The Blaus - South America and Europe

6 do Agosto - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio is one of the places that we were most excited to see, as we have heard so much about it. We have heard it is fun and beautiful, but also a place to use extra caution, as it can be quite dangerous. We arrived after a 30 hour bus ride from Salvador, and picked a hostal out of our guide book that was full when we got there, so we had to spend an hour walking around Ipanema with all of our bags to find a different place to stay. Our first impression was that Ipanema is as nice of a neighborhood as we have seen anywhere in South America. Nice resturaunts, bars, upscale shops, and nice looking condos everywhere on tree lined streets. This was our impression before we saw the spectacular beach that is synonymous with Rio. We also later learned that Rio has the most expensive real estate in South America.

Staying in Ipanema is not cheap, and since we decided to choose location over luxury, we ended up in dorm beds in a backpacker`s hostal. Things were great as we had our own room for the first three nights, but once the weekend rolled around it filled up with drunks from all over the world. We purposely have avoided these situations on this trip because we know how they can turn out with such predictable clientel, but we had to bite the bullet this time due to the high cost of getting our own room in expensive Ipanema. Things hit a low point one morning when Jen woke up after hearing the door to the dorm room slammed repeatedly at about 6:30 AM, and went downstairs to get some coffee. On the stairs she encoutered a 19 year old Englishman with blood all over his face and shirt, a huge black eye, completely sprawled out all over the stairs with money in one hand and a tipped over beer in the other, yelling "quero mais cerveja" (I want more beer) at the people who ran the hostal. He then preceded to tell his story about getting beat up by some Brazilian boys and losing his friend. They told us that Rio was dangerous, but we are sure this guy provoked whatever happened to him, which he did not remember a bit of the next day, nor did he get much sympathy from us.

Rio has a reputation in Brazil for having snobby residents. They are called Cariocas (the name given to the first white settlers in Rio by the natives), and because they live in such a beautiful place they are very proud of their city and themselves. They have a really big rivalry with the Paulistas, or the people from Sao Paulo, and often chide the Paulistas for working too hard indoors and having pale skin, while the Cariocas sit on the beach and look tan and are in perfect shape. We saw this first hand on the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana. There were perfectly tanned Cariocas laying out on the beach all day, all with perfectly sculpted bodies and small bathing suits. They clearly spend half the day at the beach, and the other half at the gym. They did not seem to work, as we saw the same people day after day on the beach (this happened to be the week before school started for many students). They bring their chairs to the beach, sit in groups of 5-10, and smoke pot all day. This was clearly a way of life, as the entire beach was up in smoke all day long, nobody even looked over their shoulders for police.

After one day walking along the miles of amazing beaches that stretch along the coast of Rio, we decided to head up to Corcovado, where the famous statue of Jesus overlooks the entire city. This was one of the experiences we will remember forever. Rio is just so spectacularly set that it can only really be taken in from high above the city. There are long stretches of white sand beach everywhere, with giant cone-shaped mountains that form the setting that you see in postcards. There are also a lot of lagoons and a large bay, so there is water everywhere, truly the most incredible setting for a city. We were there in the dead of winter too, and it was still perfect beach weather. They say Rio gets 1 week of winter per year, which consists of some rain and temperatures that go as low as 68 F. We spent 2 hours looking out over the city under the shadow of a 200 foot Jesus statue, and were totally impressed.

Rio is also known for its nightlife. We tried a few times to make it up late enough to go out and see it, but never made it until the last night we were in town when a guy we met named Felipe asked us if we wanted to go out. Felipe worked at our hostal, and he took us with one of his friends to Lapa, one of the main places to go and see and hear samba. The streets were full of people, guys selling drinks from carts, and loud music and people dancing. We got lessons on how to be a real Carioca from Felipe. He taught us how to walk the right way (chest out with a swagger), what football team to root for, all the hand gestures and pick up lines that the Cariocas use on eachother, and generally how to act like we belong. It was great getting to know Felipe and really fun learning all the little tricks and sayings that are characteristic of Rio dwellers. We joked with him that the Porteños from Buenos Aires have a reputation for being the most arrogant of all the South Americans, and he just laughed and said imagine what they would be like if they lived in a city as beautiful as Rio. He then said Porteños and Cariocas are similar, except for the fact that Cariocas are better, with no hint of sarcasm. He was funny and showed us a great time, dancing in the streets until 4 AM. As the night got later, the hookers came out in force, wearing barely anything and walking in the streets poking their heads into car windows. This was our queue that it was getting a little late, and we should call it a night. We all went back to the hostal and said goodbye to Felipe who has promised to come to San Francisco soon. When Cariocas say goodbye, they say "come by my place later." It is not meant to be an invitation, but shows how they are generally very welcoming people, and this is how we said goodbye to Felipe.

Another thing that was on our must do list in Rio was to visit the favelas. These are the slums that are tucked into many different pockets all around the city. For anyone that has seen the movie City of God, that was about one favela in Rio. There are 800 favelas in the city, and they are all built on public property by residents that have no money to buy land, so they are all in essence squatter settlements. The government long ignored them, but allowed the people to live in shantytowns where they erected them, although they would not be equipped with electricity or water or other public services. Those times have changed, and now they have these amenities, but are still the center of the drug trades, and are for the most part very dangerous and very poor.

We found a guide that would take us into Rocinha, the largest of the favelas in Rio, with over 160,000 residents. We walked through the tiny passageways of the favela, met some of the people, and saw what life was like there. The favelas have long been ruled by the gangs, and the drug lords have very strict rules; one of which is no stealing. They rule the place with an iron fist, so people obey the laws, or suffer a fate worse than what the police will dole out. However, in Rocinha, the police have started to put up posts and are moving into the territory, causing an uproar and some shootouts. Because of the shootouts, we were only allowed to stay along the main roads, and so we did not get to see as much as we wanted, but found the whole experience very interesting. The one thing we were most surprised by was how well the people lived in the favelas, from what we were able to see. They did not look all that different than any other poor parts of town we have seen in other South American cities. I think we would have had a different impression if we were able to go further into the favela to see what life is like away from the main roads that are paved, and have electricity and water. The favela was full of kids flying kites, and we were told that this is most commonly used to alert the drug dealers that the police or rival gang members were coming. All in all, they welcome tourists because it brings money into the favela, and people were nice to us and we never felt in danger. It was also a very stark contrast to all the residents of Ipanema, Leblon, and Copacabana who sit all day on the beach with a cigarette and beer in one hand, and a cell phone in the other.

We loved Rio, but also found it to be a very strange place. The poverty was not as bad as we thought, but the luxurious life of the rich was more hedonistic than we imagined. It is very strange that these two parts of society are so often right next to eachother, and functioning in apparent harmony. Ipanema beach is public, but we never saw any poor kids begging or stealing there. There was also not much of a police presence, so it seems to us as if the two sides of town just coexist, but don`t really mingle very much. The only thing that we saw that looked like mingling were these two young kids playing paddle ball on the beach using a flip flop as a paddle, and a soda can as a ball. After soccer, paddle ball is the most popular activity of those at the beach, and we joined these two young kids and played paddle ball with our flip flops until we were exhausted. They loved it, and took it very seriously. Whenever the boy hit the can over our heads, he would jump and and cheer like an NBA star after a slam dunk, then he would cross himself and kiss the sky. He was better at the celebration than the game, he wanted to be Ronaldo, the biggest soccer star in Brazil.

posted by The Blaus @ 3:20 PM