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Published: November 9th 2007
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Maracana
Flamengo vs. Athletico Mina Gerais (from Belo Horizonte). After Itacare and my peaceful surfing break, I put my board aside and went down to Rio to meet the Original Oyarzún himself, who seems to finally enjoy his retirement life.
I took advantage of my last weekend alone to taste the Rio night life and see a football game at the Maracana, one of the world’s biggest stadiums. It’s an impressive feeling sitting among 50 000 fans and knowing that it wasn’t even near its full 100 000 seated capacity.
After a mad weekend, my dad and I finally met up on a Sunday in the hotel lobby in Copacabana after not seeing each other for 10 months. Our first few days together were spent catching up, visiting all the different sites of Rio and beach hoping between Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon. These 3 neighborhoods of Rio are known to be one of the wealthiest and nicest areas. They are each unique in their own way, and are each surrounded by fang shaped monoliths with multicoloured favelas perched above them.
Rio de Janeiro is a lovely city, to a certain extent. I had the impression the rich and tourists are just stuck in their cocoon and never leave those
areas, which probably only represents a mere 40% of the whole city. The real Rio can clearly be seen through the bus window entering the city. It’s a poverty stricken place where favelas seem to pop out in any spaces available. This was clearly seen on our first day when we went up the Corcovado Mountain. From the peak, where the Christ Redeemer stands at 720m with a watchful eye over the city, you had an incredible panoramic view. You could see all the different neighbourhoods, rich and poor, the Maracana, the Sugar Loaf Mountain, the lake and the beach stretched along the concrete coast.
During our stay, I think we were both very envious of the Carioca lifestyle. The streets filled with fruit bars, people in suits mixed with others going to the beach. It is without a doubt a place of contrasts where no one worries what you look like. There was no shame of wearing the smallest bikini, even though some cases looked like they were dressed as the Michelin tyre woman.
After staying there for four days, we got an overnight bus north to the state of Mina Gerais and the famous colonial town of
Ouro Preto. In its time, the 1700s, Ouro Preto flourished as the most important place in the new world, even bigger than New York. It was the heart of the South American gold rush with hundreds of thousands of ton of gold dug up in the region by African and Indian slaves. Obviously over the years, the primary resource got scarcer and all the power and wealth were decentralised to Rio. The town is still a real gem, having very well preserved its cultural heritage and traditional flavour with very little signs of our modern society. It is trapped in between mountains and filled with mazelike cobbled streets, churches and colonial buildings. During two days, we’ve been working out the legs clambering up and down those steep rollercoaster streets and getting my overdose of churches for the rest of my trip. Just in a kilometre radius, you had eleven churches and god knows how many chapels.
Still on the move, we celebrated my 25th birthday in style. We went to the coast, 5 hours south of Rio in the small town of Parati. We stuffed our faces for four days with all traditional food available. Eating to the rhythm
of Bossa Nova and burning our bacon fat in daily excursions to different isolated beaches.
After 13 days being treated like royalty, our quality time as father and son came to an end. It was great being able to share this with Oyarzún senior and will never stop being thankful for it!
I picked my board back in Rio and went off solo again to the falls of Iguaçu, situated on the triple border with Argentina and Paraguay. I spent just a couple of days there and it was one of the big highlights of the trip. The Argentine side clearly makes an impact. You walk for 20 minutes in some woods and then on a trail built over the river, to then hear a burgeoning sound getting closer and closer. Steam from no where appears and all of a sudden this roar comes and you see the ground and all the water being sucked in. Standing on top of the waterfall is outstanding, staring down the Devil’s throat with no sight of the bottom. It was a despondent and overwhelming feeling being above such a force of nature.
My last stop was back to the coast and
the Island of Santa Catarina, next to the city of Florianopolis. It was back to the same old routine of surfing everyday. I stayed there a good 5 days until I decided it was time to leave Brazil behind after surfing down the coast for two and a half months. I sold my board to a French guy and got a bus down to Uruguay.
On that note, I still feel I’ve just scraped the surface, having just concentrated on the whole coast. Personally I prefer the northern part of the country, from Bahia upwards. It is less developed and it feels like stepping into the real Brazil. It has its proper culture, music and food coming from a very strong Indian and African influence. The people are less stressed and seem happy with what they have. Rio and further south is much wealthier. You can see that with the cars driven around and the houses that are proper mansions. Favelas are not as predominant and the population gets whiter and whiter the further south you get.
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