Raining in Rio

Rio is one of those places where most of what you want to do is outside.  Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf Mountain, Copacabana, Ipanema, the Escadaria Selaron steps, and general sightseeing in areas like Lapa and Santa Teresa, are all things best done in the sunshine.

So we weren't feeling overly enthusiastic about Rio in the rain.  Especially as the rain wasn't just normal rain, but torrential downpours that lasted most of the day.

Now I know that there are things that we could have done to amuse ourselves.  We could have gone for salsa lessons, or taken a cooking class, or even done a crash course in Portuguese, but I think we had reached the point where we were winding down to the end of our first year away, and didn't really feel like making that much of an effort.

We knew that we had plenty of things to do when we got back to the UK, and that we could cadge a free bed from family as opposed to spending a fair amount on Brazilian accommodation prices, so we decided to look into bringing our flights forward.  When we found that we could, we did.

And then we figured that, rather than telling my parents that the lift they had offered us from the airport was now needed a week earlier than expected, it would be much more fun to make our own way there and surprise them on the doorstep.

So we had one last day in the rain in Rio, during which we took a trip to the bus station to get our previously bought tickets refunded, and then took our overnight flight back to Heathrow.  We hadn`t seen as much of Rio as we`d expected, but we had at least made it up Corcovado and had a good view of the city and Sugarloaf Mountain.  We had also had a quick glimpse of the Sambadrome and the Maracana stadium as we passed them on a bus.

The flight was relatively good, although there was a mini drama about an hour in when a fellow passenger was taken ill and they had to find a doctor on board.  Thankfully it obviously wasn't too serious, so we didn't have to make an unscheduled landing, and when we got to London he did manage to walk off the plane under his own steam.

We had a good rest of journey back to Kent, and arrived at my parents house roughly twenty four hours after we left the hostel.  My mum's response, "what are you doing here?"  She did at least say afterwards that she was pleased to see us though.

Favela tours - yes or no?

the favela sits on the hill to the left

Alongside the beaches and the hills, one of the things that Rio is best known for is its favelas.  They are home to the poor of the city, and account for some twenty percent of the population of Rio; the largest, Rocinha, had an official count of 69,300 at the 2010 census, although the actual population is estimated at around 150,000.  The numbers are so large because they were swelled by an influx of people from the poor parts of Brazil in the 1920-50s, when Rio was enjoying its wealthy heyday.

The favelas have a notorious reputation for being dangerous and crime ridden.  They are little - or not so little - towns within the city, with the larger ones having their own schools, church and other amenities.  Many have for years been regarded as no-go areas for all including the police, controlled instead by the machine gun toting drug gangs.

Over the last year or so, with the hosting of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics in mind, the police and military have been raiding the favelas and ousting the drug gangs, to try to push crime away from the city and improve the face of Rio.  The local reaction to this is mixed, and of course while they have arrested some of the drugs gangs, many are just pushed elsewhere rather than actually being stopped.

a closer look at the favela

Much like the townships of South Africa, the favelas have become an integral and infamous part of Rio, and given the dangers of going into them alone, they offer tours of them for tourists.  So the question for us was, should we take a tour?

The obvious answer is yes; they are a major part of Rio and they show you a different side to the city.  As we saw in Bolivia, it can be a humbling and very worthwhile experience to see how little some people have and how lucky we are, and that would certainly be something that we would see in the favelas.

But I am quite uncomfortable at the idea of gawping at someone's home and life.  I would hate it if someone was treating my home and lifestyle as a tourist attraction, so why should I feel I can do that to others just because they are 'different' and poor.  Personally, it seems to me to be rather a rude thing to do.

And the same applies to taking photos there.  The ramshackle nature of the favelas, the way they cling to the hillsides, and the graffiti on some of them make for some good photos, as do some of the criminals with their guns, but I would feel most uncomfortable encroaching on people`s lives by actually taking any of those photos, even if everyone else was.

In any case, what are you really seeing anyway?  These tours do the same thing every time, so what you see becomes almost a performance.  If you're going to a favela then you will probably want to go to one of the more notorious ones, which means the tour probably has to be 'authorised' by the gangs that control it anyway.  They know when the tourists will be there and can ensure that we see what they want us to see - and only that.

Any if I wouldn't choose to tour a poor council estate in the UK, why would I want to do effectively the same thing here? So our view was no, the favela tour was not for us.  I am sure that many of you reading this will think we are wrong to decide that, and that is fair enough.   I think everyone has to decide for themselves where their tourism threshold lies and what they are comfortable with before they feel like their presence is an intrusion.

I expect that my low threshold comes from the fact that I value my own privacy, so it feels wrong to me not to give others the same respect that I expect.  I know that sometimes I will miss seeing something amazing, in the same way that I will miss out on some potentially great photos, but at least I won't feel that I am being hypocritical.

Another big Jesus

Stairway to heaven

After our interesting experience with a large Jesus Christ at Tierra Santa in Buenos Aires, we had to go and see the even bigger, and rather more famous,  Cristo Redentor, or Christ the Redeemer Statue in Rio.

At around 38 metres high, and 28 metres across the outstretched arms, it is a huge statue that towers above the city from its perch on Corcovado mountain.  Clouds permitting, you can see the Christ from all around, looking down on you and supposedly protecting the cariocas (people from Rio).

Having seen that the forecast was for rain throughout our time here, we decided to visit the Christ statue on our first full day, when the rain was supposed to stop for a while.  After a false start waiting on the wrong street, we hopped on a bus to the little rack railway that takes you up Corcovado to the base of the statue.

The train up Corcovado was engineered by Francisco Pereira Passos and Joao Texeira Soares as a result of the enthusiasm of father and son emporers Pedro I and Pedro II, for the view from the top. The first section was completed in 1884. It now covers the full 3824 metres and takes twenty minutes at a speed of around fifteen kilometers per hour.


The Christ statue came along some time later, being inaugurated on 12 October 1931, having taken ten years to complete and been paid for by donations from parishioners. Hector da Silva oversaw the construction of the Carlos Oswald design.

The statue is made from reinforced concrete, but is entirely covered in small triangular pieces of soapstone, giving it a softer and slightly reflective effect. The head was the work of Paul Landowski, and sculptor Margarida Lopes modelled the hands on her own.

Sugarloaf Mountain

The statue has had many visitors over the years since then, but I guess the most fitting was probably Pope John Paul II in 1980, when he blessed the city of Rio from up here.

The statue does look impressive. And I was pleasantly surprised at the relatively small amount of stuff for sale there. There was some of course, as well as the official photographers - we discovered why they were there later - but generally it was fairly unspoiled by the usual hoards of souvenir sellers.


Copacabana beach

We spent a while admiring the views. The weather wasn't great, and made for a slightly misty effect, but the clouds stayed high enough that we could at least see the famous Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, Sugarloaf Mountain and the Maracana Stadium, as well as the hills and favelas that make Rio what it is.

We took some photos, including a few of each other, and were about to leave when we decided that we really should get a photo of the two of us with the statue. So we asked a guy to take one, which he did, but he cut off Jesus' head. Undeterred, we asked a woman, who carefully angled herself to take two pictures - and cut off one of Jesus' hands in both of them.

Despairing slightly now, I found a guy from the USA, figuring that if I could speak to him in English, then I could explain that I wanted the whole of Christ in the photo. He obligingly took a couple and he did get the whole of the Christ in both - but there was a drop of rain on the lens and it obliterated my face entirely.

Us at the statue - or not!

Almost at the stage of giving in, we decided to have one more go, and asked an older guy who had seemed to be taking a lot of care over his own photos. He agreed, and spent a while moving around to get the right position for the photo. And he did indeed get in the whole of Jesus Christ. But....we aren't in the picture at all! Not even the tops of our heads. Now why on earth would we ask someone else to take a photo of the statue without us in it when we can quite easily do that for ourselves?

At that stage we decided that it wasn't meant to be, and it would almost be a shame to actually get a proper complete photo of the three of us, so we gave up. But now we could see why they had official photographers.

On the way back down on the train, we were treated to some extra entertainment as a band got on and performed.  This seems to be a regular occurrence, so perhaps they think people will be bored on the way down otherwise.

Rio

From Paraty we set off for Rio de Janeiro on a five hour bus journey.  This was OK except for the fact that we were at the back near to the toilet.  Half way through the trip, we noticed a bad smell.  A very bad smell.  Some time later, we heard repeated flushing of the toilet.  Some time after that some guy emerged, avoiding an eye contact.  I don't know what he'd eaten, but clearly he shouldn't have.  The smell took a long time to go away and was only partly masked by the eating of mints.

We got to Rio, with our noses just about surviving, and the sun was shining brightly as you would expect it to be.  Little did we know then that this was the only real sun we could expect during our six days here.

Our hostel was nice, although I think calling the room a deluxe double would be considered a breach of the trades descriptions act.  The first room we were offered was a good size, but had no windows and had three sets of bunk beds in it.  We changed it for a room that had a window and a double bed, but was so small that you couldn't open the door fully as the bed was in the way.  The communal areas were decent though, which is just as well as we ended up spending rather more time there than we had anticipated.

As well as the normal hostel facilities, there was the added bonus of a dog to help keep us amused.  Charlie, the very large two year old golden retriever, was friendly but could be a little overpowering.  Nic was held captive by him for a while when Charlie got hold of his arm or his trouser leg and wouldn't let him go.

A couple of days into our stay, the owners brought along a friend for Charlie, a two month old golden retriever puppy called Chanel, which made for some amusing interaction between the two of them as well as some very cute mishaps by her.

We went out the first evening, looking for somewhere to eat.  With the reputation that Rio has, I was a bit dubious about wandering around at night until we had got a better feel for the area we were in, but in fact it seems the area directly around us in Botafogo was reasonably OK.  We didn't find anywhere very exciting though, so after a quick bite we went back to the hostel.