Experiencing Brazil

On Sunday we explored Rio in more detail: we visited one of the favelas, the Christ statue and a samba school 🙂

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The other side of Rio: the favelas..

The basic safety rule in Rio is “don’t go up any hill!” Everywhere else the rich build their mansions on the hillside with the most beautiful views. Not here in Rio. You can see the chaotic and mostly illegal sprawling favelas everywhere.

Unfortunately, I didn’t bring my camera along. So I post one of the million online pictures here.. It’s actually a really nice location! In the middle of the city with great views to the Christ statue 🙂 This property could be worth millions if it were not a favela!!

For more impressions check out those two videos (thanks to Fernando):

Most of the music video is shot somewhere in the north of Brazil. But the favela scenes are from the one we visited 🙂 They even built a statue of him at the exact place where he did the video.. although it’s a really funny looking statue 😉

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Two things really impressed me when we were walking through the favela:

• Architecture: When I was travelling in Africa and Asia a lot of the shacks were made out of wood, waste or other crazy materials. Here, all the houses were actually made out of bricks. Maybe that was because this is one of the “nicer” favelas. But I was really impressed with the architecture quality of the houses! Although I have to confess that there is absolutely no order or logical structure 😉

• Modern dreams: At one point we passed a house with an open door. So we took a short, secret glimps of the interior. And what did we see: a huge flat screen TV 😉 In the middle of one of the poorest areas of Rio.. But I have to admit that I saw similar things in Africa and Asia as well.. As soon as people have a little bit of spare money, they usually want to buy “luxury” things such as mobile phones and TV’s.. Although it might seem crazy to us, but for them they are really desirable, because they symbolize the difference between the poor and the others.

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For lunch we went to an “all you can eat” restaurant with meat as specialty 😉 The waiters basically walk around with huge spits full of meat.. Exactly my taste 😉 Although I have to admit that I completely fell asleep after this incredible lunch.. 😀

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View from the top

In the afternoon, we went to see one of the highlights of Rio: the Christ statue!

And I have to say that the view is really breathtaking!!!

Unfortunately, it got really foggy after a couple of minutes at the top. So I post an official picture here instead..

Rio has a very interesting landscape of hills and beaches. It’s really difficult to understand the structure of the city. On the other hand, this supported the development of very distinct neighborhoods, such as Copacabana, Ipanema or Botafogo. Sao Paolo, in contrast, looks more like a huge carpet of houses..

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Let’s dance!

And finally, we visited one of the famous samba schools in Rio 🙂 It was really cool watching all the girls dancing! And the music is just amazing!!! I LOVE the drums!! It immediately get you moving 😉

(property of the picture owned to A.Y.)
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Although I have to say that I was a bit shocked by the outfits of those ladies.. I mean they all looked sexy and wow, they can really dance!! However, in our country only females in the horizontal industry would wear costumes like that.. But I guess different countries are different..

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Tomorrow we have our next meetings in Rio. Looking forward to learn more about this exciting country :)!!

Tags: Rio

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2012 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Rio. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.