff.
Retreat Treat
At the end of the first week of the year I moved from Botafogo to the Recreio (say Ree-CRAY-yoo) at the outskirts of this enormous city, which would be my home for two weeks. Recreio has beautiful beaches and in summer, which is now, as Rio lies in the southern hemisphere, there are some good waves for beginning and intermediate surfers. I stayed at one of the few surf hostels in Rio, owned by a fantastic Argentinian woman*, which has an excellent vibe, great staff and surf sessions twice a day. In addition to that, there were tons of other activities including yoga classes, capoeira workshops, fitness training, dance classes, hikes and other excursions. It was so full on, I found it hard to reserve time to actually work.
Marvellous Times
I had a fab time. Spending time in tropical weather in the northern-hemisphere winter is always special when one usually tends to wear a big fat coat that time of year. Despite my two-and-a-half week stay, I have actually seen very little of the Marvellous City. It takes an hour and a bit by car to reach central Rio from Recreio, depending on traffic, and more if you take public transport. This made a trip to down town rather time consuming. As there was plenty of entertainment at the surf camp, there was no real need to go into central Rio. One day I made the monster journey to central Rio to see the famous city beaches and buy tons of souvenirs, as one can’t stay away for almost 9 months and return empty handed.
I found Ipanema beach quite underwhelming, as it’s narrow and very busy, even on a random week day. I was more impressed with Copacobana, which seems one of the greater city beaches, where each stretch of sand has its particular crowd and pretty much everything, legal or illicit, is for sale.
There is probably always an excuse to return to Rio. I would like to visit other Rio attractions like Lapa, Sugar Loaf mountain and Santa Teresa, I’d love to catch more waves and see other parts of the enormous country that is Brazil.
*I heard through the grapevine, that one of the other organisers of the retreat had taken over the hostel.
Dark Fairy Adventures 
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