Rio was just a fantastic city, and it was the people we met that just made it a million times better. So lucky on the first day we met a lovely girl called Laura, same age as us at 27 and Anita and I immediately hit it off with her like a house on fire. She had been working in Hong Kong for 5 years as a teacher then had decided to up sticks and go travelling around South America on her own. It was so refreshing to see a girl confidently forging her own way in life who was interesting, open minded and a laugh too. Books Hostel was then descended upon by a group of 13 lads from New Zealand, who would you believe came all the way over for a couple of weeks on a stag do, they were a real laugh and when we weren´t out and about sightseeing or taking our lives in our hands on the local buses we were hanging out with these guys.
On the first full day Anita and I went for a long walk through the city, the place has got serious style and the people a real sass, graffiti is everywhere but purposeful and artistic and seems to be very much embraced as part of the culture in Rio. We stumbled upon a "weight and pay" buffett in the north of the city, which was our first intro to Brazilian food. We poked and proded and sniffed the food, sampled some and spent the whole meal not in conversation but saying ´hmmm....mmmmm.... interesting.... that´s nice... what´s that? It looks like chicken has the texture of potato but tastes like tofu?" Whatever. In it went.
In the evenings we went down to the hostel bar, which was basically a table with caprinhas on it. Caprinhas, wow, if I knew that there weren´t mixer cocktails but actually just a glass of pure alcohol with some fresh lime on top I would not have drunk so much! We headed out in our local area Lapa, which had a fantastic street party on every friday and saturday with samba music playing and dancing.
As we decided it was time to be like true backpackers Anita and I decided to cook our own food in the hostel so went and bought some pasta with veg and salami to make... some kind of dish. We´d been students before, it´d be fine. The hob in the hostel had a flame the size of a lit match so after a bit of rough guessing decided to leave the pasta and sauce on for 30 minutes instead of 10. Mistake. By the time it had cooked it looked more like green porridge. But we sat down and ate it in silence and at the end we just looked at each other and burst out laughing, which got more hysterical when we salvaged an old ice cream tupperwear box from the bottom of the cupboard under the sink, spooned the mush in and put it in the fridge for later. I actually ate it cold the following day, a true trooper! Anita warmed hers up and literally slapped a whole pack of ham over the top to give it some flavour, it pained me to watch her take each mouthful.
We spent a few days touring the city, down to Copacobana beach, which although beautiful and hot I sat there in my hiking boots clinging to my bag for dear life because of the mugging horror stories I heard, much to Anita´s amusement. The Christ statue was a real highlight, the people of the city have a real pride for it and I had seen men on more than one occasion with large tattoos in its honour. Santa Teresa was also a very pretty little spot, and not unlike the winding streets of Italian villages, with cobbled streets and bright flowers spilling over weather-worn shop fronts.
The event that really made Rio for both Anita and I was the favela tour. A favela is the poorest part of the city, slums that seem to organically grow up the sides of the Rio hills. We went to the largest one in Rio, 200,000 people. We had mixed feelings about it to begin with as surely it was just asking for trouble, wealthy looking tourists dropped in the middle of an area organised by drug lords and criminals. All of us got off the tour bus and we must looked quite the sight huddled together entering the mouth of the slums. We had to get to the top by motorbike, which was actually a taxi service and the best way to get through the winding streets of the favela. We would then walk down, stopping a various places along the way. Now THAT was real fun, both our first time on a motorbike. We sped up the main street of the favela, weaving in and out of traffic, skimming buses with the skin of our knees and dodging people on the way and the taxi drivers shouting "go faster faster for the girls!" in Portugese, no helmet of course!
Our tour guide Marco was full of beans, a real charasmatic, funny and interesting guy and with a real passion for the favela. The only thing I can compare these overhung higgly piggledy streets to was a concrete rabbit warren. There were electricity wires and pipes everywhere, the residents just tapped in as and when they could. Men walked past us with pistols slung around their hips. We stopped at a gallery and a look out point near the top while Marco explained the history of the favela, the conflict between police and the drug lords in the favela, how the area is run much like any government would run its people with adminitrators and accountants and security and recruitment, which did baffle the mind somewhat. The favela´s "soldiers" would do military training through the streets with their Uzis and AK 47s while kids walk past on their way to school, it´s quite surreal.
The people here loved it, they were proud to show their home to the ´gringos´ (us tourists), which made us all feel a twinge of shame that we thought it might be like looking at animals in a zoo coming into the slums. As we weaved our way down the streets it became apparent to us that actually this was the safest we had felt so far in Rio. As Marco points out, there is no petty crime in the favela as the leaders here would not tolerate it and in the past have apparetly burned people alive in the streets for such crimes to set an example to the others in the community. Extreme of course, but having come from the UK where teenagers were smashing in shop windows and looting I couldn´t help thinking the UK government could learn a thing or two from the way things were operated here!
So after feeling very humbled by the experience in the favelas we left Rio no a reflective note and headed on a 2 hour bus journey west to Ilha Grande.
No comments:
Post a Comment