La Ciudad Maravillosa

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sunday, March 30, 2008

I´ve had easier journeys. If you ever come down here, don´t go the way I did. London and Rio are 5,700 miles apart, but by going via New York I managed to turn this into 8,400 miles - too far! It took 32 hours to get here, but it was definitely worth it - Rio is a fabulous place.

Sugar Loaf from Corcovado

  

Rio is located on the Tropic of Capricorn, is home to around 6,000,000 people, and is known as La "Ciudad Maravillosa," the Marvelous City.  The Portugese found the bay which is known as Guanabara today, and mistook it for the mouth of a river, the month was January (Janeiro in Portugese), and the name stuck.

The locals call themselves"Cariocas", and they are incredibly friendly (Rio has been voted the friendliest city in the world on more than one occasion). Basically if you go in the same bar more than one night on the trot, which I did, you´re practically a local. The other thing they specialise in here is fruit and vegetable juice. There seems to be a juice bar on every other corner, and I´ve been working my way through the juice menus in one or two of them.

You can do the usual tourist trail stuff: Sugarloaf, Christ the Redeemer, Copacabana, Ipanema, etc, and most people do, but Rio is also a nice place to just wander round and hang out. The city has a (deserved) terrible reputation for violent crime, but if you use a bit of common sense you´ll be fine. You can be unlucky though, as they do a nice line in bus hijackings here. Also, on the news today was CCTV footage of a guy whose ticket wouldn´t go in the Metro turnstile. He went off on one, pulled a gun, jumped the barrier and started shooting at the trains! 

My hotel is in Copacabana. There´s a swimming pool on the roof, and this is what you can see when you´re swimming around:

View from my hotel roof

Last night I ate in place called "A Garota de Ipanema" where the two gentlemen in this video used to go, and this is the song they wrote:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DmV0TcTNJ3o


One thing that I´ve found strange here is the proximity between the wealthy and the poor areas of the city. Most cities have "good areas" and "bad areas" of town, but in Rio, the most expensive parts of town are only a few blocks away from the "favelas", which look a little bit like this:
  
 


.....and I almost forgot. The night before I left Rio, I watched a TV programme with highlights of the weekend´s football matches. In one match, a player celebrated a goal for a little too long and a fight broke out between the two teams. The referee tried to break it up, and someone floored him.....cue the riot police on the pitch, complete with shields and batons, attacking the players. Top match!