Rio de Janeiro -- Day 1

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Rio de Janeiro -- the ‘Marvelous City’

We left Igaussu Falls behind with a yearning in the heart to visit it again and again and yet again, though we knew perfectly well that perhaps we will not be able to visit it again in this lifetime.

It is not easy visiting it from Mumbai with long flights resulting in jet-lag, long hours spent waiting at airports for connections and long periods of sleeplessness resulting in long faces at the end of the journey.

May be just our age is catching up with us because I remember I had traveled to Hawaii from Mumbai via Atlantic Ocean, once upon a time without much trouble.

Igaussu Falls are absolutely wonderful, but now we were looking forward to enjoying Rio de Janeiro, which my cousin had described as ‘European Mumbai’. This combination of European infrastructure and culture superimposed on the ‘tropicality’ of Mumbai (My own word) appealed to me instantly because I do enjoy the abundance of tropical fruits even though I do not like the hot, humid weather of Mumbai.

As we were checking in our bags at the Igaussu Falls airport, the lady next in line turned towards her husband and spoke with him in Marathi. This interested me immensely because Avi and I had speculated on whether we will meet any Indians in Brazil and had expected that we might meet PIOs (Persons of Indian Origins, but NOT residing in India), but not Indians with Indian passports.

So, I turned and spoke with the lady in Marathi and as expected, they were US citizens.

They too were surprised to meet Maharashtrians so far away from home. They were even more surprised that we were NOT traveling with Kesari Tours and our bookings were not done by our NRI daughter. We ourselves had done all the bookings through the Internet.

People do not expect senior citizens like us to be that techno-savvy or enterprising.

We were waiting for our flight to Rio and there was an announcement that the flight was two hours late.

The lady panicked. She had a cause to panic. They were going to miss their International Rio-Chicago flight thanks to the delayed Domestic Igaussu Falls-Rio flight.

Domestic airports in Brazil are nothing to write home about. In fact, they resemble the ‘ST Stand’ of Kolhapur/Satara at peak times. The only difference is that the ST buses from Kolhapur/Satara stands are more regular and punctual.

The previous day, at Sao Paulo’s domestic airport, they were showing Igaussu Falls flight as ‘Boarding’ and suddenly “Igaussu Falls” changed to “Gaurrulhos”. This transformed a usually taciturn me into a rather garrulous lady. I started asking the TAM girls about the flight in my anxiety because I thought we had missed our flight. She did not help the matters any because she said that we will get the ‘next’ flight.

This made me even more garrulous till her colleague calmed me down by telling that our flight was ‘late’, not ‘next’.

The TAM girls need to brush up their English.

So, we could take this delay in our flight philosophically. After all it only meant that we will reach Rio late at night.

But it was a big setback for the Marathi couple. Their whole schedule was thrown out of gear.
However, they ultimately decided to stay at Rio for one night near the airport and take the next day’s flight to Chicago.

We parted with them at Rio airport. They had given us very good tips about traveling in Rio by bus.

We used those tips to the fullest extent when we took a bus to the ‘Corcovado’ (The hill overlooking Rio, where the statue of ‘Christ, The Redeemer’ has been erected.)

Corcovado is the highest peak (2329 feet high on which stands the 125 feet tall statue of Christ.) in the Rio, a city of hills and beaches and as such, it is often enveloped in a cloud cover, which obscures the views from the top. So we were advised to visit Corcovado on a sunny, clear day by my daughter, who had seen only clouds from there.

Our first day in Rio happened to be sunny and a Sunday, so we made a beeline towards Corcovado.

The same idea had occurred to a million other tourists and so there were huge crowds everywhere resulting in long lines for train-tickets.

It was also a Sunday.

The lovely little rack-railway, as well as the elevators and escalators take you directly to the observation deck at the foot of ‘Christo’ very comfortably. This is indeed a boon to the senior citizens, who were present in abundant quantities.

I do appreciate modern conveniences. In fact, I wish they would construct elevators at Tikal and Teotihuacan pyramids to facilitate the tourists.

You get wonderful views of Rio from Corcovado and realize what a beautiful city it is. In fact, Rio has displaced San Francisco as the ‘most beautiful city’ in my estimate.

The train to Corcovado goes through the lush green Tijuca Rainforest reminiscent of our own Matheran railway.

In fact, there is a strong resemblance between Rio and Goa. Both have the Portuguese stamp on them.
Just like Mumbai, the tropical night descends on Rio quite fast. There is hardly any twilight and by 6:00 PM it is already dark.

So, by the time we came back from Corcovado, it was getting dark but streetlights lit up Rio.
We got down at Gen Osorio Square to check out the weekly ‘Hippie Market’, but did not find anything to our liking, may be because the market was winding down. So we made tracks to the supermarket to buy some fruits, specially ‘sitaphal’ (custard apples) which we are rather fond of. The season for custard apples in Mumbai was already over but Rio being in the southern hemisphere, custard apples were available and they were sweeter than the Indian variety.

Our dinner, while traveling, consists of mainly fruits.

The bottled coconut milk made a good dessert.

We bought the fruits and then walked along the Ipanema Beach towards our hotel.

Every big hotel along the beach turned its lights on as we passed its sensors. This was a precaution on their parts against the intruders but we had a whale of time turning the automatic lights on and bathing the sidewalk in their glow, as though we were Royalty and unseen hands were lighting up the path for our benefit.

It was a full moon night and I was searching for the moon in the sky but could not see it. Then I turned towards the sea and saw its reflection on the waves in the far LEFT corner.

The big, beautiful moon in all its ‘Purnima’ glory was behind us as we walked towards, what we thought was East, but was actually West.

It is easy to get confused about directions in the southern hemisphere.

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