#TBT The colourful world of Rio
Food, fun, caipirinha, music, havaianas, caipirinha, flavelas, traffic, caipirinha… did I say caipirinha yet?
Another amazing journey to witness a culture I fell in love with. Rio was a city that I went to as a tourist, but didn’t always have to feel like one. It’s a great big city that lets you disappear and find little alcoves and enclaves where the locals are, without straying too far off the beaten path. There are so many people who simply won’t speak to you in English, and they love it. It makes me appreciate the culture and beauty of it more. Is it safe? Everyone asked me that. I didn’t exactly walk around flashing designer wear (especially not skinny jeans... read the previous blog) or anything expensive. I traveled very low key, and wore my havaianas everywhere.
First, the City itself. It stretches on for miles. It’s one gigantic traffic jam. Every corner you turn, there’s another hill, tunnel and expanse of flavelas revealed. The beach is beautiful, though, and the water deep blue. The beach culture and culture of food, music and dance was very obvious. Everyone seemed to partake in this. Old, young and in between. In Ipanema, you would see surfers walking through the streets to and from the beach, barefoot, carrying surfboards!
I should write another blog about how hockey boys can’t dance and especially cannot mambo or anything else that requires essential hip movement to a fast rhythm. One night at a live music venue in Lappa, I tried to dance with a Brazilian lady who was absolutely beautiful. Walter the ladies man at work again. She tried to teach me the rhythm of the song we were attempting to dance to. In broken English, she would say “One, two, three…one, two, three”… moving her feet and hips to match. But my feet, nor my body or brain could understand, hear or feel the rhythm. I swear, I heard four beats in the song that was playing, and thought that perhaps she didn’t know how to say “four” in English, so she stopped at three. But no, then I realized, my dancing skills and hockey skills were not a good mix and definitely did not compliment one another. She was sweet but eventually smiled and traded me in for a man who spun her around the dance floor and moved his hips so well that I could no longer watch. I turned to my friend the caipirinha.
Speaking of caipirinhas, they were fabulous but deadly. If you’re going to try them, don’t consider them an equal to vodka sodas, by any means. In Brazil, there was so much fresh fruit, many restaurants sold “caipirinhas frutas” with fresh fruit muddled in. So, I’m not always the biggest fan of having a pink drink in my hand, but these looked so delicious I had to try it.
I did visit a number of tourist spots with a guide we found on trip advisor, he was fantastic. Marcos. We did a city tour and went to Sugar Mountain and to see the Christo statue. We visited the famous Copacabana beach, Ipanema and the fancier places in Leblon. After two days of the typical tourist attractions, Marcos and I had bonded and become friends. He invited me to join him at a bar for drinks and food with a group of locals atop a flavela. Well, this was the invite I was waiting for. A tour of a flavela. It was interesting to hear and understand more about this way of life. So different from getting your mortgage from RBC and settling down to buy a home in Canada. Marcos told us that he had grown up in a small house with his mother at that was in Ipanema, located at the base of a flavela. Growing up, he had many friends who lived in the flavela and had grown accustomed to hanging out there. Through the few days of touring I’d done, I had seen many. Some with armed guards at the base of them.
Marcos explained that the government was trying to clean them up a bit and be more forceful about cutting out crime and danger. It was a challenge because thousands upon thousands of the city’s population lived in these types of communities, and to simply shut them all down would cause pandemonium and crisis. I wanted to learn and understand so much more about this but it was hard to broach the subject at a deeper level when I didn’t know the locals I was speaking with that well.
Well, then, in we went. Hiking up steep hills into the flavela. There was a large channel throughout that collected storm and sewer water. Everywhere I turned, my view as always tainted with electrical wires. Low wires, medium wires, bands of them all clumped together, single wires. There were wires everywhere in complete disarray. After a while, there were so many that they began to simply blend into the landscape. We climbed several narrow staircases and wove in and out of different parts. Most of them all had little doors everywhere leading into peoples’ homes. We comped up to a point that seemed like a bit of a commercial area and neighbourhood hub, with some shops and services lined in a row and a narrow grassy patch with benches. At that point, Marcos spoke with some men on motorcycles and the next thing I knew I was being tossed a helmet. “Get on!” he motioned to one of them. I was a bit taken aback. Did I want to fall to my peril by cause of an unknown moto-taxi in Rio? I think not, but my adrenaline got the best of me and I said nothing and quickly jumped on the back. In half Portuguese-English, the driver warned me not to stick my bare ankles and flip flops too close to the exhaust or it would burn me.
Up we went, along some narrow and windy little roads, leading us right to the top. It was exhilarating. The view, the fear, the anticipation of what was to come at the top of the hill. There were patches of guard rails that might have protected one from a motorcycle fall, but again, not really up to Canadian safety standards.
Out of nowhere, we turned a corner, and came to a stop at a modern building (a stark contrast to the balance of the surroundings), with stanchions outside the door. There was a small awning covering the entryway with no name on it. Marcos paid the drivers and in we went.
The inside was much more modern than I could have imagined. They had couches and lounge chairs and glass railings with a killer view. Marcos wasn’t kidding around about the view that’s for sure. So that was my tame experience in a flavela. Pretty easy going! The sunset was unreal with a view of Sugar Mountain as a backdrop.
