It's our last day in Rio de Janeiro, and we are maudlin. Once the initial travel weariness had worn off, we made better use of the city and have fallen in love with it. I always feared this would happen. We know we need to move forward, to start the process of travelling on the ground, but the unknown is so much less attractive than the known.
We spent Thursday afternoon lying on Copacabana beach of the first time, pondering on the viability of living in this colossus, which reminds me of Howl's Moving Castle, a marvel, beautiful and enchanting, yet somehow held together by magic, string, and sheer force of will. Everyone is more than happy to tell us how corrupt the country is, but there doesn't appear to be much impetus to sort it, possibly because the country is just too big, or more likely that the Brazilians are all so used to the system right now and know how to work it, and its merely ex-pats who are thoroughly exasperated by the whole situation.
The way of life is Rio seems to be a simple combination of beverages (coffee, mate, limonada, beer, acai berry sorbets, and a wonderful Tip-Top type drink called Guaravita. I shall refrain from endorsing the Fanta Passion Fruit drink, as it is a touch sickly, which down here is saying a lot!), a bit of work, and a lot of playing on the beach. Whatever real social problems the Carioca faced a few years ago seem to have abated in the face of the government's drive to promote peace and harmony before the World Cup and Olympics (by way of lots of police with big guns). It remains to be seen whether there is any sort of lasting legacy to this; as we know in Northern Ireland, people become accustomed to the quiet life awfully quickly, and there seems to be little reason for an upsurge in social unrest after all is said and done.
Having said that, there is still a lot to do here if Brazil wants to establish an equal footing with the West. Brazilians are intensely paranoid about hyper-inflation, and taxes at all levels are high, whether inter-state or nationally. Germans we have met are stunned at the prices here and refuse to buy anything, whereas we have felt that whilst many products equate to Belfast prices, many services are substantially cheaper. Tourist attractions remain artificially high to meet our budgets though, and I am sure that applies everywhere. I doubt many Carioca take the cable car up Pao de Acucar, given that there is a path up it for free instead of the R$53 for the direct route.
...
Our time in Rio de Janeiro has passed. We scrounged together an extra two days, but our sketchy itinerary doesn't allow too much romantic waylaying. We need to be at Foz Do Iguacu by the 20th December, to spend Christmas in a much less expensive Paraguay, and with journey times by bus stretching to an easy 7 hours, you don't get much opportunity to get a proper look at anywhere. Yet with a little planning we have thrown a few towns in which appear to be worth the jaunt. More on that later.
Day 4 in Rio - discovering that, even when there appear to be a lot of buses, there are also a lot of places for them to go to, and your bus may take its time turning up. A trip to Botafogo district yields a cable car journey up to Sugarload Mountain, for our first dose of spectacular air sights of Rio. Once you get up there the city makes a whole lot more sense.
We spent Thursday afternoon lying on Copacabana beach of the first time, pondering on the viability of living in this colossus, which reminds me of Howl's Moving Castle, a marvel, beautiful and enchanting, yet somehow held together by magic, string, and sheer force of will. Everyone is more than happy to tell us how corrupt the country is, but there doesn't appear to be much impetus to sort it, possibly because the country is just too big, or more likely that the Brazilians are all so used to the system right now and know how to work it, and its merely ex-pats who are thoroughly exasperated by the whole situation.
The way of life is Rio seems to be a simple combination of beverages (coffee, mate, limonada, beer, acai berry sorbets, and a wonderful Tip-Top type drink called Guaravita. I shall refrain from endorsing the Fanta Passion Fruit drink, as it is a touch sickly, which down here is saying a lot!), a bit of work, and a lot of playing on the beach. Whatever real social problems the Carioca faced a few years ago seem to have abated in the face of the government's drive to promote peace and harmony before the World Cup and Olympics (by way of lots of police with big guns). It remains to be seen whether there is any sort of lasting legacy to this; as we know in Northern Ireland, people become accustomed to the quiet life awfully quickly, and there seems to be little reason for an upsurge in social unrest after all is said and done.
Having said that, there is still a lot to do here if Brazil wants to establish an equal footing with the West. Brazilians are intensely paranoid about hyper-inflation, and taxes at all levels are high, whether inter-state or nationally. Germans we have met are stunned at the prices here and refuse to buy anything, whereas we have felt that whilst many products equate to Belfast prices, many services are substantially cheaper. Tourist attractions remain artificially high to meet our budgets though, and I am sure that applies everywhere. I doubt many Carioca take the cable car up Pao de Acucar, given that there is a path up it for free instead of the R$53 for the direct route.
...
Our time in Rio de Janeiro has passed. We scrounged together an extra two days, but our sketchy itinerary doesn't allow too much romantic waylaying. We need to be at Foz Do Iguacu by the 20th December, to spend Christmas in a much less expensive Paraguay, and with journey times by bus stretching to an easy 7 hours, you don't get much opportunity to get a proper look at anywhere. Yet with a little planning we have thrown a few towns in which appear to be worth the jaunt. More on that later.
Day 4 in Rio - discovering that, even when there appear to be a lot of buses, there are also a lot of places for them to go to, and your bus may take its time turning up. A trip to Botafogo district yields a cable car journey up to Sugarload Mountain, for our first dose of spectacular air sights of Rio. Once you get up there the city makes a whole lot more sense.
Sarah's face at this point is an absolutely picture.
This is Botafogo beach and cove, Flamengo to the right.
The first cable car takes you to the smaller Morro da Urca, 220 meters high. The second car ascends to Pão de Açúcar, seen here in the centre. The cable cars run at about 35km/hr, which seems pretty quick when they pass each other!
This is a view of Copacabana beach on the left.
The problem with both Sugarloaf and Corcovado (where the Christo Redentor statue is) is that you are relying on a clear day to be able to see anything. They actually close the hills when its cloudy, because its so pointless to ascend. Later in the evening we watched as the clouds rolled in over the top of Sugarloaf, and surely no amount of willpower could have penetrated them.
We stopped briefly for lunch, assisted in our Portuguese by Fernando the Carioca (people who are born and raised in Rio) and had our first Brasilian steak, which was as good as it sounds. We are becoming very accustomed to putting tabasco sauce on everything, even chips, because there is no vinegar in Brazil!
Timing be damned, we head up to Corcovado ('hunchback') Mountain, because the sky is clear and we need to fit in as many sights as possible in our short time here. Eventually catch a bus, which runs up Rua Da Larangerais, which resembles the Lisburn Road in Belfast for some reason. A van snatches us from the bus stop and whistles up the side of the mountain, streets of a steepness we will see time and time again in Rio. Last night I asked a girl from Sao Paulo why Brazilians love building houses on the side of hills. There was much hearty laughter.
You can take a rail car to the top of the mountain, not sure how much, but our van was R$20 to the gates to the Christo Redentor area, which was about a 2 hour walk, and from there you pay R$32 to get into the park, and another van runs you to the steps at the base of the statue. Suffice to say, the views are even better from here, and the statue is as impressive as anything I have seen in my life.
Finding escalators up to the statue...
A view southeast from the statue. In the top left you can see Sugarloaf Mountain, top right is Copacabana, on the left is Botafogo.
Clouds enveloping Sugarloaf around 6.30pm.
The mountain closed at 7pm and threw us all out, which was when we took a bus back to our hostel via the all the places in Rio we hadn't been to yet. We slept well that night.
No comments:
Post a Comment