City Of God

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With all of us knackered from a long night at the Sambadrome, we had a late start the next day.
When we eventually came to, it was decided that we would head out to Niteroi, a city on the other side of Guanabara Bay from Rio.
After a ferry and a bus ride, we eventually were dropped off at the Museum of Contemporary Art - not because any of us are particularly into contemporary art, but because of the Oscar Niemeyer-designed, flying-saucer-like building that houses the museum. One of the most influential architects of modern architecture, Brazilian born Niemeyer has left his imprint all over Rio going some way to explaining the plethora of glorious 60s/70s architecture that exists in the city. Among the buildings designed by Niemeyer is the Sambadrome itself, the Gustavo Capanema Palace, the Banco Boavista Building, and the Hospital da Lagoa. As well as pretty much designing the whole city of Brasilia, Brazil's capital, Niemeyer also has many notable works overseas including most famously, the UN Building in New York.
Niteroi also has some great coastlines and beaches but we had unfortunately arrived a bit too late in the day to give the place a more thorough exploration. What we saw was very scenic though, disregarding the floating trash that unfortunately litters the water at Icarai Beach.
We spent the majority of the afternoon having lunch where Sag and Fi shared another massive grill, and I ordered the bolinho de bacalhau (deep fried fish balls) which were quite salty (like most food in Brazil is) but went nicely dipped in olive oil and and little bit of chilli sauce.
It was a long bus ride back to the apartment and we were all still knackered that night, so we all decided to hit sack early.

The city of Rio is quite spread out and it takes a while to get anywhere within the city. Public transport could perhaps be better as the getting around by bus or metro does take a lot of time, and often just gave up and took taxis. This is particularly true when getting between the tourist-centric beach areas of Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana, and the older, historic areas of Santa Teresa, Lapa, and Centro.
It was on bus, that we went to see arguably the Rio's most famous sight - Christ The Redeemer.
Standing atop Corcovado mountain, arms open and looking down upon the city, the statue can be seen from just about anywhere in Rio and has become a symbol of the city, and a symbol of Brazil.
Arriving at the bottom of Corcovado, we were shocked to find out that we had a four hour wait ahead of us to get onto the cable car that takes you to the top. Fortunately for us there are privately run vans that take you to the top for a very reasonable fee, so we hopped into one.
As one of the world's most famous sights let alone one of Brazil's there were a couple of queues that we had to wait in before eventually getting to the very top, but once up there, it was well worth the wait. The view is spectacular, and once you fight through the crowds of people taking cheesy photographs of their arms wide open against the statue (us included), you were treated to some magnificent panoramic views. We were also up there on a beautifully clear day, with no clouds obstructing our view. Definitely a must-see, comparable to the Statue Of Liberty, although with the view that it offers, it perhaps surpasses New York's signature sight.

It was a beautifully clear day, but also scorchingly hot. We have had great luck with the weather but today it was 39 degrees! Rather this than freezing my bollocks off in London but it was almost too hot - the shirt just had to come off again. It is humid here too, although thankfully not as humid as it gets in South East Asia - 39 degrees in Kuala Lumpur would be much worse than 39 degrees here.

Our next port of call was the historic area of Santa Teresa. Famous for it's hilly and winding streets, the place is now a spot for artists to gather and nowhere is this better reflected than on Escadaria Selaron.
In 1990, Chilean artist Jorge Selaron started renovating the steps that ran past his house, which were in a bad state of disrepair. Using colourful and hand-painted tiles, the work has since continued to the point where 250 steps have now been renovated including the walls that line the stairs. As the project became more and more famous, visitors soon started donating tiles to the point where the 2,000 tiles that now cover the area come from 60 different countries. Unfortunately Selaron died just a month before we arrived although he has left behind a feast of art and colour as his legacy.
We walked up the steps and continued upwards towards a restaurant we planned on eating at, randomly bumping into Fi and Rachel along the way. The walk was quite taxing but it was cool seeing a more historic and unique part of the city. The rich used to live here and their colonial mansions still remain in many places as well as the old tramlines that used to run through the area, giving the neighbourhood a nostalgic air about it.
The restaurant we ate at was good and as usual the portions were massive, as I got a huge platter of fried shrimp as my starter. The place was artistically decorated as well, in keeping with the general theme of Santa Teresa.
On the way back we were approached by a couple of young, drunk local guys who started talking to us, asking where we were from and stuff. They seemed to be quite excited about seeing gringos in the neighbourhood...and then they saw me. If you thought they were excited before, they then suddenly started singing a song in full voice, with one of them either side of me jumping up and down. It was as if they had never seen an Asian before. I think I got off quite lightly however - while on Escadaria Selaron, a group of about 20 locals started singing and doing Gangnam Style in front of him which must have been pretty scary and not least, insulting. I appreciate that it is just a joke to them and they probably don't know that they were being racist, but the fact is that they were. It's casual racism yes, but it is still racism. From experience it seems that a lot of people's attitudes to Asians is that we are a bit of a joke and that we are not really to be taken seriously, and in this respect Psy hasn't really helped. Put it this way, you don't see scenes like the one I saw on Escadaria Selaron happening to other racial groups. Much as I try to play along with the joke, that whole episode just made me feel really uneasy.

On a more positive note and while on the topic of race, a really interesting observation I have made while here is the fact that there is no 'typical' Brazilian face. There are Brazilians who are fare, blonde and blue-eyed, there are Brazilians who look African, and there are Brazilians that are everything in-between. People from different ethnicities - Europeans, Africans, and Portuguese in particular - have been mixing for centuries and as resulted in a refreshingly multi-ethnic yet 'Brazilian' society. In fact, the official ethnic groups that are used in Brazilian census are brancos ("whites"), pardos ("brown" or mixed-raced), pretos ("blacks"), amarelos ("yellows"), "indigenous" (Amerindian) or "undeclared". Perhaps not surprisingly, the categories are not popular with Brazilians and many refuse to identify themselves with one particular category, which goes to show just how much miscegenation has occurred in Brazil over the years. I would venture to say that I have never seen so many people of mixed ethnic descent than I have seen in Brazil.
I had known before coming here that Brazil had the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, so I was surprised that I saw so few people of Asian descent during my time in Rio and the fact that I was seen as a rarity by the locals. 1.4m people of Japanese descent live in Brazil although the fact that Brazil's total population is close to 200m perhaps explains why I haven't seen many.

Having has a 'night off' the previous night, it was time to get back on the booze and we started making cocktails with the vodka, cachaca, juice, and tropical fruits we had bought from the supermarket, making use of the blender that we had in the house. The concoctions created weren't bad actually, with one tasting like an alcoholic mango sorbet.
They certainly got us warmed up for night out and we stopped by a restaurant near the apartment where I had a delicious filet mignon crepe. Filet mignon seems to be quite popular in Brazil as they sell them everywhere.
However afterwards, John wasn't feeling too good as his stomach had been playing up all week and some of the others were a bit tired and not overly keen to go out. In the end we decided not to go out, although we vowed that we would have to at least have one decent night out in Lapa before we left Rio.

We spent the next morning just chilling on Ipanema Beach, going in for the odd swim. Well, the others did, while went on a mission to try and find some cash from an ATM. Why is it so damn hard to find an ATM that works in this city?! Most ATMs in Rio wouldn't accept many of our cards and we would often have to try three or four different ones before finally finding one willing to disperse us some cash. I found Bradesco Bank usually worked but even big banks such as Santander and HSBC - which is my own fricking bank - wouldn't accept our cards and would have no English options. For banks that are supposedly "international", the situation was utterly ridiculous.
We then hit a por kilo restaurant for lunch.
Por kilo does seem to give it away a little - pay for your meal by the kilo. We basically had the freedom of a buffet with which to pile our plates and then we would have our final plate weighed and pay a price based on the weight. Naturally, I can't help myself when it comes to buffets, so I pile on as much as I can - mostly the famously delicious Brazlilian BBQ meats. Yummo!

While we had ticked off one of the "big two" yesterday, it was time to tick off the other one this afternoon - a ride up to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain or as I told the taxi driver - Pão de Açúcar.
Before we headed up there though I was feeling the effects of lunch. I had eaten so much that I started to feel really ill and at one point thought it was all going to come out. Thankfully I managed to keep it down rather than emptying my lunch in front of all the tourists queuing up to go up the second of Rio's most famous landmarks.
From the ground, visitors take the cable car up the top of Morro da Urca - the mountain alongside the Sugar Loaf - before getting on a second cable car to go up to the Sugar Loaf itself. Bond fans will recognise the cable cars from Moonraker, where Jaws attempts to kill 007 and Holly Goodhead.
You get some great views over Botafogo Beach, Guanabara Bay and Christ The Redeemer from Morro du Urca and it was from here that Rachel decided to go on a helicopter ride. The price of the ride was a bit to dear for the rest of us, but Rachel said it was worth every penny as firstly she managed to get a second free ride due to a clerical error which saw her put on the wrong route, and secondly because she got that magical money shot of the Sugar Loaf from behind Christ The Redeemer. Having looked at her photos, I almost wished I had done it!
By the time we got to the top, there was low cloud drifting past the mountain which made taking any meaningful photos impossible. At the same time however, it added a mystique to any photos that you did manage to take.
There is a nice park space to mill around up the top of the Sugar Loaf and we managed to see a massive lizard and some monkeys before we headed down Morro du Urca to watch the sunset. Morro du Urca is definitely a pretty chilled place to relax and take photos of the sun setting behind Christ The Redeemer - low clouds also made it look as if Christ was walking on them. All in all a pleasant evening.

I found that Rio could be an intimidating place to be, especially when you're not able to speak a word of Portuguese, but mainly because of what other people had told me about the city's reputation for crime.
Because I was warned by several people to be careful, I took more precautions than I usually would, like not taking my wallet out with me, only taking as much cash as I needed, stashing the cash in several different pockets in my clothing, and not wearing a watch. However, if no-one had told me anything about the crime in Rio then I wouldn't have thought that the city was any more dangerous than anywhere else. Just walking around, it never felt unsafe but I was always looking over my shoulder because of what people have told me.
Much of Rio's reputation for crime is built on tales from the favelas. Tales of these impoverished neighbourhoods in the hills of Rio, run by drug lords, where people are shot dead every day, where the residents are all crazy drug addicts, and where the police are too scared to enter due to the heavily armed militia that served the drug lords. On our last morning in Rio, we would find out for ourselves just how much of it is true
Fi had booked us a tour of a couple of the favelas and I had to admit that half of me had a moral issue with visiting poor people and looking at how they lived, yet the other half of me was morbidly fascinated. In the end, I felt I had to do it, as I felt I would not have properly experienced Rio without seeing all sides of it.
Now I wouldn't say we were nervous about going into the favelas but there was certainly a slight apprehension in our voices as we joked about how we might get shot in the crossfire during a shootout between rival gangs while up there. Our guide was very informative and gave us some really interesting insights into what life is like in a favela and how they came about.
The favelas originated due to people coming into Rio looking for work and building houses on public land, which is allowed under the Brazilian constitution, which states that the government must ensure there is housing for all. The fact that people started building their own properties meant that the government didn't have to provide this housing - so the government let the building of the favelas continue. As the favelas weren't built under official laws and were not properly recorded, they were left to fend for themselves by the city and were not connected to sanitation or electricity, which further impoverished the favelas. When Rio started becoming a transit point for trafficking to Europe, the drug trade rapidly grew during the 70s and 80s, along with the arms trade and violence within the favelas, as the poor started turning to the lucrative drug trade and rival gangs started competing for dominance of the market.
In recent years, several initiatives have been undertaken to try and 'clean up' the favelas and improve the conditions within them, especially in preparation for the World Cup next year and the Olympics in 2016. Special police units have been established in favelas in order to drive out the ruling gangs and drug lords. Most favela residents now have access to water, sanitation and electricity now, and are being reintegrated under the city's administration, paying taxes like normal residents.
Ironically, our tour guide tells us that many favela residents actually felt safer under the rules of the drug lords, as they maintained order within their favelas and protected them in a way that the police aren't able to do. They also previously did not have to pay taxes nor bills for water and electricity and some residents wonder whether they are now actually better off then they were before.
The first favela we visit is a tiny one called Vila Canoas. As the buildings weren't built according to proper building laws or rules, everything has been built right on top of each other and the alleyways that form the 'streets' of the favela are extremely tight. It is almost as if the favela is one massive building with 'corridors' rather than streets. From your bedroom you could probably climb into your neighbour's kitchen. Some of the power cabling is absurd, with an insane number of wires coming out of a single power pole. The community is very close-knit here and people leave their front doors open or unlocked - everyone know everyone else. The proximity between rich and poor is astonishing though - right across the road from the favela is a gated mansion with the house probably the size of half the favela itself.
The second favela we visit is Rocinha, the biggest one in Rio.
We firstly visit the 'town centre' of sorts and it feels like a whole other town within a town. From what I saw, the people here aren't living in desperate poverty - it is no poorer than some of the places I saw in Egypt, Morocco and Cambodia which are among the poorest countries I have visited so far.
We then go up into the hills of the favela and into a resident's garage which opens up into a stunning vista of the favela and the South Atlantic Ocean in the distance. It is quite a role reversal in Rio as the poor live in the hills and the rich live on the ground where in most cities it is the other way around. It is in fact the poor, who get the best views in Rio.
I was glad I did the tour as it was a real eye-opener although not in the way that I expected - from what I saw, the favelas really aren't as bad as they are made out to be.

After having a bit of a siesta in the afternoon, it was now finally time for our night out in Lapa.
Lapa is Rio's cultural and nightlife hub and with it's cool colonial buildings and bars you could see why. A lot of the bars were the kind of places you always imagined having a drink in when thinking about South America.
We had booked a table at one of Rio's famous samba bars, the Rio Scenarium, for dinner and drinks. The place has three different floors and decorated with so much colonial memorabilia that you felt you had gone back in time. A samba band played on the ground floor and is where most of the action is as locals and tourists alike get on the dancefloor for a truly Brazilian experience. There is also a 'club' in the place that plays more modern music to cater for younger clientele.
Despite the number of caipirinhas that we guzzled down, they unfortunately did not have the desired effect, making just about all of us drowsy and wanting to hit the hay, myself included. Not Rachel however, she was having a great time. At one point she went up to the band to make a request for a popular song she had heard at a bloco. Not knowing what the song was called, she resorted to singing the song to them. Despite her seemingly accurate rendition of "duh duh duh duuuhhhh", the band had no idea what she was asking for. For the rest of us it was a hilarious moment that we carried with us for the rest of the trip.
As I fell asleep in the taxi with Sag and Sarah, I came to the realisation that the night out in Rio had not materialised as I had hoped - and that perhaps I am getting too old for this shit...

Overall though, I have to say that I loved Rio de Janeiro.
There is so much to see and do that you could spend two weeks here and still find new things to experience. It is big enough so that there are several areas worth visiting that all have their own unique sights and charms. It has the sights, the scenery, the weather, and most importantly, a distinct identity. There is an infectious exuberance about the place.
As a result I would have to rate Rio right up there among the great cities of the world - London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Barcelona - Rio would definitely not be punching above it's weight amongst such company.

Up next: relaxing and chilling on the beaches of Ihla Grande.

Até logo!
Derek

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Photos

Christ The Redeemer
One of the most famous landmarks in the world.

Botafogo Beach & Sugar Loaf
Iconic Rio.

Ipanema Beach
"Tall and tanned, and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking..."

Escadaria Selaron
Jorge Selaron's colourful "tribute to the Brazilian people" and labour of love.

Tram Station, Santa Teresa
The old tramlines add to Santa Teresa's sense of nostalgia.

Santa Teresa
The hilly, cobblestoned streets of Santa Teresa.

Artwork, Santa Teresa
Bohemian Santa Teresa has become a hotspot for the artistic.

Lapa Arches
The old Carioca Aqueduct that is now a Lapa icon.

Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum
Niemeyer's flying saucer.

Sugar Loaf Mountain
The low clouds was simultaneously a pain in the ass and a cool effect when trying to take photos of the Sugar Loaf.

Looking Down From The Heavens
Christ The Redeemer looks down upon Botafogo Beach and Guanabara Bay.

Sunset At Icarai Beach
Out In Niteroi.

Streets Of Lapa
Cool old buildings in Lapa.

Streets Of Vila Canoas
The buildings are so tightly packed together in the small favela of Vila Canoas, that it's like walking through a maze.

Rocinha
Rio's largest favela.

Lapa Nightlife
With the old buildings and vibrant nightlife, Lapa felt like quintessential South America.

Rio Scenarium
Awesomely decorated nightclub that we went to in Lapa.

Samba de Janeiro
They didn't play the song but it didn't stop a couple getting up to have a dance.

Restaurant, Lapa
Awesome exterior of a restaurant in Lapa.

The Apartment
Our awesome home-away-from-home during our stay in Rio. All apartments should have a breakfast bar.

Jesus Christ!
Doing what every other tourist up there was doing. You just had to.

How's The View?
From the top of Corcovado, where Christ The Redeemer looks down upon the city.

Feeling Hot Hot Hot
Just to show that I wasn't kidding.

Shrimp
This is just an entree.

Cable Cars
Looking up towards Morro da Urca, next to Sugar Loaf Mountain. Jaws tried to kill Bpnd on these cable cars.