Samba on the Streets

Rio
December 16, 2011

My original plan was to go to Florianopolis in Brazil before continuing on to Rio. However, rain was predicted the whole time I would be there, and I decided that 26 hours was a long time to spend on a bus to spend a couple rainy days in a beach town, especially when it would take another 16 hours to drive to Rio. In the end, I decided to fly from Buenos Aires straight to Rio. I guess I’ll just have to come back to Florianopolis another time.

I flew from Buenos Aires to Montevideo on Puna, a Uruguayan airline. The man sitting next to me said the 29 minute flight was probably the second shortest international flight in the world. (The first is escaping me.) The flight was fine, but the connection was delayed a couple hours which meant I arrived in Rio around 2:00 AM. Now, I’ve been pretty down on my Spanish, but being in a country where I don’t speak the language at all (or even know how to phonetically pronounce words!) made me appreciate just how far I could get on the little Spanish I know.

I had a little scare in the airport after arrival when I couldn’t get any money out of the ATMs and didn’t have enough cash to get a taxi to my hostel, but fortunately, after four machines and even more attempts, I was able to get out some Brazilian Reales—just not very many. Enough to get to the hostel, at least. I arrived around 3:00. The hostel was fine—I made my bed in the room of eight and went to sleep.

Morning came early, though, as I was awakened by screaming kids. Lots of them. Like Kindergarten Cop out of control screaming kids in a classroom. It turns out the hostel was next to some sort of preschool. (No wonder it was so cheap!) But being awake, I decided to get up. I perused some options for tours (I like starting a city stay with a tour—you get to see what’s out there and meet some new people.) while eating breakfast. I decided to do the city tour which covers the main must see sites of Rio. In my head, I was thinking it was a good day to site see because the cloudy sky wasn’t good for the beach. I like to think had I had more sleep, I would have realized that a cloudy day might not have been the best day to go to vista points, like Christ Redeemer and Sugarloaf, but really, who knows? I’d signed up for it.

The tour was nice, though not as full of information about Rio as I would have liked and not the views I would have gotten had I held out for a couple days. (Oh well--guess I’ll have to go back.) I also had a hard time staying awake during some of the drive. I’ll let the pictures speak for the sightseeing:

Christ the Redeemer

The view 

What I was supposed to see.

Cathedral

Lapa Steps

More step views. The steps are continually
 being changed--new tiles traded for old.

Lapa steps

Ahhh... San Francisco

Artist Selaron and me.
Don't know how the hand and tongue thing
started with him, but I figured I'd join him.

If you pass through the middle of this tree,
you'll get married soon.
The men all hugged the fence to pass.

Sugar Loaf

Views from Sugar Loaf

 That night I had dinner with one of the guys from the tour who was staying in the hostel. There was a little local party going on at a bar near the hostel on our walk back and we watched the dancing for a little. I think Brazilians are just born knowing how to move.  Other than that it was a quiet night for me. (I may have gotten lucky though. Two poor girls in my room (one of whom was the first speed skater from Australia to compete in the sport in the Olympics) who ate the same thing at the same restaurant—they had actually recommended the meal to us—were up all night sick from what they thought was food poisoning from the meal.)

The next morning was Saturday, which meant no preschool which meant I could sleep in a little, which I did. It was another cloudy day and I spent it walking around Copacabana. My friend Caroline was right—when you’re there, you find yourself humming Barry Manelow as you’re walking along the streets. That night a few girls from the hostel and I went to Lapa—an area of town known for its nightlife. It really was pretty crazy. There were people everywhere along the street for a couple blocks. Really, people everywhere. It was fun people watching, and we wandered around a bit, but we were pretty tired and ended up having a nice sampling of street food before heading back to the hostel.

After surviving the bus ride home (I think the bus drivers don’t quite know what to do when there’s no traffic—ours was swerving in and out of lanes, taking turns fast, and slamming on the brakes a little too quickly), I was ready to get in bed and have a nice sleep in the following morning. It was still the weekend, after all. What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was the preschool building serving as a church on Sundays. And those congregants do love to sing. As my mom would say (and I’m pretty sure the expression comes from scripture), they made a “joyful noise unto the Lord.” Wow.

I moved hostels Sunday afternoon. (The move had been planned in BA, and was I grateful!) The first hostel was in Leme, next to Copacabana. The second, The Lighthouse (which I highly recommend to anyone going to Rio), was in Ipanema. The staff was fantastic, and I got a great overview of Rio when I arrived—places to go, things to see, food to try. I went to the beach with Louka, a non-English speaking Italian guy from the hostel, and we met some of his friends there. (As he didn’t speak English, our conversation was in Spanish. So it was quite limited. But I will say it’s a lot easier to understand a non-native speaker of Spanish than it is to understand a native.) The afternoon was spent listening to live bossa nova on the boardwalk—between the music, the sand, and the waves, it was one of those I-can’t-believe-I’m-living-this-life moments.

Paradise

Is this really my life?

We went to Bib Bip that evening. It’s a little bar—big enough for two long tables and standing room against the wall (I never made it inside). There were a couple fridges behind a counter at the back of the place and the front was open with people standing outside. There were about 12-15 men sitting round the table playing samba. They would rotate in and out of the different instruments and take turns starting off the songs. It was like I was witnessing a private jam session. At a smaller table also outside was an old mustached man with a giant book in which he wrote down the names of people in attendance and kept track of the number of beers they drank. He took his job and the music very seriously, occasionally stopping the musicians to shush the people talking in the audience. There were all sorts of people in attendance including a man who had had a bit too much to drink and whose mental facilities might be in question even when sober. He was trying to get me to dance “pow-pow-pow” as he moved his pointed fingers in front of him to the music. He also tried rotating in to the musicians table. A couple of the musicians found him amusing, but the mustached record keeper did not, and he had a few words with him.

Tuesday morning I made it out early enough to lay out at the beach. It was gorgeous. The water was a cool, but tolerable, and the weather was sunny but not so hot to be uncomfortable. The only problem, which I didn’t discover until later, was that I did not do a very good job applying my spray-on sunscreen, and I ended up with some pink patches later that evening.

After a morning at the beach I went on a favela tour. It definitely was a sharp contrast to the life in Ipanema. The favelas are built on hills, and we started with a motorcycle ride to the top. The hills are steep and long, and moto-taxis are a very common service around the favelas. I didn’t realize a motorcycle could squeeze between some of the cars we passed or take the corners the way we did, but I’m alive and uninjured, so I guess the driver knew what he was doing. The tour was interesting, and I felt like I learned a lot more about life there than I had on the city tour. They all used to be quite dangerous, and many of them still are. 

Up to the favela. Ladies were told to
hold onto their drivers.
Men had to use the small handles in back.

However, awhile back the government started pacifying the different favelas and weeding out the drug lords and militia that ruled them. And it sounds like they’ve made a lot of progress. There’s a big police force present around the communities now, and they are trying to better living conditions for the people there. The one we visited was next to a fantastic sports complex that the kids can use for free if they go to school. They have a long way to go, but you could see progress on the tour. 

Power sharing.

View from the favela.

Supporting the entrepreneurship in the favela

A better garbage collecting
system is still needed.

That night was samba in the streets. Literally, there were people playing samba in some random street and people all around dancing and listening. While there were a lot of tourists there, one lady from Rio said that it was a really authentically Brazilian thing to do—gather around music and enjoy each other. What a life!

Tuesday was another day of planning for me, but I did make it to a traditional Brazilian place for dinner. Restaurants that are either all you can eat or pay by the kilo are quite popular, and quite tasty.

After running errands on Wednesday, I began my travels to Nairobi. I was supposed to catch a bus from the bus terminal at 5:30 for a six hour ride to Sao Paolo. The hostel suggested catching a local bus to the terminal around 3:45 because traffic could make the journey up to an hour and you never really know when the local busses will show up. I was outside at 4:00. And I arrived at the bus terminal at 5:40. Fortunately, there was another bus leaving at 7:30 that would get me to Sao Paolo by 2:00, which still felt like plenty of time to catch my 4:20 flight, even with the hour shuttle ride to the airport. And, the bus company was great about switching my ticket.

 As I had time to kill, I wandered around the terminal a bit, read some, and then decided that I should grab some dinner. It was about 7:15 when I got my food, and as I was eating I kept looking at my watch thinking I didn’t have much time and wondering why I didn’t start earlier. At 7:23 I decided I better get my food to go. So, I asked for a to-go container. The guy was really helpful, but a little too thorough for my time constraints. He finally handed me the bag with my salad. I took it and hustled down to the bus (only making one wrong turn). As I got there, a bus was pulling away. I literally started running after it, shouting, astonished by my ability to miss two busses in the same day. I was able to catch the driver’s attention, but he motioned for me to go to the next bus. Fortunately, it was a false alarm, and the bus I needed was still boarding passengers. I got on and took a deep breath.

I made friends with some German men who were on the bus and when we were talking I learned that the shuttle I was planning to take to the airport didn’t run from 2:00-4:00am. Oops. Fortunately, however, there was a guy in front of us overheard our conversation who said he’s split a taxi with me.

When we arrived in Sao Paolo I ran off the bus to get the taxi. The driver was nice enough, but a bit old, and perhaps should not have been driving at night. My cab buddy and I were already thinking this when it started to pour. The skies opened up and let out a deluge. Streets started flooding, you couldn’t see ahead of you, and our driver slowed to a crawl. While this was probably a safe thing to do, it didn’t feel like such a great move when I was trying to catch a flight and I was wondering why we couldn’t have found one of the cab drivers that were passing us on either side to take us to the airport.

After an eternity, we arrived. It was 3:55. I still had an hour and twenty five minutes before my flight, so I was feeling okay, but I didn’t have a big cushion. I also didn’t know that the check-in for Qatar airlines was a good half mile from where I was. While I didn’t pull out the full sprint, I did walk at a pretty fast clip to get to check-in area 3, and in the end I left the counter 7 minutes before it closed. 

Have I mentioned that tours are a good way for me to travel?