Head In The Clouds

Head In The Clouds
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Having been to Rio before and spent my time there listening to stories of muggings and robberies, I was less than impressed about having to return, but Tim couldn’t go to Brazil and not see Rio so we booked a flight, which was surprisingly cheaper than a bus and booked the classic one day tour to see Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf Mountain.

Accommodation in Rio is not cheap, like any other big city and so we booked a better than average hostel and were over the moon at just how nice it was. When we were given the tour by the staff they told us to keep an eye on the tree outside our window as occasionally there are tiny monkeys. It didn’t take long looking out the window to see the most tiny adorable marmoset looking back at me, here was a first, monkey watching from the comfort of my bed. Mother nature really was spoiling us.

So the morning of our tour arrived and looking out the window it seemed that maybe mother nature was not being so kind after all, the sky was grey, the clouds were low and it definitely didn’t look like the picture perfect Rio that you see on postcards. We hopped on our minibus and thankfully we had a fantastic guide who was absolutely hysterical as he was going to have his work cut out to keep us entertained in this weather. Our first stop was Christ the Redeemer, the mini bus huffed and puffed up the hill to get us to the half way point where we were transferred onto a different minibus for the final section.

So here are some factoids about this iconic Brazilian land mark. It was constructed between 1922 and 1931, he is 30 meters tall, stands on an 8 meter wide pedestal and his outstretched arms are 28 meters wide. He weighs 635 metric tonnes and stands at the peak of the 700 meter Corcovado Mountain which overlooks the city.

Whilst it is an amazing location and he can be seen from all around the city in his position high on the mountain, this position also means that when it is a cloudy day, he is completely encompassed and you can see nothing but his pedestal. Oh Bugger, we stood and watched in the hope that there might be a break in the clouds, but there was not a single gap and for just a few moments that the clouds thinned we got a brief glimpse of his outline. From the viewing platform we couldn’t see a single part of the city below through the clouds and so our guide did make a quick stop at a heliport below to give us a bit of a view over the city. Next up we were headed to Saint Sebastian Cathedral, another iconic location, but apparently another weather dependent one. As we pulled up and walked towards this strange Dalek shaped building we were faced with a pair of locked gates. I genuinely thought that our poor guide was going to cry. He did redeem himself a little by taking us to a random little lady selling cakes and sweets out of her garden, the giant slice of chocolate cake did go someway to improving our tour which was beginning to turn into a comedy of errors. Next up were the Lapa Steps, finally a landmark that was open and visible, it was by this point pouring with rain but we were not going to let that stop our fun.

The Lapa Steps are the life work of the Chilean born artist Jorge Selaron and whilst living in a property overlooking the steps he began to transform them in 1990 by applying tiles and mirrors to the steps. It started as a side project to his passion of painting and soon became an obsession whereby he was selling his painting to fund the project. In later years visitors would donate tiles and there are tiles representing pretty much every country in the world. The steps have received world wide acclaim featuring in travel shows, commercials and most recently in the music video for Snoop Dogs, Beautiful. You so know that we couldn’t leave this location without paying tribute to the steps and to Snoop and Pharrell, boom I think we nailed it! Interestingly on the 10 January 2013 the body of Selaron was found on the steps with odd burn marks on his body, it is said that in the final months of his life he had become depressed having received death threats from someone who worked in his studio. Oooh.

The finally destination of the day was Sugar Loaf Mountain for sunset, as we pulled into the carpark and looked up we could just see the cable car delivering people to the clouds. Thankfully our guide let us keep our ticket to return the following day as we had seen more than enough of Rio’s clouds from within for one day. Instead we stood in the carpark as our guide took the one lone tourist who was leaving the following afternoon to the top whilst we waited in the rain having a good ol’ chat with the others on the tour.

We had found an amazing restaurant near our hostel which worked on a principle common in Brazil whereby there is a huge buffet and you fill and weight your plate and pay by the kilo. This was incredible value and for the first time in a long time being a vegetarian didn’t matter as I could pile my plate high with fresh salad and veg and Tim could refuel his dwindling protein supplies with a mountain of meat.

From talking to other tourists on our failed trip to Christ the Redeemer, they all spoke highly of the favela tour that they had taken with the same company (Be A Local), so not wanting to remember our trip to Rio as a failed attempt to see all the highlight we booked ourself on the favela tour.

The Rio that we were visiting was a far cry from the Rio that I saw 10 years ago, whist there is still crime, the city seems to have cleaned up its act massively thanks to the World Cup and in preparation for the Olympics. A tour into the heart of the biggest favela in Rio was a prime example of this.

A favela is basically the name for a slum, the favelas began to be built in the city in the late 19^th century when soldiers with nowhere to live began to build them and slaves with no land ownership worked and lived in them. The favelas are notorious for gangs, gun crime and drugs but they are also home to many ordinary people who just can’t afford to live anywhere else. A 2010 census calculated that 6% of the Brazilian population lived in slums, around 12 million people.

Our tour visited Rocinha Favela, the largest hill side favela in Brazil, it is estimated that around 90,000 people live here in the favela. It is actually now classified as a neighbourhood and the homes are largely brick structures some three stories high, there is basic sanitation, plumbing, electricity and water.

Walking through the favela was a far cry from what we expected, but don’t get me wrong, it was ramshackle, it was dirty, the streets smelt of sewerage and we were very pleased to have been advised to wear trainers and not flip flops. There were little businesses along the route, a graffiti artist selling paintings, a corner shop selling cakes and pastries, a few ladies selling friendship bracelets made from the now redundant telephone lines. We saw a group of men singing and playing some amazing music with just a selection of broken old rusty paint barrels. The guide would always be at the front of the group, whistling and making signals to the locals that we were coming so we didn’t stumble into anything untoward. We did hear gun shots in the favela which was a stratling jolt of reality, but we never felt in danger.

Walking through the favela we saw bullet holes in the walls, collapsed buildings and children playing with kites, this was the method used to raise attention back in the day, they now just use gun shots.

The views over the favela were just something else, to think that pretty much the whole population of Jersey could fit into this one slum was mind blowing.

Glad to have seen a small part of the world of favelas we had one last stop to complete our Rio tour, Sugar Loaf Mountain, take 2.

We got a taxi to Sugarloaf and well expected to be ripped off, but amazingly the fare was £1 less than the hostel had guestimated and he even gave us the few coins change that we we
re due, amazing!

The weather in Rio was being kind to us and whilst there were still a few clouds, it was a vast improvement on the day before. We took the cable car to the first stop and were greeted with the most adorable marmoset monkeys and then onwards to the top level the clouds were lifting and dropping and after an hour or so we had seen full 360 views over the city. Sunset was not far away, but with the viewing areas getting busier and busier we decided to call it a day and said one last farewell to the monkeys.

Our stay in Rio had not been perfect but it was not a complete failure, however not seeing Christ the Redeemer was something that we couldn’t stand for so it looks like Rio is going back on our to-do list, fingers crossed the next time JC is not going to have his head in the clouds.

Time to move on again, we have a bus to Belo Horizonte to start a 4 week cat and house sit and to get our blog and lives in order.

See you soon Rio!!