The Marvelous City

One city, several nicknames, three letters: RIO. In Portuguese they call it a cidade maravilhosa (the marvelous city) and any trip there, rain or shine, leaves no one doubting why. Having been to Rio before this time around was a different experience, although again nothing short of spectacular, from before. The past few weeks have seen me all over the place. We essentially had two mid-semester breaks with a week of school sandwiched in between. The first break was for my specific exchange program alone. That’s when I took off for the Pantanal and had my crazy rendezvous with jaguar, as previously blogged. Then it was back to São Paulo for the first week of the second half of the semester followed by another week of vacation – called semana de saco cheio (literally translated to “fed up week”) which is observed by most universities throughout all of Brasil. So we gringos got the benefit of two weeks of vacation. During the second break I visited Londrina, the city where I lived last year, immediately followed by 5 days in Rio.

My friend LeeAnn and I hopped an overnight bus to Rio on the same day that I got back from Londrina, making it my second red-eye bus in as many nights. We arrived Rio early Wednesday morning to clear blue skies and picture perfect 90 degree weather. By 9:30 am we were on the beach frying until about 12:30. We stayed in Ipanema this time rather than in Copacabana where I crashed with my buddy Eric who came down last year and hit up Rio with me. Ipanema and Copacabana are, on a smaller scale, like Brooklyn and Queens I guess. They share the same plot of land and essentially the same beach but are divided only by a huge set of rocks and an old fortress where the two beaches meet, yet have vastly different identities. It’s mainly the beach crowd that defines each neighborhood’s identity. Ipanema tends to have the younger, hipper, sexier crowd while the old, but still very plausibly sexy, hang out at Copacabana. Our hostel was actually part of string of rowhouses of about 5-7 different hostels that all shared a common patio area. So 5-7 hostels with 15 people staying in each one = a very diverse, extremely international, easy going group of foreigners all looking to let loose and explore the city.

The day we arrived just happened to be the same day that Brasil played Colombia in a World Cup qualifying match. Dam, what were the chances?! So Wednesday night we trekked over to the famous Maracanã – Brasil’s high holy shrine to soccer – to watch the match. It was a packed house and an energetic atmosphere of 54,000 fans waving plastic Brazilian flags rooting on the 5-time World Cup champs and the only country to qualify for every single World Cup……but a terrible game!!! The game ended in a 0-0 tie and admittedly, I found myself falling asleep at times because the game lacked action. Lately, the Brazilian team has only been playing well in World Cup qualifying matches outside of Brasil. But each of their past 2 matches in Brasil have ended in 0-0 ties against fairly weak opponents.

The Maracanã

The next day was more beaching, and unfortunately, the last day of good weather before the rain and drizzle set in for the next few days. We shot up to Corcovado (Christ the Redeemer statue), my second time there, but still well worth the time and price. We could have picked a better day to go. It was real cloudy, meaning we were literally in the clouds and had minimal to zero view of the beautiful city landscape below. With each break in the clouds all the tourists scrambled to get as many decent shots in before the clouds covered it up again. The clouds did produce an interesting view of the Christ statue, however. When the clouds came in we stood 20 feet away from the huge statue, yet, could not by any means see it. There was a really cool effect as the clouds passed and the sun broke getting spitting images here and there of the statue. The picture below of the whole city skyline was taken last year, just to give folks who hadn’t seen it an idea of what the view SHOULD HAVE looked like.

Also on the activity agenda we rented bikes from our hostel and cruised up and down the beaches stopping for a beer at the Copacabana Palace – the fancy 5 star hotel right on the beach where the white collared rich and fabulous stay when they frolic in Rio. On Saturday afternoon I took a ferry with some Italian girls I met at my hostel across the Guanabara Bay to Niteroi, a separate city across from Rio just to get out of the city and see Rio from an alternate angle.

The nights, of course, were consumed by the parties. Rio is the place to party in Brasil as far as my knowledge of the country is concerned. We spread our time across the local bars, Lapa – the crazy samba district, and a real down and dirty authentic neighborhood festival in the way northern part of town. I guess the best and most appropriate place to describe is Lapa. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures because it’s not exactly the safest place to bring a camera. Lapa is a small neighborhood in downtown Rio more or less where the industrial North Zone meets the luxurious and beach enchanting South Zone. Lapa’s cobblestone streets give it a colonial antique feel, and are enhanced by the still standing aqueducts built by the Portuguese in the 1700s that tower of the neighborhood and under which all the partying goes on. Lapa is the one neighborhood in Rio where it’s actually corny to go into a club. The clubs are admittedly really great and world famous, but all the jamming to live samba music rubbing elbows with gringos to Greeks to Cariocas (a native of Rio) goes on outside, in the streets. The place just has a ridiculous energy; the type of vibe that most people associate with Brazil. It’s like a mini-Carnaval that goes on every weekend.

Everything in Rio is beautiful. More accurately, everything in Rio is stunning – whether it’s stunning women, stunning scenery amidst the mountains and ocean, stunning sunsets, or stunning poverty seeing the favelas (slums/shantytowns) spread throughout the hills. It’s a very photogenic city. For good or bad, the people, the landscape, the scenery, and again even the poorer areas are worth taking a picture of. Picture taking in Rio is like one big photo-essay.

It made me miss the aesthetic beauty of a city. Every city I have lived in or am familiar with: New York, DC, Barcelona has a physically pleasing aspect to it. New York has it’s skyline and island appeal to it highlighted especially at night seeing the bridges lit up. DC has its monuments and the mall. Barcelona is like a European Rio in that it too is squeezed between mountain and water with hills spread out through the city. And then there’s São Paulo. It’s a great city with a lot to do, a wild party scene, brilliant professors, and a booming economy. But aesthetically, there’s no charm or good looks to it. For most of the seven hour bus ride back to São Paulo on Sunday I was consumed with thinking about the necessary steps I have to take to live and work in Rio in the near future – maybe for about a 2-3 year stint. It’s a quick ride away from São Paulo so I’ll probably be back again in November and then of course New Years. The invitation is still open to any takers for NYE2009 on the beaches of the cidade maravilhosa!

Corcovado from another angle

Just monkeying around

Capital City

My Pantanal entry was getting a little long so I cut it short and left out the Brasilia part of the trip. After the Pantanal LeeAnn and I caught a quick little 19 hour bus ride from Cuiaba to Brasilia. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. By that I am referring to the fact that I did almost the same exact bus trip with my buddy Chris last year. Only last year we left from a different city further south, Campo Grande, to head to Brasilia. Last year our 17 hour bus trip turned into a 31 hour excursion because the bus broke down 4 times and each time took 2 hours to fix. Horrendous experience. So I was gambling big time by doing a similar distance and length trip through the center-west of the country to Brasilia. But last year we literally only went to Brasilia to catch a flight to the Amazon. This time our goal was to spend a few days in the city, see the sites, and then fly back to Sao Paulo.

Complete opposite from last year, this trip was right on the money. It took exactly 19 hours down to the very minute from the time we left to arrival in Brasilia. And that’s largely my experience here with the bus systems. With the exception of last year’s 31 hour aberration the bus systems here are excellent. The seats are a lot more spacious and cleaner than Greyhound, they serve mineral water and sometime even snacks, and are spot-on with punctuality. Take note Chinatown bus!

To be honest, Brasilia was nothing too impressive. The big lure to Brasilia is its futuristic architectural style designed by the great 101 year old Osacar Niemayer. But really, the city had such an empty and lifeless feel to it that it overshadowed however neat and quirky the architecture is. Naturally, being an unofficially official Washingtonian (unofficial in that I root for neither the Redskins nor the Wizards) I was comparing Brasil’s capital city to the US. Washington takes the cake. Washington feels like the capital. To borrow a phrase from GW and risk being fined for royalties, in DC you feel like you are a part of something. Hhhmm, not the case in Brasilia. A country as rich in culture, flare, and emerging prominence in the world lacks a capital that exuberates that same appeal. It’s all good though, each major city in Brasil represents a piece of that bigger picture – Rio is the flare, Sao Paulo is the economic hub, Salvador is the cultural icon. Brasilia is very strategic and methodical however, I’ll give them that.

Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasilia

National CongressThe city was built out of nowhere in the 1960s and was constructed in the shape of an airplane (or bow and arrow, or bird, however you want to picture it). The center axis that cuts through the city is more or less equivalent to the mall in DC with its monuments and attractions. The “wings” are more or less divided into residential and commercial sections. On one wing are just houses and residential neighborhoods, on the other wings are just businesses and commerce. The residential neighborhoods are symmetrical, identical, and a maze! All the blocks look the same – soccer field followed by grocery store followed by a school. If you miss your street, good luck to you. Figuring out which street is which in Brasilia is like searching for a needle in a stack of needles!

One of these doors was the entrance to our hostel......

American football on Brasilia's mall?!?!

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I AM CURRENTLY TRAVELING AND THEREFORE UNABLE TO POST A SUBSTANTIVE ENTRY ON MY BLOG. I WILL UPDATE IT ON SUNDAY WHEN I RETURN FROM RIO DE JANEIRO. MY APOLOGIES TO ALL ACTIVE FOLLOWERS, i.e. FRED-O TRUMAN.

The Pantanal

Okay okay were to begin? Last week we had a mid-semester break from classes before beginning a new round of modules. So I took a healthy getaway from São Paulo. Back in 2005 I bought one of those Page-A-Day calendars for my office desk. It had 365 different travel spots around that world that I dreamed about each day. I saved them all. One day when I’m old and gray and writing my memoirs I plan on looking back at that list and seeing how many of those places I’ve conquered.

On that list was the Pantanal – the sprawling wetland forests in western Brazil, eastern Bolivia, and northern Paraguay that cover an area roughly the size of France. Some people have called it the poor man’s Amazon, but it’s anything but. Admittedly, the Pantanal lacks a certain awe and mystique that the Amazon has. The Pantanal isn’t jungle like the Amazon. It doesn’t have indigenous tribes with painted red bodies angrily shooting bows and arrows when a plane flies overhead. It hasn’t been popularized in movies with flying anacondas or Sean Connery finding the cure for cancer. (Although there is a pretty popular soap opera in Brazil based in the Pantanal. Not quite Emmy worthy though). But despite the lack of mystique, the Pantanal is the best place in Brazil for animal spotting. The terrain is flatter, there’s less bush for animals to hide, and especially during the dry season (when we went) animals tend to congregate in the few watering holes that there are.

So I strapped on a backpack and went for a 4 night/5 day excursion to the Pantanal with my friend LeeAnn. We flew into Cuiabá, the capital of the state of Mato Grosso, and were greeted by 110 heat. It felt great! The previous 3 weeks in São Paulo had a constant chill and as mentioned, it got me really sick. So it was great to feel the sun, feel the heat, and work up a sweat. In our travel group were two French people and an Australian couple on a one year leave from their London jobs doing a seven month swing through South America before returning to Australia to get married. I was amazed with their itinerary. Their trip took them everywhere from Buenos Aires to the Galapagos Islands, up to Colombia, down to Machu Picchu, through the Peruvian Andes, down to Brazil, and ultimately a six week swing through the Patagonia in southern Argentina. They went from a blizzard in Peru to 110 degree heat five days later in Brazil. I was again reminded of how much ground I need to cover. At the end of this trip I will have spent a total of 8 months in Brazil – with still a lot more places on my Brazilian wish list…I can’t even imagine how to go about covering the rest of South America.

Our guide was a short, friendly, know-it-all about nature guy named Santos who just happened to be a dead ringer for Sammy Sosa. I swear, if I hadn’t been reading headlines about Sammy Sosa making numerous comeback attempts to major league baseball I would bet the farm that he was giving tours in the Pantanal. Our trip took us deep into the Pantanal via a four hour drive down a dirt highway called the Transpantaneira. It’s pretty easily navigable during the dry season, but during rainy season the road tends to get flooded therefore limiting the number of trekkers that come through. The road was covered with hundreds alligators and my new favorite animal the capybara – the world’s largest rodent. Yeah they’re rodents but they’re just really dam cute with their chubby butts, furry brown hair, plump faces, and typically traveling in families of 3 to 4. We stopped along the way to take a hike through the bush. Surprisingly, not far from the main road were pretty conspicuous and rather fresh jaguar prints. While the capybara is a new a recent add-on to my favorite animal list, the jaguar has long-been THE favorite because of its intriguing mix of strength, stealth, physical beauty, and power. They’re rather elusive creatures though and the chances of seeing them in the wild are slim to none….or so we thought (cue the suspense music)…….

Over our five days we stayed at 3 different pousadas/fazendas ( = ranch farms turned mini motels for tour groups and travelers). We started each day early (around 5am) and ended around 10pm. The mornings around dawn were best for spotting animals feeding so we took boat rides through the rivers and drives along the Transpantaneira to see them. Other activities included day and night hikes through the forests, piranha fishing (and eventually eating what we caught), horseback riding around the fazendas, and in down times lounging under the sun in hammocks while catching up on some good reading. Overall there was a lot of boat riding and hiking.

Inexplicably, last year while piranha fishing in the Amazon no one got even the slightest nibble on their line despite hours of fishing. In the Pantanal rivers, 3 second after throwing your line into the water you not only got a bite but were almost guaranteed a catch. I was on fire catching yellow-belly piranhas left and right. We used some to feed the alligators that were circling our boat, threw others back in the river for the hawks to grab, and the rest we brought back to the fazenda for the staff to cook up for dinner.

By far the most exhilarating part of the trip was spotting a jaguar in the wild. I don’t know if it was just dumb luck considering how elusive they are, but not only did we spot a jaguar in the wild, it had just killed a large alligator about its same size along the banks of the river and was attempting to drag it up a hill to eat it. INCREDIBLE. Honestly, as corny as it might sound it was a really breathtaking sight that leaves me short of words because of the action and rarity of what was going on. I’ve posted some jaguar photos below and am trying to upload videos, but unfortunately they take forever to load. I'm working on it though. The pictures don't really show the size of the alligator, but it was a big boy. About the same size of the jaguar I would say. The jaguar was trying to grab the gator by the neck and drag it uphill but because the gator was so big, the jaguar got tired and was taking frequent breaks. Man, again, seeing that spectacle just left me amazed. As much as I had wanted to spot a jaguar in the wild I never thought that I would actually see one.

Anyway, each night the sun went down around 6pm so at night after devouring deliciously home-cooked dinners we chilled out on the hammocks, sipped caipirinhas, and got samba lessons from our renaissance man guide Santos. There are 3 regions in Brazil that are on my must-do list before finishing this trip: the Pantanal, the southern beaches of Santa Catarina, and of course the northeast Afro-Caribbean region.

Pantanal: check.