The Virtue and Vice that is Rio De Janeiro

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Consider yourself warned!
Now before I went to Rio so many people told me of the horror stories awaiting me in Rio. I heard everyone there is looking to pick off tourists. I heard life is cheap. I heard hard drugs are everywhere accompanied by corrupt policemen. I heard the women are only gold diggers. I was warned not to wear flashy clothes, not to speak english in public or on public transport, not to be loud, not to draw attention to yourself, not to walk slowly, not to bring out alot of cash, under no circumstances was I to whip out my laptop or camera. I heard that from the moment you land to the moment you take off you have to watch your back! But I must confess, for all its vice and crookedness there is so much virtue and beauty to behold. Rio holds so many voluptuous laughs, so many delicious scenes, and the ease with which you can slip into friendships is uncanny. So many Brazilieros are just willing to love and it is infectious!

I got off the airplane in Rio, with all the horror stories swirling in my head, I decided to become Jasone Bourne. Besides I was only going to be there a couple of days so what could go wrong? The air temperature occured to me as it was so freaking hot, I mean hot as a frying pan in hell. Wind tunneled through the open doored terminal but sweat just poured off me. I had my Bourne deadpan face on as Adam's boxers were bunching (as I had to borrow some because my bag went straight to Rio) in my jeans and the t-shirt on my back was thoroughly drenched under a ton of back pack weighing me down. Anyways, I got a tip from my friend Jim, Jim and I went to Junior High and a year of High School together, to get the Blue and White REAL bus from the Airport straight to Copacobana (it's a $6R fare compared to $40R taxi fare). Sweet Savings. But like any grocery store back home, with the milk tucked neatly in the back corner refrigerator, I walked by forty five taxis and the forty five hungry and boisterous drivers before I saw the bus. They eventually relented when a couple germans walked out behind me. I put my bag underneath the gleaming bus and the air conditioning blasted me as I stepped up to be the first one on. I sat on the right side of the bus so I could watch the undercarrige hawk like; making sure no one stole my bag (I also heard of a scam where a passenger would hide a midget in a bag and put them under the bus to go through all the bags enroute). So like Bourne, I surveyed the whole bus and measured everyone up as they got on. I listened to all the conversations around me and decided that the crazy looking midget girls speaking Portugese were the biggest threat, I determined that the best place to hide a gun was under the driver's seat, and I knew that I could run flat out for 79 miles (nah I'm only joking probably only 74 or 75) given that heat and elevation.

I was a little scared and I slyly took out my camera and started snapping pics out the window. I tried to keep my camera low but then I saw a german tourist take out his passport and money case (oh that is something that I found really cool all the different secret bags, pockets, and or pouches that people held their traveling essentials in (I never kept all my privates (money, id, and chapstick) in one spot and took my irish passport when I went out so I could still get back to America if I needed to)) out of his backpack and it amazed me how cavalier he was with his PRIVATES! I wanted to shout at him and tell him "Aufmerksamkeit Zwerges" but I just stared at him in the reflection in the window. I started to relax when I saw that the midgets did nothing to him. Then I caught an eye of a cock eyed brazilian girl and quickly returned to gazing out the window.

The airport I flew into, GIG, is twenty five minutes north of Rio and Brazil unfolded before me as we started moving! We passed miles of shoddy corrugated iron roofs, scores of uninhabited building sites (there must have been a soccer game on somewhere), wide expanses of dry grass, and then houses upon houses as we got nearer to the city. I hadn't thought about my perception of the place before I got there but I was moved by the poverty, the energy, and a guy with a bunch of limes at a stand with lemonade written on the front of it. We stopped at the rail station to pick up some other people and I watched a cab driver out in the heat swing a freshly cleaned shirt on like a matador. The shirt was white as Vermont snow and he leaned against his yellow and black charriot to button it up. We got moving again and pulled into a red light along side another bus. I saw the other driver place his elbow on the steering wheel and rest his chin on his hand. I looked at him and wondered what happened. With all his Brazilianness about him, his dark complexion, his muscular physique, his unreal abilities with a soccer ball; what happened? What happened to make this extraordinary person sit driving a bus and seemingly hating it? I felt for him, snapped a pic, and then the light turned!!!

I saw a sign for Copacobana and something in me lept! The only experience I've had with that name was a tall guy who sang "Lola" with a lisp in the talent contest at my church in college. I remember that was one of the last times I went to youth group there (not because of him mind you). Christo the Redeemer looked down upon the scene from afar and I thought of my Grandmother May. She is one of the nicest people in the world. She grew up in the "city" as they say in Waterford, Ireland. Well relatively speaking, you see my grandfather lived 15 miles outside of the city (town really) on a farm and they met at a dance, where they had popcorn and lemonade (Oh! the days when things were simpler). Anyways, she worked in a hotel just out side Waterford, then went to work in a Hotel in London, and then she was offered a job in Switzerland by one of Picasso's lovers. She was a swiss lady who invited my grandmother to run a Swiss hotel in the mountains. My grandmother declined only to return to Waterford to marry my Grandfather. My grandparents along with my great aunt and uncle bought Kingsmeadow, a huge Georgian style house skirting the bounds of Waterford and the Swiss lady gave my grandmother some original Picassos. But to this day Maisy has no idea what she did with them. They're somewhere in that big old house (I've no clue where they are as we've all looked). Anyways, staunchly Catholic, one of the seven wonders of the modern world, Christo, really struck Maisy's chord in my heart. I knew I had to get up there before I left.

The bus stopped on the Copacobana and after I tucked my camera away I put my Bourne face on and I got off just behind the cock eyed girl and her friend. I retrieved my bag and tipped the bus driver because it weighed as much as it did when I put it on, and he kissed me (Bourne doesn't do kisses from the same sex so I held on to my pockets as he did so). I walked up Rua Duvivier behind the girls and tried to find the hostel, Stone of a Beach because that is where I was to meet my friends Jim and Drew (I love you facebook). Drew also went to school with Jim and I back in Rhode Island. I felt extrememly exposed walking behind the girls with my luggage weighing me down. If I needed to I would not be able to run that aforementioned 74 miles flat out. You see, before I left DC I was living a minimalistic existence and I could fit all my possessions on the back seat of a Nissan Altima (Bourne doesn't do luggage). So walking up the street I felt like a moving target. I was stressing out at an intersection and so the girls turned to me. I asked them, "Falle Englais". The cock eyed one nodded (damn) and I asked her where Stone of A Beach is. She spoke fluent english and she offered to walk me there. I accepted and felt bad because I thought her friend was much better looking and kept looking at her.

I got to the hostel and said "Obrigado and Caio Caio" to the girls. The manager of the hostel, Melissa, reluctantly let me put my bag in their closet under the stairs. Now Melissa was another one of those people you can't not mention when you travel, like Billy. She had tats all over the back of her left leg, left buttock and all the way up her back to her shoulder and down her left arm (oh yeah almost everyone in Brazil has tats). She has one child and she ran the hostel with her husband, a kiwi, and her brother, Fernando. This girl made out with one of my jujitsu instructors, took a shower with another, and slept with this dude that I fought who looked like Dolph Lundgren! (I wonder if I had anything to do with that) Crazy Crazy!!! I made my way up to a bar on top of the hostel. It is this old school mansion painted bright blue on the second floor with bright orange bricks on the first. It's in the heart of Copa and two blocks from the beach. I replenished some of the fluids I lost enroute (Bourne was happy but only briefly). I was at my first destination but I needed to get up with my friends. I facebooked my boy Jim from the computer in the lobby (much to the chagrin of Melissa (and I thought that was bad well you should have seen her when I asked for my bag back without booking a room) and within twenty minutes I saw two gringos walking down the street in flip flops, boardshorts, and tee shirts!!!

Brazil has the most ethnically diverse culture in the world. I mean you walk down the street and there are so many shades of skin color it's amazing. From the old school milky white of the portugese settlers to the tanned silky smoothness of a rich brown to dark black of the slaves they brought with them. The melanin concentrations varied so much and yet you can always pick out the gringos. The gringos walked without the physical ease of the Brazilieros, their hair was crumpled, and maybe it was the money they had or maybe it was the insecurities they had but they just didn't fit in. I was amazed at how relaxed the brazilians were with their bodies. Fat men, skinny men, and muscular good looking men all walked around with the same lassiez faire attitude - ie this is me in a tank top and I don't give a %*&# what you think about it. It was something that was very foreign to me. I have always been insecure about my body and walking around in Brazil I began to relax about it. I always wanted to be incredibly muscular and I would get down when I kept working out without the results. But I realized in Brazil that it is okay to work with what you've got. I realized nothing's worth the price of worry!

High fives, and hugs all round as Jim, Drew, and I were reunited and on our way to the beach!!!! Now I hadn't seen these guys in nine years and when they heard I was coming down to Brazil, like Adam (the badass), they insisted on me staying with them!! They had traveled the world before going from Thailand up to Cambodia over to Africa and then they came to Brazil and they were supposed to continue on their world tour but they cashed in their tickets, took an apartment, and stayed in Brazil!!! They got the ideal pad, a small apartment, two blocks from the beach, two blocks from the hostel, and guarded day and night! The guys were a well of information as far as what busses to take, what walks to avoid, where the good restaurants were (not that we ate at any of them), what to do, and when to do it.

The sun was shining and it was 1.20 in the afternoon and I was sitting on the beach in Copacobana for the first time in my life!!! It was so incredible! The girls on the beach were out of this world and one wondered why they bothered wearing anything at all because their bathing suits were literally speaking strings of cloth!!! But anyways I've never felt the Atlantic so soothing I stayed in the water for hours. The salinity and the awesome waves reminded me of my home in Rhode Island. I remember swimming out and then looking back towards the scene in front of me - foursomes of brazilian boys and men juggled soccer balls at the water's edge, merchants walking up and down the beach selling everything from string bikinis to giant slices of watermelon, the vultures flying in the sky with giant gulls hovering high above them, the favela down past Ipanema on my left flank, Sugarloaf looking at me from my right flank, and the multitude of trees lining the hills of the Tijuca Forest behind Copacobana.

The sun was dipping low in the sky just touching the building tops as I bobbed up and down out past the breakers. I thought of my mom and how she always took us to Narragansett beach at this time in the afternoon. It was just after she finished work in the summer time. I was only there for a few hours and my WWBD (What Would Bourne Do) mentality left me. I felt connected to the eternal flow of existence. A rush of tranquility flowed over me as looked up into the sky. I was grateful.

Then Jim called to me from the shore! It was time to go! As I said the sun was going down and that, my friends, is when Rio really lights up!

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Photos

Rio at Night
Botafogo lit up in the foreground to the right and Christo lit up in the clouds.