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Published: March 6th 2009
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I spent a whirlwind 2.5 days in Rio de Janeiro, taking in as many sights as my feet could handle. I was lucky enough to have an invitation to stay with a friend of my cousin´s, at her apartment in Leblon. Leblon is the ritziest and probably the safest area of town, which was great for me, because I was a bit nervous to walk around Rio on my own.
I was also lucky in that she had a connection for buying me a ticket to the "Sabado Campoa" - the Parade of Champions, during which the 6 top-ranking samba schools from last week´s Carnival parades get to parade all over again at the Sambadrome, from 9 pm till approximately 6 am (or later... I didn´t make it till the end, so I´m not sure how long it went!)
Rio is beautiful because it is surrounded by rolling green hills in all directions, and then of course there are the beaches, so there is a freshness that you wouldn´t experience in most big cities. Of course, I only saw the "pretty" side of Rio because I was protected in well-kempt, cobblestone-lined Leblon.
I spent a day at the
beach - first at Leblon, and then I walked over to Ipanema Beach, which is right beside it. There was a moment there, after I´d paid a measly $5 for a chair, umbrella, and a large coconut (to drink the coconut milk - VERY refreshing and magically combats dehydration!) when I sat back with my coconut in hand, my P. G. Wodehouse novel and looked out at the water, realizing that I had nowhere to be and nothing to do... when I felt truly blissful. I think it was the first moment of my trip where I truly felt relaxed. Of course, I am lucky to be travelling, but you tend to spend so much time researching and organizing your next destination (so as not to arrive in a new town with nowhere to stay!) that it´s hard to find a moment like that.
Of course I wore lots of sunscreen, and the number 30 I bought at Mountain Equipment Co-op is SO effective that I barely got a tan! Oh well, I suppose it´s healthier that way in the end...
The waves were quite rough, so I waded a bit but didn´t go into the big crashers.
Sugar Loaf Mountain
mmm.... loaves of sugar. My second day in Rio I did the tourist thing and went to Sugar Loaf Mountain. I find it highly amusing that I´ve spent 7 weeks in South America eating foods that are about 200 % more sugary than what I would eat in Canada... and then find myself at Sugar Loaf Mountain. I guess it´s supposed to look like a loaf of some kind. Anyways, I took the two funicular rides that go right up to the top, and took in the beautiful views from all sides of Rio and the neighbouring regions.
Afterwards I walked a bit around Urca, the neighbourhood near the base of Sugar Loaf, which is also a military zone so I felt quite safe walking around surrounded by military personnel! Then I took the bus ride back to Leblon in order to prepare myself for... the Parade of Champions!
I must admit I was nervous about going to the parade. I pictured lots of mayhem and obnoxious drunk people. But in fact it is quite safe there because you have 2 electronic tickets that get scanned on the way in at 2 different checkpoints, so thieves can´t get in unless they´ve
bought a ticket (which tend to be expensive.)
My ticket included transport on an air-conditioned bus (oh, did I mention, it usually went up to 36 or 38 degrees each day in Rio?) I was sitting in section 5, which was right in the middle so I had a great view of each act as it was in full swing.
It is definitely difficult to describe what goes on in the sambadrome. Perhaps I´ll upload some photos. It is a HUGE spectacle. There are thousands and thousands of performers, which in itself is pretty mind-boggling. The floats are enormous and most of them have mechanical moving parts - such as, a huge lion´s head that moves back and forth with a mouth that opens and closes, or a huge house with walls which keep collapsing and then coming back together again. Each samba school takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to make its way across the enormous sambadrome - I think it´s almost 1 kilometre long! And the singers/ samba band keep repeating the same song over and over again during each samba school, so you go into a kind of trance and you tend to know
the song by heart by the end. Then, the next samba school begins, and the whole thing starts over again! During the initial 2 nights of parades (during Carnival) there are 8 schools each night, so the evening goes from 9 pm till around 7 or 8 am!! The night that I went, I made it through about 4.5 samba schools - till around 3:30 am - and then I had to call it quits because my feet had had enough and visually, I just wasn´t absorbing anything anymore.
From what I gather, people are quite rambunctious at the Sambadrome during Carnival - with lots of singing and dancing and hollering - but because this was the Parade of Champions (post-Carnival) the audience was a bit more low-key. After all, they already knew who the winners were, so there wasn´t as much anticipation. The people around me were mostly locals, and I had the impression that many of them were there to support a particular samba school.
The samba schools are largely made up of people who live in the favellas - the "slums" of Rio - so it is ironic in a way that they put on
this amazing show where the tickets are so expensive that most of them would not be able to afford to go see it. I learned a lot about the favellas from Simone, with whom I was staying, because she had recently opened up a restaurant and had had to accept the fact that in order to run a business in Rio, you need to cooperate with the "king" of whatever favella is connected to your neighbourhood. This kingpin will help you out and make sure that your store is not robbed, as long as you pay the appropriate unofficial "security guards" who are responsible for that area. From what I understand, a lot of the samba schools are funded through these various favella kingpins, and of course the money comes from the drug trade. But, without this money, the samba schools would never be able to afford to put on such an amazing show. To be able to participate is a huge honour and the cariocas (Rio denizens) feel a great deal of solidarity for one particular samba school.
Continuing with my rapturous enjoyment of Brazilian fruit, I discovered the fruit-juice bars (walk-up counters on the street) which serve
amazing, blended semi-frozen fruit drinks. I tried the famous acai drink, which is a very dark purple berry which turns your mouth blue and is supposed to have all kinds of health benefits. It was SO delicious that I almost ordered a second. Instead, I tried a strawberry-orange one, which was just as amazing... I´m not sure how I´m going to cope with Canadian fruit when I get home!
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