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Published: March 16th 2008
La "Ciudad Maravillosa," the Marvelous City. That´s what Rio de Janeiro is known as, and we have to agree...it is pretty spectacular. It´s hard to argue for a more impressive geographical setting for a city. Long stretches of soft sand beaches framed by huge green mountains jutting out of the sea line the city on one side, while the rest of the city wraps itself around Parque Nacional da Tijuca, the largest urban park in the world. Seen as a whole--which we had the opportunity to do from two of Rio's most famous landmarks, Sugarloaf (1325 ft high) and Corcovado Mountain (2800 ft)--Rio really is breathtaking.
Every day we would wake up from the top of our three-story bunkbeds and immediately go outside to see if we could find Jesus. But every day, the enormous Christ the Redeemer statue, perched high on Corcovado Mountain, overlooking the entire city, was shrouded in clouds. We wanted to hold out for blue skies before going up there, so a typical day had us heading to one of Ipanema´s many juice bars to get some açai, then walking 3 blocks over to Ipanema beach for some prime time people-watching. People sunbathing in thongs and
Jesus!
Christ the Redeemer Statue. The best view we got of him all week.speedos, playing soccer, volleyball, strolling along the beach to show off their hot bods, vendors selling stuff (our favorite guy liked to advertise his product by shouting out, ¨Açai! Very much fucking cold! ¨). There was an endless amount of people to keep our attention. Our favorite thing to watch was the people playing futvolley, a game of beach volleyball where they use their heads, chests and feet to get the ball over the net--just no hands allowed. It was amazing to see how good some of these guys are and the rallies they got going. Playing soccer is such a part of their culture here so they just take those soccer skills and apply it, Soccer runs in their blood. And speaking of soccer...
Maybe our best experience in Brazil was watching the Rio de Janeiro City Championship futebol match in the Maracana Stadium. Seeing a soccer match in Rio was something that we definitely planned on doing, and we got lucky that it happened to be such a big game. The teams competing were Flamengo (the most popular team in Rio, the ¨people´s team,¨ with a lot of poor and working class fans, which are usually the
Flamengo fans
Getting rowdy 3 hours before the game even started most enthusiastic ones) and Botofogo (a team that has a much more affluent fan base. That´s an interesting thing about soccer teams in South America, and maybe it´s the same in Europe; teams don´t just represent a place, they represent different classes and races of people). The setting for the game was incredible: the Maracana Stadium, one of, if not, the most famous soccer stadiums in the world. The stadium used to hold 200,000 people but they recently added seats to make the place less dangerous, so now it holds about 80,000, and this game was completely sold out.
I do not believe that we have or will ever witness again more human energy than we did during this game. The stadium basically roars and shakes for five hours straight. People show up three hours early to start the songs, cheers and shit-talking to the other team. The game itself was excellent. Even if you´re not a sports person, you couldn´t help but get excited when Flamengo, the people´s team and the section we were sitting in, scored the game winning goal with only three minutes left in the game. We have never seen such a celebration, with chants,
Beautiful
Chowing down at one of Rio´s famous Churrascerias fireworks, smoke, flares, samba drums, huge flags...what an electric atmosphere. We can only imagine the craziness that will take place when Rio hosts the 2014 World Cup.
If the soccer game was our best Rio experience, eating at a churasceria (Brazilian BBQ) has to be a close second. These amazing restaurants are a must-eat experience in Rio. The particular one we went to (thanks Jenny and Mike, we are forever indebted to you for the recommendation) had an amazing buffet of salads and sushi that we would have been stoked about even if that was all there was to eat. For sides, every table gets plates of fries, rice, onion rings, garlic bread and fried bananas (John ate 5 whole bananas, no joke). But the real goods were carried out on skewers by the handsome young men with huge knives who would shave you off unlimited amounts of mouth-watering slices of any cut of meat you can imagine...and we´re not talking about Sizzler quality meat...this was amazing juicy cuts of high quality steak (garlic steak, steak with cheese cooked inside of it, prime rib, ribs, sausages, pork, chicken, etc). And they will keep bringing it around and serving you
as long as you have your green ¨yes i want more please¨ card facing up.
Other highlights included visiting the Botanical Gardens, Tijuaca National Park, Selaron Steps (an incredibly colorful staircase in the Lapa neighborhood covered with tiles from all over the world, by the crazy genius Jorge Selaron), Sugar Loaf at sunset, and of course, the Christ the Redeemer statue. As for the latter, the blue sky situation didn´t work as we planned...though we thought we finally had a clear day and could see Big J perfectly as we were driving up the hill toward him, by the time we got up to the top, he was so covered in clouds that we couldn´t even see his heavenly face or 85 foot wing span, let alone the city below. When the clouds did momentarily part, it was a circus...tourists pushing in front of each other to each get their snapshot with their savior. What a mess. We were fortunately able to drive to a lookout point 400 ft below the statue to get the coveted views of Rio.
Ipanema, where we were staying, is one of the nicest, safest, and most expensive areas in the city. Prices
Selaron´s Steps
At least 10 flights of stairs with tiles from more than 130 countries are comparable to the States. You think of South America and you automatically think ¨cheap.¨ Not necessarily the case, and definitely not the case here. There are people in Ipanema and neighboring Leblon with a kind of wealth that most of us couldn´t even comprehend. Copacabana also has a lot of wealth, and its beach is the most famous in Rio, but Copacabana seems to have already had its heydey, back in the ´40s when Clark Gable and the Rat Pack would party, gamble, and do other illegal things there. These days, the hillsides behind Copacabana are dominated by
favelas, shantytowns, making it a somewhat sketchy area to be, at least at night.
Most cities have crime and poverty of course, but one of the interesting things about Rio is the proximity between the ridiculously wealthy and the desperately poor. Most cities have distinct "good areas" of town and "bad areas" of town, but in Rio, the nicest, ritziest parts of town are only a few blocks away from the favelas, with its houses loosely constructed from brick and other materials, built on top of each other. Any of you who have seen the movie ¨City of God¨should be
Copacabana
As seen from the top of Sugarloaf familiar with the concept of favelas. Some are run by druglords and extremely dangerous, like in the movie, though other favelas are simply the homes of extremely poor people.
Either way, it doesn´t seem like a great place to live. Yet the favelas are also strangely romanticized (probably related to the sucess of ¨City of God¨) so that tourists fear them but are equally fascinated by them. Tours of the favelas are extremely popular, (for $60, most of which supposedly is donated to community projects in the favelas) yet people are strongly warned against stepping foot in a favela without a guide. Can you imagine someone offering guided tours of ghettos in South Central? It would never happen. The favelas interested us, but we felt too uncomfortable going in there and taking pictures of people as if they were animals in a zoo; however, many other travelers we met expressed having similar reservations at first but told us that they found the tours to be really interesting.
Whether you actually go into the favelas or not, however, their presence is highly visible, as they are covering the hillsides (including the hillside on the eastern side of Ipanema beach,
After our only run down Ipanema Beach
We were gonna run everyday, but you know how those things go which we originally assumed must be multi-million dollar homes due to their spectacular location and ocean views...in fact, these are just "five star favelas." In the States, those homes would be bulldozed in a heartbeat so someone could profit off of that prime real estate). And everyone is keenly aware that Rio is not the safest place in the world. Pretty much every person we met has a robbery story to share. They tell you not to bring anything with you besides a towel when you go to the beach. But we never really felt unsafe. As long as you stay in the right places and travel as somewhat of a minimalist, nothing bad should happen. And it didn´t. We had a wonderful, memorable week in the Marvelous City.
¨Well they tell me it´s only a dream in Rio...
But it's more than the shining eye, more than the steaming green,
more than the hidden hills, more than the concrete Christ,
more than a distant land over a shining sea,
more than a hungry child, more like another time.
Born of a million years, more than a million years.¨
-James Taylor, ¨Only a Dream in Rio¨
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