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Published: January 19th 2009
Hi all,
We are now already in Buenos Aires and are lagging behind big time with our blog entries, but this will hopefully change. Anyway, it's my job now to report about our first days here in South America. So here we go:
Three days in the City of Flip-Flops
We arrived in Rio de Janerio at 7am after a surprisingly pleasant overnight flight operated by Air France (shitty in-flight entertainment though). My seat research via
seatguru.com turned out to be unnessecary as we got emergency exit seats the last minute for free. The only disadvantage was that the lavatories were right beside us and they get quite busy after morning coffee gets served 😊 But who cares when you can stretch your legs on a 11h flight.
Arriving in Rio we immediately encountered our first obstacle: the driver wasn't there. We didn't dare to take just any taxi because the driver had to know the way to our B&B (called pousada in Brazil) which was in a favela. Yes. For everyone who didn't know until know: We actually stayed in a favela, a shantytown, a slum. But a safe one. Really. The hostel is called
Pousada Favelinha 
The Favela
The white building in the back marks the endand is also listed on
hostelworld.com. You can find a few interesting newspaper articles on the rather new concept of favelha tourism on the pousada's website as well. Anyway, Favelas don't have streets and only insiders know their ways in a favela so we needed a local driver. We organized a phone card, called the pousada and the driver was there half an hour later. Apparently there was a mixup between days the driver and the guys in the pousada told us. But we heard the same story from several other guests of the pousada. We had a rather pleasant drive to Santa Teresa and stopped at one of the two entrances to the favela, which turned out to be the upper one. As all the favelas are built behind the main city into the mountains, the 5min walk to our hostel turned out to be quite an exhausting hike of 5 to 10 minutes. The first sight of the houses or huts there were a bit disturbing especially because we didn't really know at that time what we had to expect, plus we were quite tired from the flight. The accomodation itself was very simple, but spacious and the
view from the balcony was fantastic and rivals the view from the sugarloaf.
As it was still early that days we took a copy of a map of the favelha and walked down towards the other exit at the foot of the hill. Leaving the favela you immediately notice the change: real houses and appartment complexes with guards, iron bars in front of the windows etc. The ones who can afford it try to live as securely as possible in this city. We walked to Largo do Machado which takes approx. 20 minutes but only if you don't get lost inside the favela, which is a chaotically grown collection of huts with no real paths, let alone signposts. Largo do Machado is a nice plaza with lots of good restaurants (especially on Rua do Catete), a shopping center and a subway station. One of the things that struck us while walking in town was the caleidoscope of different races, which we've never seen before except maybe in Cuba, but here it seemed much more homogeneously and equally mixed. And literally everyone wears flip-flops. It's incredible. Wear anything else and you will feel alien.
We didn't do
much that day expect going to the tourist information and Copacabana. Our plan was to get food and go home before dark. But of course we got delayed. So we reached the lower entrance of our favela in complete darkness. After 5 minute we realised that we had taken the wrong stairs into (what we thought was) another favela, which is the one thing that should never happen. Slightly panicking we rushed down the stairs and found the correct entrance. Still shaking a bit we then got lost in our own favela 😞 Although the place seemed safe enough it was still a very unpleasant experience at the time. Anyway, after 10 minutes climbing up the hill we found our pousada and were the happiest and sweatiest people ever.
The next day (New Year's Eve) we explored Santa Teresa (people say it's the coolest and hippest part of the city with artists and intellectuals living there) and the old city center with the old, open-sided tram (called Bondinho), which reminded us a lot of the tram in San Francisco. The ride costs almost nothing and was the best way to see this part of the city. There was
not much to see and to do in the old city center, so we took the tram back again to get some food. Later that day we decided to spend the night on the Copacabana. Because taxis a obviously hard to find on such a night, we had to buy special New Years Eve (Reveillon) Metro tickets which allow you to go back from Copacabana anytime you want, but only allow you to go there in a certain time slot that you pick when buying the tickets. Strange system...The queue for getting those tickets was incredibly long and when we reached the counter most slots were sold out and we only got tickets for the 7pm to 8pm slot. So we had to hurry back to our pousada to get dressed. But of course we got lost once again inside the favela. But this time we were more confident and just asked for the way - several times. The response was incredible. People were so friendly and helpful - it was amazing.
So we spent New Year's Eve on the Copacabana (as did two million more). We met up with a group of
couchsurfers (which was my first encounter
Sugar Loaf
loaf...love...loaf...love with those guys and I have to say it was absolutely incredible) instead of meeting Ann-Marie (long story - my fault - sorry!). The party there was just amazing. It wasn't too crowded, all people were very relaxed, lots of samba dancing, lots of drinks, crazy fireworks, good music...that morning we got the subway at 4am and walked again from Largo do Machado to our favela and found the way to the pousada without any problems...
Although we were slightly hungover on New Year's Day, we wanted to do some sightseeing because it was our last day in Rio. Because there was only one day left we weren't sure if we should go to the to the Corcovado mountain with the Jesus statue on top or to the sugarloaf. Other traveller's told us that the Jesus statue it is too far away and too crowded anyway and if you'd have to pick one you should rather see the sugarloaf. So we first tried to visit the church of Nossa Senhora Da Gloria, which was closed (as most shops as well except drug stores for some random reason), then went to Flamengo beach park (which wasn't too exciting) and
took the bus to the sugarloaf (Pão de Açúcar) from there. Although it is a bit pricey we took the aerial tramway to the top (which includes a stop on the small hill in front of it as well) and didn't regret it. The view is very nice and although there a lots of tuorists you don't notice it too much, as the green areas in top of the mountains are quite extensive and the view from both hills is very cool. Afterwards we took a bus to Ipanema beach and relaxed there for a while. Ipanema seems a lot richer and posher than Copacabana but the atmosphere on the beach was so much better and really relaxed.
A few Words on Safety in Rio in General, Staying in a Favela and the Pousada Favelinha
We were warned very seriously beforehand and during our stay in Rio that life in the city is crazy (think of the movie
City of God). Apparently the problem is not so much pickpocketing, but rather violent crime. We rarely brought our point-and-shoot camera with us, wore rather shabby looking clothes and took every precaution we could not too raise anyone's interest. Now, I would say it was a bit too much. Locals openly showed their jewelry, mobiles (laptops, video cameras etc). Anway, due to our extra vigilance we felt at least a bit safer.
Staying in a Favela was actually a great experience. I can't really recommend it as a first (culture shock) or last (relaxation needed) stop but other than that it's a great thing to do. We didn't visit any other favelas (and you should never go there without guides) but I can assure that the Favela "Pereira da Silva" (the place where we stayed) was a lot safer then for example walking Copacabana.
The
Pousada Favelinha itself was a rather good place to stay in. As everywhere in Rio we payed twice the price around New Year's Eve, but staying anywhere else would have been considerably more expensive and we would have missed the truly amazing view. YOu can find a lot of mixed reviews about the pousada on the web and we have to admit the place isn't superclean. Andrea, who runs the pousada speaks German and English, was always quite helpful but seems very grumpy as well. The info material provided by the pousada is very good. Overall, we never had any trouble and we would recommend to stay in the pousada although it might not be for everyone.
More pics follow...so check back again.
Real all about our next stop:
the beautiful island Ilha Grande...
Andreas & Aynur
PS: a note for German travellers: Unsere Medion Karte funktionierte in Rio (und dem Rest von Brasilien) ohne Probleme. Wir konnten sogar Anrufe taetigen, was laut Medion Webseite nicht funktionieren sollte.
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Malaika
non-member comment
Hello!
Sounds amazing so far. Thanks for the great story telling!! :-) Miss you guys. Be well and safe.