Our bus journey to Rio de Janeiro took a momentous 15 hours. We treated ourselves to a very swish coach which was a bit like an aeroplane - you get your own blanket, socks, pillow and selection of snacks as you board. The seats are pretty roomy and recline right back so we actually managed to get some reasonable sleep during the night. That was until about 5am, when we were woken abruptly. It was dawn and they were showing a video of a big pop concert on the TV screens. And suddenly the coach turned into an impromptu kareoke bar. Many of the Brazilians were singing along with their headphones on, one guy right next to us was whistling to it for about 15 minutes and then started clapping and slapping his knee! The 3 people infront of us were shouting to each other over their headphones. We couldn´t believe it in a very Victor Meldrew fashion!
We should try and describe popular Brazilian music at this point. It is quite hard to categorise, but it seems to be loved by almost everyone, male or female, young or old, trendy and cool or not. It is a little bit folky, a little like Christian Rock, very middle of the road and features a lot of singing that everyone knows the words too. In short it is irritating and fast becoming a nuisance (Apologies to any Brazilians reading this!). When you hear it in a place where there is dancing, everyone does the same dance steps. It´s bemusing and not at all how we expected the famous Brazilian passion for music and dancing to manifest itself.
Out hostel for the first 3 nights in Rio was in Santa Teresa - an apparently bohemian and artistic neighborhood with cobbled streets and big old colonial houses high on a hill above the city centre. It´s a little run down in a faded kind of way but certainly has character. An old tram rattles up and down the hill to and from the city centre. The first time we got on it we had to hang off the edge as it was completely packed. Darren almost lost his foot, as suddenly the tram crosses a long viaduct with sides that are inches from the foot-rest that he was standing on. They don´t seem to bother to tell you about things like that here. Health and safety? What´s that? Another example is the deep manhole-sized cavities that we have suddenly found ourselves teetering on the edge of in the middle of a perfectly ordinary looking pavement. No barriers or signs or anything like that.
In Rio we have been plunged into full-on backpacker culture. It´s a bit of a shock. From meeting very few tourists who have English as their first language, suddenly we are surrounded by dozens of young Australian, Irish and English backpackers, talking about which part of London/Dublin/Sydney they are from, where they have been and where they are going. It gets very tiring having to tell so many people the same thing. And we´ve been quite perturbed by the fact that almost everyone is doing a very similar route to us. Latin America, Oz/NZ and then Asia.
On our first night here we went to a favela (slum) ´Funk party´. Darren had read about these a few years ago and they were a rite of passage for favela kids. There were occasions when they would die at the parties (they would have to run through a corridor of others and get punched, beaten with sticks and kicked and hopefully emerge the other end a man!). We were surprised that they organised tours there but figured that it must be a watered down version. We arrived at a favela ´town´ centre which was heaving with people (on a Sunday night) and the party was in a huge warehouse style venue. The sound system was huge (about 30K for all you sound bwoys) and all the gringos have ´VIP´ areas on the balcony. You could choose to stay in these or venture out into the fray. We ventured out of course! The drinks were the cheapest yet - 25p for a can of beer.
The DJ was up on stage with just a flouro light for company and played a bass heavy version of hip hop and RnB which was quite danceable. Then unfortunately the ubiquitous Brazilian music started and all the tough boys and curvaceous girls who had been looking very cool bumping and grinding to the R&B suddenly started waving their arms in the air, singing loudly and doing what looks a bit like line-dancing. Oh dear.
There was a large contingent of transvestites at the party. We amused ourselves watching the Brazilian guys grabbing their backsides and then realising their mistakes once they bothered to look at their faces and noticed their man sized hands. Rather than podium dancers, there were podium security who kept an stern eye on the crowd from above. The girl´s toilets had no doors on the stalls which was something of a problem for all the female tourists who had to visit the toilet in packs and make a human barrier while one of them used the cubicle. Angie threw herself into the Brazilian way of doing things though and smirked at the fuss and bother the English girls made!
It was no doubt a relatively tame version of how the parties used to be but altogether it was a good way to start our Rio experience and see how they party in the favelas.
On the journey back our minibus driver kept jumping red lights and we later found out that the law was changed a few years ago so drivers don´t have to stop at red lights after 11pm for fear of being robbed!
The next day we walked around the city centre, and took in some of the huge ornate old buildings that sit side by side with the skyscrapers. We also found a very posh cafe in an amazing old Art Noveau building. The waiter must have thought we were mad as we simultaneously squealed with glee when he told us that they had Earl Grey tea. Even the heated longlife milk could not spoil the treat of having a cup of tea for the first time in a month. We also had some pastries to go with our tea and Angela´s choice demonstrates the strange and funny menu translations that we keep coming across: ´almond lard of heaven´!
One of the highlights of our time in Rio so far was a favela tour. We visited, (along with 6 other tourists), Rochina, which has the unenviable record of being the largest favela in Latin America. Over 120,000 people live in Rochina, squashed into a valley with vertical rock sides. The favela sprawls up the hillside behind the rich district of Sao Conrado (infact the 5 star Sheraton hotel is literally just across the highway from the entrance of Rochina), as others do all across the city (there are 300 favelas in Rio alone). It was built in the 1920s and until about 20 years ago the houses were wooden shacks. As they are built ontop of each other and clinging onto the edges of the hills there were fatalities in heavy rain with houses collapsing in the mud slides (infact we saw a mud slide during our tour as it had rained for 24 hours before we visited). 20 years ago the government provided bricks and concrete so favela residents could rebuild their houses more safely.
Our journey into the favela started with a motorcycle taxi ride up to the top of the hill along the only main street, which climbs the side of the valley in a series of hair-raising hair-pin bends! The main street has loads of shops, a post office, a medical centre, a sports centre, bus routes and even a branch of ´Bobs Burgers´ (a popular fast food chain). It is the artery along which goods and services from the outside world get into Rochina - but the postal service, for instance, only goes as far as this. Post is delivered to the interior of the favela by locals and there is an extra charge for this service.
We then plunged down into the chaotic maze of narrow alleyways, steep steps and muddy paths that make up the ´streets´ of the slum. Apparently cars used to fit down some of them but now they are no more than a few feet wide due to the fact that they have been filled in with more and more houses. The electricity poles groan with illegal connections (see pics). The streets are numbered but the signs have been removed by the drug dealers to confuse the police (the area is totally un-policable anyway but there are occasional SWAT team raids; last year 21 people died in one because of the proximity of the houses, the thin walls and the high powered weapons the police use).
The favela has a community association, funded in part by the drug lords, and it is to this you go to if you want to rent your house or buy a property here. Land ownership was initially decided by who built their house there first and they don´t pay any taxes or rates. Many types of people live in favelas (eg nurses, waiters, security guards and maids) alongside the unemployed and impoverished, because they are the best option for cheap rent and proximity to their jobs in the city centre. If they lived in an affordable ´normal´ suburb they would have to travel for hours on the bus to work which eats up their meagre wages.
We met lots of the local children, visited an artist´s studio (where they teach the kids grafitti art), saw one of the last wooden houses that the community association is helping the family to rebuild (building material costs twice as much because you have to pay to get it brought up into the favela), and spent time in a daycare centre (for children of parents who are alcoholics or addicts) which runs entirely on donations and is supported by the tour company we went with.
Because we visited in the rain the whole place was dank, grey and dripping and had the feel of a Victorian slum as described by Dickens. There is rubbish strewn everywhere, open sewers and water pipes that are broken in many places (Angie realised it perhaps wasn´t the best idea to wear sandals on the tour!). The kids often have nowhere to play except on the streets. But mostly the houses we saw inside of were clean and tidy and some even had smart new TVs and stereos.
The locals are all very friendly and welcoming. The tours bring business and donations into the community and are helping to change preconceptions. In fact it is often safer in a favela than on the streets of Rio. This is due to the drug dealers enforcing a strict code of conduct inside to protect their multi-million pound business (most of the drugs sold in there are purchased by outsiders).
In all our time spent there was enlightening, shocking and surprising and we´d recommend it to anyone. It made us realise how fortunate we are to live in the clean, safe and ordered environment that we enjoy.
Rio de Janeiro Hotels
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