Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Saturday, March 19, 2005:

How to describe my time in Rio de Janeiro, the South American city that is probably most familiar to and most visited by Americans? It is a city of beautiful beaches and beautiful people. It is also a densely-packed city of impoverished favela shanty-towns and desperately poor people who mingle with and beg in vain from the rich upon the heavily-touristed streets of Ipanema and Copacabana. I loved the place and I hated the place, though I do not think Rio itself can be credited or blamed for being what it is (because, to be even more pedantic, it simply is what it is). While Rio is world famous and constantly inundated with wealthy international travelers, I found it one of the most baffling, mysterious and impenetrable cities I have visited thus far. I do not say this only because I could not understand much of the strangely beautiful Portugese which they speak. Rather, the contrasts, juxtapositions and bleeding together of races and cultures lend the city a dizzyingly eclectic atmosphere I could not begin to sort out during my time there. I am not sure whether I would want to return to continue the challenge of trying to sort some more. That said, I would return to Brazil without question.

My first day in the city passed quickly in a blur of exhuastion and culture shock. Nevertheless, I am writing to record some of the details of my initial (though pretty uneventful) glimpses of the city. I took a $20 taxi from the airport to a hotel in Ipanema which I had researched only the night before. It was hard to locate cheap places in Ipanema and Copacabana and I did not feel comfortable staying anywhere else. Thus, I was looking at about $50 or so for a single room, give or take. I had already planned on this before the trip, figuring my time in Rio would serve as a brief splurge of a treat between my time in Spanish-speaking South America and Africa (and some useless knowledge for those who do not know is that Brazil, as the fourth most populous country on the planet with some 180 million people, has more people in it than in all the other South American countries combined, making Portugese and not Spanish the most widely-spoken language on the continent).

The 20 minute ride with a driver I could barely communicate with began with a bleak view of tiny delapidated favela shacks crushed together on top of one another along the sides of the highway. Factories billowed smoke into a hazy, cloudy sky. Otherwise, the roads and the views therefrom resembled those near Trenton, New Jersey: Not inspiring. Things changed quickly, however, when we passed through a tunnel under one of the hills toward the coast and exited alongside Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, a picturesque circular lake on the edge of Ipanema and Copacabana surrounded by luxury hotels, shops and modern higher-end apartment buildings. Joggers ran laps and people walked dogs around it. The sun was shinining. It looked like the Rio I had seen in pictures and on television. Corcovada rose up behind us and other hills towered above. There was a commercial feel to the neighborhood but the backdrop was stunning, with lush green trees, blue water and sun all around.

My first choice hotel, just a block north of Ipanema Beach, quoted me a rate of nearly $90 per night, far higher than the $50 I had read about online. Apparently, they charge this on weekends because there is some sort of art fair on the streets nearby. I had no interest in this whatsoever and walked out and down the road, without a map or any real sense of where to look next. The next hotel down the street charged $200 per night and didn't even look all that nice. Perhaps Ipanema was just out of my league. However, the next hotel I checked, the San Marco, charged about $40 for a single with television and air-conditioning. The room wasn't stunning but the staff spoke a little bit of English and the location was still just three blocks from the beach. I checked in. I then tried to take a one-hour power-nap but wound up sleeping for three hours and waking up at 3:45. So at 4 PM I finally stepped out to do the usual wandering around by foot that I try to do as soon as I get to a new city. I made my way towards the beach.

Crossing a busy four-lane road divided by an island lined with palm trees, I reached a sidewalk overlooking a broad tan beach teeming with activity. In the foreground just off the pavement were street kiosks surrounded by customers in bathing suits sipping beer, caiprinhas and green coconuts that had been cut open at the top to allow the insertion of a straw. They sat on plastic chairs on small tables covered by sun umbrellas and gazed out at the sand and water where several volley-ball matches were taking place, all of them energetically played by players who seemed very skilled and experienced. At one net, players executed complicated passes and volleys with only their heads and feet, nothing more. Back past the games were numerous sun-bathers and a few kids hitting a rubber ball back and forth at one another with paddles, rapidly and also with great skill. Glancing further out at the water were numerous swimmers and even a few surfers riding the not insignificant waves. Out further still were various green-hilled islands perhaps a mile off the coast, and a few freighters and barges lying strewn on the navy blue ocean.

I turned left and made my way along the beach toward a distant rock promontory jutting out from the end of Ipanema. A turn to the left from there (so said a cheap free map I had picked up in my hotel) would take me to Copacabana beach. I wasn't in any hurry, but thought that if I could make it there, it wouldn't hurt to see if maybe Copacabana would be a better place to move to for part of my time in Rio. As I walked, I passed more volleyball players, rollerbladers, swimmers, sunbathers, dog-walkers and, in general, more tanned athletic people than I had seen together in one place in my life. Convertibles and Mercedes Benzes drove by, along with a Ferrari driven by a middle-aged man with white slicked-back hair in a tan linen suit --- had he worn white, he could nearly have passed for Don Johnson. And had I seen any pink flamingos sticking up out of the sand, I might have thought I was in some Portugese-speaking, bizzaro-world version of Miami.

I stopped at a kiosk and ordered a coconut, which was a cold, sweet and simple luxury at about 70 cents. Already the city seemed to me to be a place offering all manner of things ranging from the expensively tacky to the affordably tasteful and vice-versa. As I sat in my white plastic chair and watched a foot volleyball game on the beach, I overheard chatter from both Brazilians and tourists in Portugese, English, German, French and Japanese. A smiling black man in Jamaica shorts and sandals moved from table to table with a platter of grilled shrimp kebobs and wedges of lime he was selling. From other kiosks and stands came the scents of different grilled, spiced meats.

After a while, I moved on. The sun was still bright out so, at one of the many beach-front stands selling beads, jewelry and other knick-knacks, I tried on some sun-glasses. The man there spoke at me very rapidly in Portugese and I was able to understand some of it, but only some of it, just as he could understand some but only some of my Spanish. "Are you from Argentina?" he asked me. I can't say I didn't smile and take it as a compliment under the circumstances. I left a few minutes later, assured that he had given me a "special" deal on the pair of rip-off Nike shades I had bought for about $5.

Further down the beach, a man stood by a series of two-foot high head-and-chest/bust depictions of Jesus, surrounded by the apostles, which had been meticulously crafted in great detail out of sand. Passers-by put their donations into a jar. Several feet away from the figures, lying in the sand and covered in sand, were two boys, about 10 years old, wearing rags. They lay motionless in the heat (and nobody seemed to be giving them anything). Further down the beach I saw a number of other clearly homeless people collapsed in the sand, a few with their hands outstretched toward the sidewalk but most apparently unconscious under their makeshift shade of sand and/or newspapers.

I reached Arpoador, at the end of the beach where the rocks were, and stopped at a kiosk to buy a grilled sausage on a stick, coated in powdered cheese. As I turned around, I realized that I had never once paused on my walk in order to look back behind me. Now I had a full view of all of Ipanema stretching away from me in a sweeping curve, including the more distant Leblon suburb and, at the end of the beach at least a mile or two away, a series of vibrant green mountains jutting up from the sand and covered in houses, with several high-rise hotel complexes at their foot. The sun was beginning to set and the sky over the ocean was salmon and violet. I sat down on a bench to watch. Next to me was a very old woman in a wheel chair, her breathing assisted by a mask attached to a fairly scary looking device strapped to the frame. Her son or grandson or caretaker sat next to her and they both silently looked on with me. A small stray golden retriever came up to me and I gave it the last of my sausage.

I walked down a busy commercial street past shops and a number of glitzy but also pathetic-looking casinos and came out onto a whole new sweeping beach ---that of Copacabana. In the far distance, past the sand and surf and towering modern hotels, stood the looming Pao* d'Azucar, the mountain "Sugar Loaf." I walked for a while, passing a number of restaurants with outdoor seating that were across the street from the beach, across the highway. As darkness began to fall, crowds of people began leaving the beach and others started piling into the more expensive tourist eateries, some of which looked like they belong in a Las Vegas theme park.

At this point, I began to slowly retrace my steps, finally returning to the street where my hotel was about an hour later. I then went to a nearby restaurant where I had an appetizer of fried yucca balls containing a shrimp and cheese mixture and an entree of salmon in lemon-sauce with grilled vegetables. It wasn't cheap, particularly in comparison with Buenos Aires (it cost about $15 with a beer, water and tip), but it was decent.

Back in the hotel, I began to eye my map and a small tourist guide I had also managed to find for free. I was looking for bars and backpacker places. However, I never found any as I never even managed to get out of the room ---I fell asleep early at 10.

(* Pronounced "pOWWng": There are a number of similarities between Portugese and Spanish but don't expect that Spanish will get you by very well as you will meet more Brazilians in the hotel and restaurant trade who speak English than they do Spanish. While a wide range of Spanish and Portugese words are nearly identical, the Portugese pronunciation differs dramatically and can (at least in my experience) be very confusing. To my ear, the language sounds almost as though somebody crossed Spanish with Russian or another Slavic language. In written form, it seems like a cross between Spanish and French. Whatever the case, its a romance language all on its own and an interesting one. It took me quite some time to get used to the "ao" pronunciation --- a sharp and nasal OWWWWng sound that is about as common as the "shun" sound in English words such as "pronunciation.")