Ressaca

Hangover.

Last night’s antics essentially began when it was already Sunday, as that’s the Brazilian way. We headed to a well-known club that only opens once per week. It’s in a very sketchy area of the city centre, which was nerve-wracking to navigate after midnight, but was definitely a worthwhile experience after what has overall been a sedate visit to Brazil.

An Englishman is always going to be deeply uncool in a crowd of Brazilians and it doesn’t help that I’m travelling with a Colombian who has natural samba hips. However these notions were soon shed after a few Heinekens and some wild dance moves with a fabulous drag queen from São Paulo. Erlyn captured some video footage which is not to see the light of day again.

This was the scene on Sunday morning as we arrived back at the hotel at 8am in time for the buffet breakfast. Erlyn snapped this (and applied the effects) as I attempted to feign feeling fine but found chewing on a piece of pão de queijo (delicious chewy cheesy bread invention) too much effort. The colours symbolise the messiness of my brain at this point, a brain which by a long way hadn’t evacuated all alcohol by Sunday evening. This breakfast and then an evening crawl to find pizza was about all we could manage from the day.

But, as Brazilians would say, valeu a pena (it was worth it).