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Published: March 22nd 2006
On top of Rio de Janeiro
It was a little cloudy, but the view of Pão de Açúcar was still amazingHello Everyone!
The time after Carnaval has just seemed to fly right by, so fast that we can’t believe we are returning to the states in just 4 days! We had an amazing send off from Recife (more on that in a bit), but currently we are in Southern Brazil near Sao Paulo in a suburb called Alphaville and have been since the beginning of March. We also just returned from a 5 day trip to Rio de Janeiro where we made many new great friends and saw some fantastic sights. So without out further ado, let’s tell this tale.
When we last wrote, we had been unwinding from Carnaval and getting ready for our send off party before we headed south. Samuel wanted to have a big send off for us and there were talks of a live band and some barbeque, but it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Our flight to Sao Paulo was leaving on Saturday morning March 4th at 4:10am, which meant that we had to be at the airport around 2:30am. We decided that it was basically pointless to go to sleep Friday night, but instead just start our farewell party around 10pm
and party until it was time to fly. We woke up Friday morning and the fun began.
Samuel and I took off in the afternoon to start the preparations. We had about 30 people RSVP so we picked up lots of food, drinks, and snacks to feed them all. The band was arriving around 10pm, Samuel didn't want to have to mess with the barbeque so he hired two chefs to do the cooking, there were 3 crates of cerveja delivered, a butcher showed up with a whole bunch of meat, and the back yard was decorated beautifully. Ana spent the morning preparing a banner for us, which she translated in English, and once it was hung and we were allowed to see, it brought tears to our eyes: “Ben and Heather, A true friend is someone capable of touching our hearts even from the other side of the world. We liked knowing you and we’ll miss you too much!” They also hung a blank banner on the wall where all our friends could write us a farewell message, it was all great.
Everything was set around 8pm and people started to filter in around 9pm. The cooks
showed up and made a wonderful feast and the band was great. While in Brazil, Heather, as well as myself, have taken a liking to a musician named Djavan. I think that Samuel may have chosen this band because they knew how to play many of his songs, which was great for us because we knew most of the tunes! We had space to dance so many of us enjoyed that, Samuel actually siddled up to the mic and sang a lot of the songs with the band, but the hour of departure was arriving fast upon us. It was very hard to say goodbye to everyone, there were many many tears, but we eventually filled up 3 cars of some of our closest friends and headed to the airport.
We didn’t have too many problems before take off, although our bags were a bit too heavy, but we were prepared for that so it was a quick fix. After many more goodbyes and tears, we were in the air heading south to Sao Paulo to spend our last few weeks with the first family we stayed with in Recife. The Guimaraes, Antonio and Silvinha, were in Recife when
we first arrived, but moved to Sao Paulo for Antonio’s job in the beginning of the year. If you haven’t read the positing entitled
Return to Oz, you can click the link to be introduced to the Guimaraes.
We landed, had a car ready to take us to the house, and once we arrived to the house we found a couple of beds and passed out. Through out the week we did some shopping, watch a couple of movies in the Cinemas, caught up with a new friend we met in Recife during Carnival named Diogo and hung out quite a bit with Aninha. One thing that we had been talking about doing was a short trip to Rio de Janeiro since it is only a short distance from Sao Paulo. We thought of flying, but instead decided to try the bus system and just book a hostel instead of a hotel to save some money. We decided we would leave on Monday morning and stay until Friday, five days of sun and relaxation (the weather in Sao Paulo had been cold and rainy). We made all the arrangements, asked some locals how to take a bus from our suburb to
the bus station and at 8am Monday morning, March 13th, we were on our way.
The trip from Alphaville to the Bus station Tiete required a two hour bus trip to the metro and a 20 minute ride in the subway. After that is was another 6 hour ride to Rio de Janeiro on the bus, and finally a 20 minute taxi ride to the hostel. It seems like a lot, but we had no complaints because the bus had to be the most comfortable form of travel that we have experienced yet. We took the Executive bus, which was only an extra US$6 more than the low end bus, so we weren’t expecting that much, but we were pleasantly surprised. When we walked onto the bus, we were handed a sack of snacks and goodies, a bottle of soda, and a large pillow and blanket. We aren’t talking about one of those small square airplane blankets, we are talking about a full sized blanket that was very enjoyable on the overly air conditioned bus. The seats also reclined into half sleepers and they played a couple movies for our travel enjoyment.
With this much comfort we could
have had easily went a few more hours on the bus, but before we knew it we had arrived in Rio. We made it to the hostel named Mellow Yellow, threw our stuff in our room locker, learned that 90% of everyone there was from the UK or spoke English, and headed to Copacabana beach while the sun was still out. The landscape was beautiful and it was thrilling to be on the world famous beach (although, I don't think it even compared to the beauty of the beaches in the northeast of Brazil). The tide was out a bit and the immense waves were crashing down with a force that would evoke fear and respect from any sane man. After walking along the beach, hand in hand, we headed back to the hostel to grab a bite to eat in the bar, it was R$9 crepe night.
Once in the bar, we grabbed a couple seats and ordered ourselves a tasty crepe that was large enough to feed us both. Afterwards a gentleman was going around handing out pieces of paper announcing that it was trivia night. We grabbed a piece and he said to grab some more
people to form a team, so we did just that. Chloe and Becci (UK), Toly (Aussie), Dan (Israel), Heather and I (US), Team Six-Pack felt that we did very well with the 40 trivia questions that were asked, and when he went to reveal the scores he had our paper in his hands. I thought we had won, but soon found out that we only achieved second place, 31 correct. I should have known that the name Kitt, the car on Knight Rider, was an acronym for Knight Industries Two Thousand, but the pain of loss only hurt for about 10 seconds - afterall, in less than an hour we made four new friends.
After the defeat, we invited two other girls over to our table, Jo and Carolyn from the UK, and eventually others joined in the conversation. We chatted the night away with many great people from around the world and heard many exciting stories about places that we are planning on visiting. We met another engage couple named Steve and Mel from New Zealand, so it was good to know that we aren’t the only ones out there! Around 2am everyone was ready for some sleep
so we all found our rooms and called it a night. We were planning on waking up early to head to the beach in the morning for some sun and then check out the famous Sugar Loaf Mountain in the afternoon.
Well, lets just say things didn’t work out as planned in the morning. We didn’t actually have a window to the outside world in our room so when we woke to a dark room we just thought it was early, but was a bit shocked to learn it was almost 11am! The day of travel and late night must have caught up with us. We grabbed some of the free breakfast, found the showers, being a hostel you have shared bathrooms and showers, and got ready to go. Around 12pm we decided to skip the beach and headed out to catch a local bus to Sugar Loaf or Pao de Acuçar.
As you can see by the photo (to the left I think), Sugar Loaf is a large rock mountain that stands proudly on the edge of the ocean and is surrounded by other smaller rock hills. To get to the top you grab a gondola at
sea level to the top of a small rock mountain, then from there you have to grab another gondola that will take you to the top of Sugar Loaf. Once on top we had spectacular aerial views of Copacobana beach, all the tall buildings, surrounding neighborhoods, and you can also view the famous statue Christ the Redeemer or Corcovado that is on top of the mountains behind Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, Christ was playing shy that day as he hid behind clouds the whole time and we were unable to see him, but we planned on visiting the statue the next day since the weather was supposed to be a bit clearer. After relaxing on top of Sugar Loaf for about an hour, we headed to the metro station to jump on the subway to check out Rio’s largest shopping market, Uruguaiana. We shopped around for a few hours, Heather bought a sarong for the beach and some other items, but the sun had set so we decided to head back to the hostel for the all-you-can-eat barbeque.
We were expecting the barbeque to be nothing but a bunch of meat, typical Brazilian barbeque, but we were very surprised
and happy to see they had lots of vegetables! We overfilled our plates with veggies and greens, had a small amount of meat, but really enjoyed the veggies. Afterward we head up to the bar, ran into all our good friends from the night before and Rich from the UK joined our group as well. After talking til around 11pm, Heather and I let everyone know that we were going to the Corcovado statue for sunset the next day and Jo, Carolyn, and Rich asked to come along. No problem at all and they were happy to be with us since we, mostly Heather, can speak Portuguese.
We awoke the next morning and decided to go and relax on the official "Copacabana Beach" for the morning (however, today Copacabana has mellowed out, there's another stretch of beach in Rio, Ipanema, that is quite the hot-spot now). We waited around until breakfast was being served, 9am, where we grabbed some food and ran into Jo, Carolyn, and Rich. They too wanted to join us for the beach, and we thought the more the merrier and headed off. Once there we grabbed some chairs and umbrella and the girls sat in
On the beach with our new buddies from the UK, Rich, Jo, and Carolyn
In the background you will see the famous Copacabana Palace which gave name to the beach the sun and chatted away about traveling. After a few hours we needed to head back to the hostel to get ready and I went to pay for the drinks we had. When I asked how much the five drinks cost the gentleman proceed to tell me that the total was R$29…what??!! I looked at the paper where they tally the totals and they had written on top of our bill, Gringo, which isn’t a derogatory word here, but just means Foreigner/Tourist, and had a charge of R$19 for Aluga, or rent. This was the first time I had been asked to rent beach space and noticed that other bill tallies that didn’t say Gringo didn’t have the rent charge. So I argued and told them it was ridiculous and stupid and that I wouldn’t pay it. I did this all in Portuguese and they seemed somewhat impressed and dropped the price. In Rio, being somewhat of a tourist Mecca, it is very common for people to try and rip off the Gringos.
After we all showered up and got dressed we grabbed the metro and a bus to get to the bottom of the mountain where we would
catch a train to take us to the top of the steep mountain to see Corcovado. The skies were filled with clouds, but with a tight vacation schedule we decided to give it a shot. Once we were there to buy tickets the people told us not to bother because the clouds where thick and you can’t see a thing! Well we would have to wait until tomorrow, but we where all this way from the hostel so we went and did some more shopping around the Uruguaiana market, which was close by. We made it back to the hostel around 7pm, met up with about 8 other people that wanted some food and went and found a nice restaurant. After eating we started the walk back to the hostel, the clouds opened up and rain started to pour. We found shelter, but after standing around for 15 minutes we all just went for it and got a little drenched. We decided the next day instead of a sunset and Corcovado, we would try an early morning when the clouds seem less thick.
We made it to the train around 11am and the skies weren’t clear blue, just a
bit cloudy, but you could see the statue. So we headed up and saw some spectacular views and took many photos. Corcovado is the number one tourist attraction in Rio so it was crowded and trying to get a picture without someone jumping in front of you to take their own picture was a pain in the ass, but we made do and had fun. A group of guys from a different country must have thought that Heather was famous or just extremely cute (I would agree) because they all took a picture with her! We wanted to take an afternoon tour that was offered by the hostel that started at 2pm, so we rushed back to the train, jumped a bus, then the metro and made it to the hostel by 1:15pm. There was still room on afternoon tour for the five of us, so we paid and went to change our clothes. We were going to a Favella.
For those of you that have seen the Brazilian movie City of God (Cidade de Deus), you know what a Favella is, but for those that haven’t, let us explain. A Favella, or as a rough translation “the slums”,
are neighborhoods that are all over Brazil, but very common in the large cities, that are filled with the poverty stricken and corrupt. In Rio - The lower of "lower classes" started to build their houses one practically on top the other and eventually turned into a tumultuous mess of residences with few if any roads and streets - mainly just walk ways. Most people just steal their electricity by tapping into the power wires, an electrician’s nightmare, and they don’t pay property taxes on the land as well. They have became so corrupt that the police stay out most of the time, but if police do enter, locals shoot of fireworks to warn everyone, and some corrupt police actually sell guns to the Favella dwellers. Overall, bad news, so why not take a tour!
The tour started at 2pm, we had a guide that had been doing this for 2 years and knew everyone we passed by on the course of our tour. At the beginning, we parked at the bottom of the neighborhood that was built on the side of a mountain and took a motorcycle to the top. We then started to trek our way down
through the Favella. We took some amazing photos, saw a few pistols, machine guns, drug dealers, people smoking a little marijuana, and many children. The tour company that we were with is trying to teach the kids in the Favella how to earn money and not beg for it, so they have taught them to paint and make bracelets to sell to us as we walk along. We also stopped off at a bakery and enjoyed some great baked goods, then ended our tour stopping off in a daycare that the tour company opened in the Favella. We played with the kids for some time and at the end, donated some money to them and bought a notebook one of the little kids made, very up lifting. If anyone that is reading this and will be going to Rio some day, we highly recommend checking this out, though with a reliable guide or tour company.
After our busy day, we returned to the hostel cleaned up and had a nice farewell dinner since we were all leaving the next day, except Rich. We all ate breakfast together the next morning, jumped a bus to the bus station, helped Jo
and Carolyn find their ticket booth and we made it back Sao Paulo around 8pm. As I reflect back on the last month here, it seems as though it has only been 2 days, how time flies when you are having a good time. We have some things planned for the next few days, but we will be back in the states on Friday morning around 10am in Salt Lake City. From there we will have some days in Idaho Falls and then head to Spokane. After that we will take care of a few things and be off to Europe before we know it! Don’t worry, I am sure there will be great adventure in the US that will warrant a blog here and there, plus I am sure we will have more to share after these next 4 days! Also, we love all your comments! Keep them coming!
Love Ben and Heather
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Amanda
non-member comment
tan kids
Hey guys! I can't believe how tan you both are...ok well, how tan Heather is! It is always nice to hear from you guys and all the fun you are having! Take care! Love you guys!