At the Copa, Copacabana

---

Bon Dia,

Our flight left late but we arrived in Rio de Janeiro without any issues and were met by our transfer who waited through our delay to meet us. On the ride through town, we saw some interesting things. On the main overpass from the airport we saw a few cars pulled over to the side. We thought they had been in an accident but it turns out that they had simply stopped to go fishing. From the side of the busy overpass in from the airport. In rush hour. The road started to back up more after that so we took a circuitous route that took us past one of the univeristies in town and its engineering building, which ironically was a pile of rubble. Somebody must have failed their final. We continued through a couple of favellas (essentially neighbourhoods comprised of impoverished people), past the famed Marana Stadium, past the Sambodromo, past a beautiful castle (not our hostel unfortuntely) and through Botafogo to Copacabana, where we were staying at CabanaCopa Hostel for the next few days.

We did a lot of wandering in Rio. On our first day, we went to the Canadian Consulate, just because, but they were a lot less helpful than previous consulates or embassies that either of us have visited. We then walked along the length of Copacabana Beach, but since the weather was not stunning, we did not go swimming. Once we reached the end, we headed to the beaches of Ipanema and Leblon. They were both much nicer than Copacabana actually. The beaches were nicer and the water was cleaner but the weather was still poor (it is the rainy season afterall) so we did not go in. We went to the Haviana store because virtually everyone in the city seems to be wearing Havianas and we were the odd ones out. After that, we had lunch at a nice microbrewery called De Vassa before continuing our wandering through Ipanema and Leblon. We did a bit of shopping and a little boy tried to pickpocket Peter but Peter had nothing in his pocket to steal. Both of the neighbourhoods are some of the swankiest in Rio and it became very apparent as we walked through them.

The next day, we went on a Favela Tour. Favelas are essentially the slums and the exist in every large city in Brazil. To put their size in perspective, Rio has 7 million people and 2,5 million people live in favelas in the city. We were picked up at Copacabana and we drove through of one of wealthiest neighbourhoods in Rio to our first favela which was called Vila Canoas. One on side of the street are million dollar homes and on the other side are delapidated houses comprising the favela. We visited an NGO first which has created a school
for children to receive a basic education. Our guide Patricia then led us through the rabbit´s warren of streets and steps, terrible electrical wiring and multi-storey dwellings of the favela. The buildings are all at least five storeys high, everyone man owns a small bird and there are wiring and sewage issues that would give Mike Holmes a heart-attack. We then headed up the hill to the next favla which was called Rocinha. Officially, 90,000 people live there but the number is believed to be much higher. We snaked up a long and winding street to the top of the favela where there was a massive, 11 storey apartment building that afforded beautiful views of the southern beaches. We then continued over the hill and down the other side to the only place in Rio where one can see both the statue of Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain at the same time. WIth views like these and the fact that the inhabitants do not pay taxes, it becomes fairly obvious why many people do not move out of the favelas. The only downside is that drug-dealers control them. In Rocinha, the police had confiscated 2 tonnes worth of cocaine two days before we got there. We saw some foot soldiers walking around with guns, but they were not a threat to us.

Soon, New Year's Eve was upon us. We changed into our white clothes and went down to the restaurant/bar area in the restaurant where everything was available for free for a change. The food was terrible, and the staff only had one pair of tongs and would only serve one person at a time so the line-ups were ridiculous. We sat down next to a brother and sister (whose names escape us) who happened to be from Quebec. We sat with them for a while and then headed out to Copacabana Beach. Before we got there, it turned into a sea of people, all dressed in white like we were. We fought our way through as much of the two million strong crowd as possible as made our way on to the beach. There were four stages set up, all with different performers. Around 10pm, at the main stage, Jacques Rogge was on hand, along with several Brazilian athletes, to unveil the 2016 Summer Olympics logo. It is essentially three, multi-coloured and styalized people who are inter-connected. Look it up online yourselves to see what we mean. Then they unfurled a huge banner with the logo on it and we were right by the edge of it so we got to hold it as it was unfurled, which was really cool. Then, we ran under it as well, which was also great. Afterwards, we went to try and find the stage with DJs on it. We forced our way through the heaving crowd, but there were no DJs at the stage we went to. Regardless, we waited there until the countdown to midnight which, was of course, was in Portugese. It hit midnight and then the fireworks started. There were several barges out in the bay that shot fireworks high into the sky for half an hour. They were probably the best fireworks that either of us had ever seen! Afterwards, we fought the crowd to return to the hostel. It was an amazing New Year's experience.

One day, we decided to go up Corcovado to see the Statue of Christ. Our first problem was that we did not realize that it was a sunday after a holiday and we did not think that it would be too busy. We waited for a local bus and when it finally arrived, it was ridiculously over-crowded. Knowing how long we had to wait for the first bus to come along, we decided to fight our way on and we stood in a very cramped space for 30 minutes until we got to the base of Corcovado. The wait for the train to the top was 5 hours long, so we waited half an hour for the car that would take us up to the top. We were frequently slowed down by the myriad cars that decided to try and park on narrow ledges and next to steep embankments. The car ride up would best be described as a roller coaster with tight turns and hairpin corners. We made it halfway up where we had to stand in another chaotic line to buy our tickets. After we purchased those, there was another line-up of approximately 200 people waiting to get on mini-busses to get to the statue. We did not want to wait so we decided to walk up to the top. This was fine untilthe temperature went up by five degrees and we were dripping by the time we got to the summit. It was ridiculously crowded at the top but the views were excellent. We could see the Maracan Stadium, Sambodromo, Catedral Metropolitana, Sugarloaf Mountain, the MAC (Neimeyer museum in Niteroi), Copacabana Beach, Ipanema Beach, Leblon Beach and the two favellas where we had a tour the other day. Many people were taking stupid pictures, lying down on the ground and having their friends stand with their arms open like Christ. Of course, these people were in the way of everyone else trying to move around. We decided that we did not want remain up there with stupid people anymore so we took a mini-bus back down to the ticket office where we were able to catch another mini-bus down the hill. We would have been down faster if stupid people would not try to parallel park into a space that they will obviously not fit into. We finally made it back down to the base, where we managed to get seats on our local bus back to our hostel. The busses are all air-conditioned and are not the theft factories that Lonely Planet makes them out to be. It was a very long and tiring day, but a good way to end our time in Rio, as well as our time in South America.

Bye for now,
Peter and Valerie

Things we learned in Rio.
-Brazilians are allowed to import no more than 15 litres of wine. That's not fair!!!
-There is no organized chaos in Rio. It is simply chaos.
-The mosquitoes in Rio are qucik. Very quick.
-The English announcements in Galeao Airport sound like they are being spoken with a Swedish accent.

---