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Published: August 21st 2007
Well my friends, I made it to the end of my journey around the world. As places to finish a year long trip go, Rio de Janeiro is just about as good as it gets. It really and truly is one of the most beautiful and scenic cities in the world, with beautiful beaches full of beautiful people, and skyscrapers jostling for position amongst densely forested hills and mountains.
When I arrived in Rio the first thing I was confronted with was hot weather. It has been so long since I have felt seriously hot, I had totally forgotten the sensation! Coming out of the air-conditioned airport into 30 degrees heat and blue skies was a pleasant surprise. I got a taxi to my hostel - a place called The Wave a stones throw from Ipanema Beach, quickly ditched the fleece, jacket and jeans, and changed into tee-shirt, board shorts and flip-flops!
Ipanema is a seriously posh part of Rio, full of trendy restaurants and boutique shops. The beach is gorgeous, with kilometres of white sand curving around in a big arc, full of people playing beach volleyball and football, people selling everything from cold beer to fake Brazilian
shirts, and of course people wearing tiny bikinis and ´budgie-smuggler´swimming trunks! The sea itself is quite dangerous to swim in, with some seriously big waves crashing down and some very strong rip-tides pulling at your legs. One minute you are up to your knees before the sand shelf disappears and you suddenly out of your depth.
The Wave hostel is a great place to stay. Not many beds so it never gets too crowded, and the bunch of people staying there were all great value. Everyday people would congrugate outside in the small cobbled pedestrianised alley, while a little old lady comes out serving everyone Brazilian cocktails called capirinhas to anyone interested. I have met some great people here, including Rob (from Doncaster but running a curry restaurant in La Paz, Bolivia), King (from Hong Kong but working in London), Iva from Czech Republic, Mike and Laura from New Zealand, and Eva, Brionny, Lou and Lucy - all from Sydney, Australia. The guy that runs the place, Alex is a real card and is bullet-proof when it comes to dealing with the ladeez!
My first full day in Rio involved a tour to see some of the sights
in Rio. First stop was the Corcovado hill and the Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue at the top. The views from the top of the hill over Rio stretching out below are simply stunning. The statue itself is massive, with it´s arms aloft and gazing placidly over the city. You can see the statue from all over the city - it is particularly easy to see at night when it is lit up, and looks like it is floating in the dark sky. Impressive though it is, I think it was included as a 'New Seventh Wonder of the World'(ahead of Angkor Wat and the Pyramids of Giza) because of the fact that there were more people to vote in Brazil than in Cambodia or Egypt! There were plenty of photo opportunities up there though, and there were a lot of gringos ´doing a Jesus´with their arms outstreched next to the real statue!
We also stopped briefly at Santa Theresa, a area of cobbled streets and aging colonial mansions set high on the hills above Rio. Lots of graffiti too - a bit like Valpraisso in Chile. A small tram ferries the tourists up to the main square
here, which has some nice cafes and art and craft shops. We were then taken to the ultra-modern Catedral Metropolitana in the centre of town. This really is the weirdest looking church I had ever seen - a 70 metre high concrete cone that spiralled into the sky. Inside was very minimalist, with benches circling the alter in the middle of the cathedral, and four massive stained glass windows looming high over our heads. On the way back we whizzed past Copacabana beach (slightly warmer than the Copacabana in Bolivia!) and then back to Ipanema.
That evening we went out to celebrate my birthday. Even though it wasn´t until the following day, the people in the hostel wanted to start the celebrations early! After a few beers and a few capirinhas, we headed off to a nice bar where Alex introduced us to some local shots and everything got a bit messy! I do remember a very dulcit version of ´Happy Birthday´being sung though and a lot of banging on the table!
What´s the best way to spend your 38th birthday? I think laying on Ipanema beach with a few beers and a good book has got to
be up there in possible top answers. The sun was blazing, the beach enticing and the sea was gorgeous (if you like big waves!). I really felt lucky to be there. After all my travelling this was the first time for quite a well I was actually lounging around doing nothing. I had forgotten how much fun it is!
We met up in the evening with two teachers from Milton Keynes, Jess and Sally, who joined me, Rob, King, Eva and Jong (from South Korea) on another capirinha fuelled birthday bender that ended in ´Shenanigans Irish Pub´near Ipanema beach front. If there is one thing you learn about the world from international travel, it´s that whereever you are on the planet, there will always be an Irish pub in the vicinity!
The next day I went out with King and Iva for a look around the central district of Rio, walking around Botafogo and up to Lapa and Centro. We went into a very modern (and very expensive) multi-level shopping complex, and wandered around the main business area full of shimmering glass sky-scrapers (including the Petrobras building that´s shaped like the half-way stage in a game of jenga).
We also went to Museu Nacional de Bella Artes, the main art gallery in Rio - full of some fantastic paintings from Brazilian artists over the past 200 years.
As the sun began to go down, we jumped into a taxi to nearby Urca, where we got the cable car up to Sugar Loaf Mountain. You actually take two seperate cable car journies to get up there, changing at Morro da Urca (at 215m high) to get to Sugar Loaf (at 396m high). It was a bit blustery and the cable car wobbled around quite a bit - poor Iva refused to look down while we climbed higher and higher! I wondered why the cable car ride looked familiar, and remembered that James Bond once fought with Jaws (that bloke with the metal teeth) in a scene from Moonraker on the very same ride! At least I think it was Moonraker! When we finally got to the top via the second cable car, the views we were presented with makes it easy to see why people think that Rio is the most beautiful city in the world. The vista of winding beaches, verdant green mountains mingling with flavelas, skyscrapers
and houses for as far as the eye can see really takes the breath away. I certainly have never seen anything to compare to it - Rio is definitely unique.
That evening we went to watch a football match at the famous Maracana stadium - a local derby between two Rio teams, Flamengo and Fluminese. The stadium itself was a huge two-tiered bowl which holds around 100,000 people. There was a great atmosphere inside the ground in the build up to kick off, with loads of flags and fireworks going off from all corners of the stands. The match itself was disappointing - all the best Brazilian players play in Europe of course, and these two teams would struggle to beat a Championship team in England. Ted, a bloke sitting next to me who happened to be a Plymouth Argyle fan, said his boys would stick four or five goals past either team!´...Probably a slightly better atmosphere than Home Park´ I replied! In the end Flamengo ran out 1-0 winners, despite having two players sent off. I must admit though that I spent more time watching the crowd and joining in the singing and dancing than watching the game!
The following day I went on a tour of a flavela in the heart of Rio. Flavelas are an equivelant of a Brazilian shanty town, and 20% of Rio´s six and a half million inhabitants live in these areas. Nearly all the flavelas are run by drugs gangs, and the police very rarely enter into them, unless they are after a specific person. There is a very complicated relationship between the police and the drug-traffickers in these flavelas, involving a high degree of co-operation and corruption. Most people in the flavelas live below the poverty line of US$100 a month, but within each flavela there is a real sense of community and neighbourlyness.
The flavela we visted was called Rocinha, and was controlled by one of the most powerful drug gangs in Rio - Amigos des Amigos (or ´Friends of Friends´). When we walked in through the entrance, we noticed two guards patrolling nearby. Apparently a rival gang had tried to take over the flavela and the gang were now being extra vigilant. Our guide told us that if we saw a drug deal take place, it would be very dangerous to take a picture -seemed slightly obvious
to me, that one! The flavela itself climbed up and around the nearby hills like a giant ants nest. There was no more room to build on the ground, so now they were building on top of existing houses. There are dozens of new people arrving every week apparently, and somehow the demand for new housing has to be met. As we wound our way through the narrow alleys of the flavela, I was struck at how well people had adapted to life there. Electricity poles had dozens of wires attached, siphoning off power to peoples houses; huge plastic barrels balanced precariously on roofs, collecting rain water; and lots of tiny shops, ranging from grocers to bakers, from shoe-repairers to barber shops, were all full and buzzing with activity. We also visited an art studio set up with money from one of the many charities that work in the flavela. There were three ex-graffiti artists working in there now using oil paints to produce canvas to sell to tourists. I actually ended up buying one that took my fancy - an abstract painting of the flavela itself...now I just need to work out how to get it home!
The
drainage of waste in the flavela was in the form of open sewage - a pungent reminder of some of the more squalid places I visited in India. As the clogged drains overflowed onto the cobbled streets, I think some of my fellow tourists regretted going for the flip-flop option as footwear! We were told a little of the gang that runs the flavela. Despite the poverty all around us, around US$10 million changes hands in cannibis, cocaine and crack deals in the surrounding streets every year. On the other side of the coin, the ADA also provides day care, medicine for the sick and money for the poor within the flavela, as well as building roads, hosting community parties and sponsoring sports and recreational events. They also have a huge degree of control over the social behaviour within the flavela, strictly prohibiting street crimes such as rape, muggings and break-ins. The head of the gang (and also therefore in charge of the flavela) is a 28 year old bloke. Life expectancy in this line of work is not high, and our tour guide expects him to be dead within years - either at the hands of his own gang,
a rival gang or by the police (the last guy in charge here was shot dead by police outside a Copacabana restaurant last year). There is no getting away from the fact that Rio is a dangerous place - one statistic I read that between 2000 and 2006, the city averaged one murder every 3 and a half hours. Young men between 15 and 24 die at a rate of 101 per 100,000 in Rio - a startling figure for a country that is not at war.
Two things struck me about my trip to Rocinha flavela. Firstly, the complete contrast of seeing this huge slum nestling metres away from a very affluent area of Rio, with huge multi-level luxury apartments glistening high above. It just felt bizarre seeing this huge chasm between the haves and have-nots of Rio so blatant before my eyes. Secondly, the smiles and the laughter of the people living in the flavela. The children playing - the neighbours chatting - people just getting on with everyday life. These locals have no money, these children have no fancy toys, but there was an over-whelming feeling of happiness amongst these closely packed neighbourhoods which I did
not expect to witness. I came away with a great sense of optimism in how we as human beings adapt to the most adverse and hopeless of situations, and still find ways to find fulfillment.
That night was another big night out with the guys from The Wave hostel. We went out to the Lapa area of Rio, which is THE place to be on a Friday night apparently. It´s basically a big street party, where the cervezas and the caipirinhas flow and everybody congrugates on the tiny cobbled streets. The nearby clubs are full of locals trying to teach the gringos how to samba...with varying degrees of success! Rob, King, Iva, Sally, Jess and lots of others all hit the town with me in a very raucous night out - memories are a bit of a blur, and waking up in bed fully clothed at 6am with no recollection of getting home is not clever or funny!!
The nearby Ipanema hippy market the following day was a good place to get some last minute souveniers, as well as recover from a hangover. Lots of artists selling paintings, jewellery, pottery and the like. That afternoon I went back
Gazing up at the Catedral Metropolitania
You can just make out the window cleaners!up to Santa Theresa to wander around the cobbled streets and chill out in a nice café. There was a lovely art and antique museum there too called Museu Chárcara do Céu, in an former industrialist´s mansion, with beautiful gardens and lovely views back down to central Rio.
As that evening was my last at The Wave, it seemed like another excuse for a party. Rob took it upon himself to get all the ingredients needed for caipirinhas (cachaça, lots of limes, and sugar) started making extra strong ones for everyone. A few of the girls were not impressed with Rob´s drink mixing skills - I must admit I took one sip of my glass and felt I was breathing fire for the next half hour! The caipirinha lady from next door was not happy with the fact that we had our own supply and were not drinking hers - in fact she had a face like she had been sucking some of Rob´s limes! A new arrival turned up at the hostel that night - a bloke called John who I had last seen months ago in El Carafate in Argentina with my mates Wayne and Danny watching
the mighty Hammers defeat Man Utd - talk about a small world! He was getting near to the end of his trip too and was flying out of Sao Paulo next week.
The next day I moved to the Augustus hotel in Copacabana. After all this time on the road, I thought I deserved a bit of 4 star luxury before going home. I was going to miss Rob and King snoring their heads off in my dorm at the Wave - but not that much! A nice leisurely day on Copacabana beach joining a few more freckles together was a perfect way to unwind!
So here I am typing these notes the day before I fly home back to London. What an adventure it´s been though. Thirteen countries, hundreds of memories, and scores of new friends. The highlights? Too many to mention. Everywhere - from the temples of Angkor Wat, to the cricket grounds of Australia; from the deserts of Jaisalmer, to the icy peaks of the Himalayas; from rocky, forlorn outposts of Terra del Fueggo and Ushuia to the sun-drenched partying beaches of Rio - I´ve been lucky enough to see some of the most beautiful
places in the world. What an experience.
When I go back to London, who knows what the future brings? Maybe teaching, or charity work in some capacity...we´ll see. I´m currently reading Pablo Neruda´s autobiography. He is the Chilean poet who greatly impressed me, and whose houses I visited in Santiago and Isla de Negra. The book is called 'Confesso Que Vivi'- translated it means 'I Confess That I Have Lived'. I can relate to that.
See you in London
Doogs
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Danny
non-member comment
It's been emotional...
Sean, great finale to a fantastic blog. Think your vocation lies elsewhere to accountancy! Thanks to you for the times we had in Chile n Argie (and for having size 13 feet or i might still be in Torres del Paine National Park!). You have really lived the dream, now don't stop there! Easy mate, Dan