Brazil notes 2 - Rio

( Earlier Part I :here)

Rio de Janeiro

So our first stop was Rio de Janeiro (translation: River of January - the early settlers incorrectly thought the bay was mouth of a river). It is a very popular travel destination. This erstwhile capital is rich in the ethnic and cultural diversity and is located among wonderful natural settings. Sugarloaf and other mountains and hills, great crescent beaches and harbors - all overlooked and overseen by the iconic Christ the Redeemer at the top of Corcovado mountain.

First impression of Brazil (Rio, actually) was that it was pretty clean. Motorways were narrower than what we have gotten used to see in the US, but traffic was well organized and roads were spotless. Cars were smaller and saw few motorcycles on the road too. It was a bright sunny days, temperature was not uncomfortably high.

Along the way, we got our first glimpse of the famed Rio favelas.


A favela is basically a slum/shanty town, like Dharavi of Mumbai, but with higher crime rates. Life is tough with gang-wars and drug-wars erupting any time, and the police have little control over them (though, they steamrolled some of them about 3 months back in effort to wipe out the drug-lords).

Some travel operators arranged to take people there on tours. If they still run it and if you like to be in people-zoo, you can try it the next time. (But do watch (possibly completely inaccurate) the dazzling City of God before you do that.)

Brazil is the only Portuguese speaking country in the Southern American continent. Almost all the other countries speak Spanish (I think) . But more importantly, almost nobody speaks English (at least everybody who does not work in the tourism industry). We realized this as soon as we stumbled into a breakfast place near Copacabana beach after checking in our hotel. After a lot of gestures and hand-waving and finger-pointing, we finally managed to get across the idea that all we wanted was to just have breakfast at the place. Boy, we were going to have fun in Brazil!

Brazil offers you great choices for food - breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between is simply awesome. Even for vegetarians, it's not that difficult to survive (and often enjoy the food). And if you are meat-eater, it wont get any better anywhere else! (I have to also mention the Brazilian coffee - it may not be as great as Columbian one, but boy, it can get you started early in the day like no other coffee I found anywhere else!)


So, onto the Copacabana beach.

It was pleasant day, and it was also Brazil Independence day. Beach was full of people, including national tourists. Roads were blocked and it was just wonderful to roam around in misfitting clothes (AA was delivering our delayed luggage that afternoon) among new and unfamiliar faces, not understanding a single word in sea of unknown voices and sound.


We took a nice long stroll on the beach - our first glance at the famed Rio beaches. It was the end of winter and water was still cold, though weather was perfect 25 °c. People were jogging, bicycling, walking or just idling around.


We also noticed a lot of outdoor gyms on the beach, along with few volleyball nets and showers.


There were nice beachside cafes, with a lot of options for sandwitches and coconut-water and chilled beer.


Across the road, there was a nice roadside market, where you could buy inexpensive clothes, stone jeweleries, bikinis, shorts, wrap-arounds, and very tasty lemon-honey tea if you are up for it. It was very interesting when we asked an oldish lady if she could tell where we belong to - and she immediately replied in her broken but not bad English - "India!!". It was surprising to know how easy it was. Upon further inquiry, she told us that Indian soap operas were so popular in Brazil that they knew a lot about Indians. Now I know it's probably not the best idea to let them know all about our Saas and Bahus, but it was funny nonetheless.


Sand and the pavement with the famous black and white wave patterns (you can't see it here though).


While returning to the hotel (two blocks from the beach, we ventured to try one of the many fruit/sandwich stalls which you can find at every corner. We had read about açaí - a very nutritional fruit (berry) of South America, and we had to try it. Communication was almost impossible with the helpful guy serving across the counter, but understanding that we did not speak or read Portuguese, he produced a menu in English from somewhere, and we indicated a sandwich and then pointed to somebody having something we thought (correctly) was açaí pulp. Locals love it, and many have it in the breakfast with granola/cereals. I guess it takes a while to get used to the taste, or may be we had already eaten a lot, we struggled to finish one serving between two of us.

Heading back to the hotel, we were happy but still anxious. We had finally breathed and spent a day alrady. Our room was small but clean and it was not too long before we fell asleep.

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Since we were going to spend just one more day in Rio, it was decided to take a full day city-tour. I hate doing this, but we had few choices, and this was the best way to get a glimpse of the great city. We would surely come back to 'explore' it, wouldn't we? (Would we? But, but there are many more places to see!).

So off we went to the Sugarloaf mountain, thusly named (probably) because it raises from sea into air about 1300 feet like a loaf of sugar. We took the cable car (rope way) to the top as it's the only way to reach.



It provides great vantage point to see the great city sprawling below you, with sea on one side, harbor on the other, and the famous statue of Jesus far away in the distance on the other side. Only downside is that it's full of, well, tourists (isn't it awesome to bitch about everybody else while being one of them??).







Clean sparkling streets of some upscale area of Rio.


Graffiti of the city.

Before going to the main 'attraction' of the Chirst statue, we stopped at the Rio cathedral - a bit of unusual structure for a cathedral.


Inside, it has four stained glass window going all the way upto 200ft.



Last destination was the statue of Christ the Redeemer, located at the top of the Corcovado mountain. A magnificent 130ft statue, overlooking the whole city, as if protecting it. It's symbol of Rio, and looks as impressive at the close range as it looks in those panoramic pictures.

You can take a train or choose to walk. We took the train.


On a clear day, you have a great view all around, but we were not that lucky. In fact, the statue was almost lost in the fog most of the time, but every now and then, it cleared and one could see the full statue. It was funny how very suddenly a lot of cameras were fired as soon as the view cleared. Sometimes we want to store the memories in the hard drive rather than inside our head or heart.






So that was that for the great city of Rio - the next day, we would take a flight to Iguasu airport, in anticipation of the next wonder.

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