In the Favelas

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Have you ever tried to meet up with a friend when you are both travelling? It is not that easy. Thereby hangs a tale...

I rather rushed through Brazil, a difficult thing to do when the country is so big. Which meant that I spent a long time on Brazilian buses.

Brazil is a beautiful country, the people are friendly and love to party.

I arrived in Porto Alegre, Brazil by overnight bus from Montevideo in Uruguay on the 26th of July. Porto Alegre is the capital city of the province of Rio Grande do Sol. It was a short stop in order to recover from the long bus ride, although I did visit a couple of museums in the city. The biggest adjustment for me was the language. Although my Spanish is still rubbish, my Portuguese is non-existent. When I arrived in the morning I stowed my backpack in a locker in the bus station and went looking for places to stay, clutching a Portuguese phrase book. At the first hotel I visited I asked the receptionist if she spoke Spanish. She said no, but she spoke English. The place was full, so she directed me to another place. At the next hotel I asked the receptionist if she spoke English. No, but she spoke Spanish! Which was fine.

Whilst in Porto Alegre I emailed Elena that I was in Brazil. Elena is a Peruvian woman that I met in Mexico 3 or 4 years ago on a previous backpacking trip. She was keen to meet up, as she was also travelling in Brazil.

The next day I pushed on to Foz do Iguacu. It was another overnight bus. Foz do Iguacu is the Brazilian side of the stupendous waterfalls that I visited a few weeks before. Foz do Iguacu is an impressive sight, even if it was very diminished in scale when I was there because of a drought. (See my previous blog Drought and Brazilian dams).

The Pantanal

On Sunday afternoon I left Foz do Iguacu for another long overnight journey to Campo Grande. Campo Grande is one of the gateways to the Pantanal. Campo Grande is the capital of Moto Grosso do Sul and is a good place to pick up tours to the Pantanal.

The Pantanal is a vast area of wetlands, Brazil's major ecological attraction. It is much better preserved than the Amazon, containing a variety of exotic wildlife not found anywhere else in South America. I went on one of the tours into the Pantanal with 'Ecological Tours' for 3 nights. To be honest there was nothing particularly 'ecological' about the tour company. I think every company likes to claim to be ecological. They think it is a word that the gringos like!

It was though very cheap. It only cost 280 rials ($US120) for 3 nights, which included an extra free night in the hostel in Campo Grande.

Whilst I was in Campo Grande I received an email from Elena that she would be in Bonito near Campo Grande after I returned from my Pantanal tour. Elena wrote that Bonito was near Campo Grande, in fact it is a 5 hour bus ride away. But in a country as big as Brazil that is just down the road!

The tour of the Pantanal was very good. It involved a boat ride, horse riding, piranha fishing and 2 seperate wildlife hikes through the bush. The piranha fishing was particularly memorable. It was mid winter in Brazil, so the nights were cold and it took a few hours to warm up. We went fishing early in the morning. We fished for piranhas in the middle of a shallow lake up to our waists in cold water. As it warmed up during the morning the aligators started to stir and the aligators eyed us across the lake...

When I returned to Campo Grande on the Friday night, there was an email from Elena saying she would be in Bonito on Saturday at noon. So, I bought a bus ticket to Bonito.

I arrived in Bonito at 2pm on Saturday 5th of August. There was no message from Elena. She had said she would tell me where she was staying when she arrived. As I didn't have an email saying where she was, I sent an email telling her the name of the Pousada (hotel) where I was staying.

The next morning I still hadn't heard anything from Elena. So, I went out after breakfast and booked a tour for that morning. I returned to my hotel to pick my stuff up, knowing I had a few minutes to spare before I was picked up by a moto (motorbike) taxi. It was then that the owner of the Pousada handed me a note. It was from Elena. She had called when I was out. She had booked into a hostel some way out of town, because the hotel where I was staying had no rooms left when she arrived. The note said she would call again after breakfast...just as I was going out.


Bonito is a small town that has become a tourist trap because of the areas caves, waterfalls and clear forrest lined rivers.

My trip for the day was to snorkel down one of the clear rivers eyeball to eyeball with hundreds of fish. The area is very beautiful, but is full of gringos.

After the tour I checked my email. There was a message from Elena from the previous night which I had missed, but nothing new. So, I caught a moto(motorbike) taxi to her hostel. She was not there. I left a note which said I was returning to my Pousada and would wait in till 7pm.

At 6pm the owner of the Pousada knocked on the door of my room. She said that my friend had just phoned. She would meet me at 7 pm at my place.

Finally we met again. We were working against a deadline as Elena only had a few days left on her Brazilian Visa. I enjoyed the night. At the end of the night we said we might meet again...maybe next time in Columbia!

Next I had a long journey to Rio de Janiero. I stopped off in Campo Grande for another night. From Campo Grande it was a long 27 hour journey to Rio.

Rio and the favelas

In Rio I visited the usual tourist sites as you can see from my photos. I also though had a tour around some favelas with a local NGO (Non Government Organisation), which runs projects for the kids. The NGO Iko Poran runs various projects to help kids in the favelas.

There are about 700 favelas (shanty towns) in the state of Rio. The favelas of Rio de Janiero have some of the best views in the city. The favelas were often built on the sides of the mountains that overlook Rio. It was land that wasn't already developed, so poor migrants to the city squatted the land. The squatted land became permanent settlements.

The favelas range in size from hundreds to thousands of houses. Some of the houses look well maintained but many look very run down. The favelas I visited were built on steep hills. The little houses were all clustered very close together, the road (or paths) between houses were very narrow, often only wide enough for 2 people to walk astride. Often the road between blocks of houses was a narrow set of steps up the mountainside. Walking along the narrow passages between houses with the smell of broken drains, reminded me of a medieval town or fortress.

The favelas are unofficially run by drug gangs. I could see that the narrow streets are easy to defend from invasions from the police. One of the favelas I entered had the huge letters CV in blood red on a wall. The initials of the gang that run the favela.

The NGOs operate in the favelas under the watchful eyes of the gang leaders. They can carry out social work because the gangs allow it. The small kids of the favelas grow up thinking that walking past gunmen outside their houses is normal. But then when someone in the community needs medical care that they can't pay for, the drug gangs help. Also, no one in the favelas pays electricity bills. You don't need to be a genius to work out why no one needs to pay!

Rio is probably one of the most stunningly beautiful locations in the world. But woven into Rio are the favelas which are ugly.

Brazil is one of the most unequal places on Earth. It has fabulous wealth, first world facilities and grinding poverty.

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