Boston to Rio de Janeiro had taken over 20 hours, including a stressfully short transfer window in Sao Paulo. I had already needed to use my meager Portuguese to navigate the surprise of exiting Santos Dumont airport directly into a mall populated by non-travelers. I hugged my luggage through the subway until emerging at Nossa Senhora da Paz in Ipanema. My hotel was located just two blocks from that beach made famous worldwide by a 1960s Bossa Nova song. I barely unpacked and reclined before forcing myself to the beach, which instantly melted away my travel anxiety. The urban blocks opened up into limitless sand impossibly fast, and a caipirinha stand immediately invited me. "Uma caipirinha por favor" came out of my lips before I could stop myself. "Onde vocestasentado?" I stared stupidly, and was about to admit I didn't speak Portuguese, when I made contextual sense of the word onde (where) and randomly pointed to a spot. The bartender, if this makeshift stand that was essentially a refrigerator on wheels could have a bartender, nodded, and I went and laid down on that spot. Minutes later, a pretty woman came over with a caipirinha. As I sipped the sugary rum, marveling at the beautiful mountains on my right, the tall buildings off on my left and the expansive beach everywhere else, I wondered why everyone didn't live here.
Antonio and I had been paired together on the Corporate Audit Staff at GE. We had only spent all of 3 weeks in physical proximity, in Cincinnati, but they were an intense 3 weeks and we had gotten close. They were cutoff when I was suddenly laid off. I had planned to visit him in Brazil in the intervening period of unemployment, but timing did not work out (I went to Colombia instead). When a wedding invitation came in the mail, it was a no-brainer for me to make the trip.
Ever since I made a point of studying Italian before visiting Italy in 2014, I try to learn languages in advance of trips. For this trip, I was able to put in 2 months of semidecent Duolingo practice before going. Unlike in Colombia, where I drastically improved in Spanish over the course of the trip, here I was never placed in do-or-die Portuguese situation, and my Portuguese improved only marginally. Upon landing I was able to ask for directions and the price of items, and that was basically the bare minimum to get by.
In Rio, I couldn't help but be reminded of Hong Kong. It's geologically remarkable for land to rise from the coast to a point high enough yet near enough the city to provide wonderful views. To have both mountains and beaches within subway access - I'm only aware of those two and Cape Town. Furthermore, the two cities are both harbors at 22° latitude, at different hemispheres of course, and as a result have similar climates, with palm trees adorning the major boulevards. Both cities had been extremely important colonial possessions, but had since evolved very distinctive local styles and customs. The open air cosmopolitan bars of Ipanema intermingled with cheap food stalls selling coxinha (dough covered chicken) reminded me of Wan Chai.
While the mountains of Hong Kong are fantastic, the beaches are fairly meh. They aren't all that close to the city and get crowded quickly, with some less than pristine public facilities. But in Rio, Ipanema and Copacabana beach are right there, and they are so wide that they weren't crowded on a hot Sunday summer afternoon. If you wanted to get away from that, there were more options further down the coast. I bought some Havaianas, those famous Brazilian sandals, and dipped my feet into the South Atlantic for the first time in my life. I think it was like the third wave that overwhelmed me and suddenly I only had one Havaiana. I stood firm, knowing that the wave would bring the sandal back. But for ten futile minutes, I futilely scanned my neck of the beach. Walking back to my spot, a young man walked up to me. "Amigo, podevocesascorato?" he said, pointing to somewhere behind him. I stared dumbly, until I saw my sandal at that spot. "Obrigado!! Muito obrigado!!!" I replied, amazed. "De nada."
Of the mountain views in Rio, there are many. I visited three notable ones - Pão de Açucar, Vista Chinesa, and Cristo Redentor. Pão de Açucar, bread of sugar, or Sugarloaf Mountain, is this thumb of a rock that arises suddenly from a peninsula situated between Copacabana beach and the downtown sector. Two systems of cable cars had been built to take tourists from the ground to an intermediate thumb and then the Sugarloaf. My view at sunset was spectacular. It was all there - clouds rolling into the mountains in the distance, lush jungled mountains, wide white beaches on both sides, dozens of marina boats dotting the reflective bay. No wonder that the entire bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The next day I wanted to hike the Vista Chinesa. This dot on Google Maps aroused my curiosity (it means Chinese View), and research told me it was a great view with a pagoda. I had no idea how to hike to it though, and hotel staff warned me that the surrounding area wasn't exactly safe. So I told a taxi driver just to drive to it. It happened that as he approached, there was a road closure and he said this was as far as he could go. I saw a dirt road leading up into the mountains and jumped at the fortune to get to hike it after all.
The hike couldn't have been more than a mile, but it went through real jungle. It had rained a few days before, and parts of the sloping trail were slippery mud, and I nearly didn't make it up. Finally I clawed my way to a paved road, and as I peeped out from the jungle, I saw dozens of faces staring back at me. I awkwardly looked around in confusion, until I heard cheering and then a skateboarder zoom by me. Evidently there was some sort of downhill race going down that road, which was why my taxi couldn't enter. Looking both directions, I crept uphill towards the audience and pagoda, clinging to the side. I reached the pagoda, and stared out at a beautiful view that included both the Cristo and Pão de Açucar, as well as miles of lush jungle. The extent of the jungle within city limits was truly astonishing.
Ever since I made a point of studying Italian before visiting Italy in 2014, I try to learn languages in advance of trips. For this trip, I was able to put in 2 months of semidecent Duolingo practice before going. Unlike in Colombia, where I drastically improved in Spanish over the course of the trip, here I was never placed in do-or-die Portuguese situation, and my Portuguese improved only marginally. Upon landing I was able to ask for directions and the price of items, and that was basically the bare minimum to get by.
In Rio, I couldn't help but be reminded of Hong Kong. It's geologically remarkable for land to rise from the coast to a point high enough yet near enough the city to provide wonderful views. To have both mountains and beaches within subway access - I'm only aware of those two and Cape Town. Furthermore, the two cities are both harbors at 22° latitude, at different hemispheres of course, and as a result have similar climates, with palm trees adorning the major boulevards. Both cities had been extremely important colonial possessions, but had since evolved very distinctive local styles and customs. The open air cosmopolitan bars of Ipanema intermingled with cheap food stalls selling coxinha (dough covered chicken) reminded me of Wan Chai.
While the mountains of Hong Kong are fantastic, the beaches are fairly meh. They aren't all that close to the city and get crowded quickly, with some less than pristine public facilities. But in Rio, Ipanema and Copacabana beach are right there, and they are so wide that they weren't crowded on a hot Sunday summer afternoon. If you wanted to get away from that, there were more options further down the coast. I bought some Havaianas, those famous Brazilian sandals, and dipped my feet into the South Atlantic for the first time in my life. I think it was like the third wave that overwhelmed me and suddenly I only had one Havaiana. I stood firm, knowing that the wave would bring the sandal back. But for ten futile minutes, I futilely scanned my neck of the beach. Walking back to my spot, a young man walked up to me. "Amigo, podevocesascorato?" he said, pointing to somewhere behind him. I stared dumbly, until I saw my sandal at that spot. "Obrigado!! Muito obrigado!!!" I replied, amazed. "De nada."
Of the mountain views in Rio, there are many. I visited three notable ones - Pão de Açucar, Vista Chinesa, and Cristo Redentor. Pão de Açucar, bread of sugar, or Sugarloaf Mountain, is this thumb of a rock that arises suddenly from a peninsula situated between Copacabana beach and the downtown sector. Two systems of cable cars had been built to take tourists from the ground to an intermediate thumb and then the Sugarloaf. My view at sunset was spectacular. It was all there - clouds rolling into the mountains in the distance, lush jungled mountains, wide white beaches on both sides, dozens of marina boats dotting the reflective bay. No wonder that the entire bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The next day I wanted to hike the Vista Chinesa. This dot on Google Maps aroused my curiosity (it means Chinese View), and research told me it was a great view with a pagoda. I had no idea how to hike to it though, and hotel staff warned me that the surrounding area wasn't exactly safe. So I told a taxi driver just to drive to it. It happened that as he approached, there was a road closure and he said this was as far as he could go. I saw a dirt road leading up into the mountains and jumped at the fortune to get to hike it after all.
The hike couldn't have been more than a mile, but it went through real jungle. It had rained a few days before, and parts of the sloping trail were slippery mud, and I nearly didn't make it up. Finally I clawed my way to a paved road, and as I peeped out from the jungle, I saw dozens of faces staring back at me. I awkwardly looked around in confusion, until I heard cheering and then a skateboarder zoom by me. Evidently there was some sort of downhill race going down that road, which was why my taxi couldn't enter. Looking both directions, I crept uphill towards the audience and pagoda, clinging to the side. I reached the pagoda, and stared out at a beautiful view that included both the Cristo and Pão de Açucar, as well as miles of lush jungle. The extent of the jungle within city limits was truly astonishing.
I admired the view at the pagoda for only a few minutes before a bilingual announcement came on that there would be a 15 minute break in the race. "Quick!" shouted a girl in the pagoda. "This is our chance!" Alarmed, I wondered how long they had been trapped there. I immediately followed suit. Suddenly I found myself hiking into the jungle with 2 multilingual Brits, where we found a small waterfall and calm pools. Locals were picnicking in the water, and one man with a bottle of rum offered me a cup - "Cuba libre?" I don't have many travel rules, but when a Brazilian man offers you a Cuba libre by a waterfall deep within Rio, you say yes.
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