There is nothing routine about today - I am in Rio De Janiero. I delay surfing to go find my morning fix.
Brazilian breakfast or café da manhã, as it is called in Portuguese, means coffee of the morning - very different from Portuguese from Portugal, where breakfast is called pequeno-almoço - or little lunch. Traditionally, in Brazil, café da manhã is not supposed to be an elaborate affair, but it is for me. I am on a holiday and I am here to eat.
“Estoy aqui estás a comer”, I say. It literally translates to “I am here to eat”. But in colloquial Portuguese, it actually means “if you don’t behave, I’ll slap you”, points out a lovely waitress as I utter those rehearsed Portuguese words. She means well. But seriously, what a way to feed an eating disorder.
Brazilians love their coffee sugary, best enjoyed with mountains of cake served at breakfast. I willingly embrace their cultural disregard for the waistline. The concept of tea and milk is considered odd in Brazil but it’s very common among adults to drink milk with chocolate powder.
It’s easy to understand why so many fall in love with Rio. Days are sultry, people are happy, caipirinhas flow freely and samba beats echo into the night. There are also bounty of experiences for the intrepid traveller: hiking, cycling, sailing, surfing, rock climbing and hang gliding. I am determined to do everything. Today, I choose rock climbing, something I have never experienced before.
With Airbnb’s amazing trigger friendly app, it is easy to find a host. It wasn’t until much later that I realised that my fingers wrote a check my body couldn’t cash. More on that in a bit. For now, I take comfort in the single positive review for the experience and leave the hotel to meet Victor near Sugar Loaf. Named for its shape and located on the fringe of the city, this mountain is a popular tourist destination.
For someone who picked up the language only through interactions with impatient tourists, Victor speaks excellent English. With four hours between the base and the summit, Victor and I have time to get to know each other. We start walking away from the crowds and the cable cars, and toward the trail. He speaks about his adventures from far and near, his next climb on Mont Blanc, his expert views on my upcoming Patagonia trek, and his life in his hometown Isla Negra in Chile.
Trails are great providers of solitude. You savour the meditative aloneness and the exquisite pleasure of just walking. Except, in this case, it doesn’t last for long.
We are confronted with an immediate steep climb. The altitude’s 2100 feet and the pitch is 52 degrees, which is the same as the sides of the Great Pyramids. I might not have at all researched this particular mountain but I seem to recall quite a bit about the distant and unrelated Pyramids.
In practice, it means that I need to hold on to this dark and storied slope for my dear life, for a single sneeze would send me tumbling to the ocean in a broken bloody heap. Victor is confident that it’ll all be fine. He begins to climb - his body perpendicular to the slope, which in turn, made him nearly parallel to the ocean. I follow on my fours. It would be days before I could do this with anything approaching aplomb – I jerk tight the laces once again and trudge up against the verticalness.
At exasperatingly frequent intervals, the path becomes steeper. Victor’s cakewalk inspires nothing in me. I don’t wish to reach for melodrama, but people have died in less trying circumstances. I can barely tread water for five seconds. Those precious five seconds are usually marked with wheeling arms and unhappy wails. Victor, on the other hand, can probably walk on water.
This slope has four pitches, each with a different crux. It starts with grade 4 and goes up to 5.6. Looking at it, many climbers would say that it’s medium-hard; my father would remind me of my terrible swimming skills; my mother would ask if I’d eaten; my four year old niece, Kyra, would tell me about Peppa Pig. I say I’d am going to die. Thankfully, Victor disagrees.
I stagger on. Each time I pull myself up to what I think must surely be the crest, I find that there is in fact more hill to climb, sloped at an angle that kept it from the view before. Eventually I reach a height where I can see nothing but clear sky, and my faltering spirit stirs – nearly there now – but this is a cruel deception.
The elusive summit continually retreats by any distance I press forward. What else can I do? Every point of rest and contemplation is also a point of no return.
When I finally reach the truly high ground and drag my tired legs to the mountain’s summit, I am, alas, meh. I sprawl face up on a sloping pavement, hoping to take in the smell of victory.......and pizza. Suddenly, silence is interrupted, this time not by my palpitating heart, but the woohoos of the efficient cable-car tourists as they watch the sunset.
I finally make a gratifying contact with the developed world: vending machines and restrooms! The cheering intensifies. Not letting lassitude set in, I run to the other end. I am glad I do, for I see the most beautiful sight of my life - the sunset behind a distant dark mountain, a blaze of changing color - orange, pink, purple - dominating the view, and slowly Christ the Redeemer reclaiming its supremacy over the Rio sky.
I sit there for a while, and with not much in the way of happiness and pizza, I am ready for the sun to rise again and for my next adventure in Rio.
