Rio de Janeiro was absolutely beautiful. I flew into Sao Paulo, Brazil to meet Nia. (There are designated smoking areas in the airport!) She showed me a little bit of the city and we had some of the best food I had had since I got to South America. We then proceeded on our bus ride to Rio de Janeiro. I met a guy on the bus on the way to meet Nia who was from Brazil, but had went to college in the states and lived in DC for some years. Him and his wife own a Language School and even though I have no teaching experience, he offered me a job to come and work for his school. He said he would be honored to have an Native Speaker teach in his school, lol. If it wasn't for the language barrier, I might have considered taking him up on his offer.
I was excited to finally see colored people - all different shades and shapes and sizes. I was a little dissapointed to find that there is a light-skinned, dark-skinned complex in Brazil as well. I don't know much about Brazilian history, but I thought - they're all brazilian, the all live on an even playing field, but that's not so. The whites/light-skinned people are typically upper class, while the blacks lived in the favellas or are from poorer families. We saw two woman walking, one "black" and one "White". The black one was pushing a white baby in a stroller and was wearing all white. Nia explained to me that she is the Nanny/Maid and they are made to wear all white as if to say "She's my nanny, I wouldn't be with her otherwise"...
We went to a pretty nice club one night and we were 2 of 4 non-whites in this huge club. We couldn't help but laugh a little at the dances of the "white Brazilians". It was interesting that similar to the states, the black people tended to have more rhythm and coordination dancing. We also cracked up because every now and then they would play an American song. I would bet money that 90% of these people didn't speak a lick of English, but when certain lines of certain popular songs came on - everyone was singing!
The favellas - they are slums that are built on mountains. You can see them from almost anywhere in the city because they are so high. The houses are literally built one on top of the other. They are very poor neighborhoods, which lack basic neccesities such as running water and electricity in some of them. Most of them are governed by gangs. The inhabitants lives depend on doing what these gang members want and so they do what they need to do to survive. They are typically occupied by the darker skinned Brazilians. They have grown over the years and police and government attempts to get rid of them have been minimized to attempting to control the crime. From my point of view, Brazilians have embraced the favellas as just another part of their culture. At Fera's (outdoor markets), you can find tshirts with a picture of the favellas or a little figurine of the favellas. Many small tour companys/taxi drivers offer Favella Tours where they take tourists for a drive through the favellas. It is a very dangerous place rampid with drugs and crime, but these tours have become the norm and so people typically aren't harmed. Some of the companies have even chosen to use a percentage of their profits from these tours to invest in bettering the favellas. I was curious to see what they looked like, but I had mixed feelings about them. How would we feel if someone started giving tours of some of our poorest ghettos in Philadelphia or DC or some of the other poorer parts of the country? I saw young favella boys gambling with dominoes on the sidewalk late at night. It was tough because you would see one of them sleeping by themselves in store entrances at night. They were known for their good craftsmanship and skill at sports, it's a shame that there isn't a better education system in place to get some of these young boys out of the slums and into somehwhere where they could be discovered or at least given a fair chance to make an honest living. Rio de Janeiro being at the beach and such a tourist area, they had a little bit of an advantage trying to make money, than they would in other places.
It was so crazy because some of the people would do almost anything for money. Nia would always say, it's sad to see these people in this situation and some of it can be a little annoying, but I can appreciate their "Legal Hustle". There are so many people that have turned to drugs and have let their lives get away from them, while others are attempting to do something. You would see fairly small guys carrying heavy carts or bins on their back up and down the beach or the street selling drinks, different foods, goods, etc. Then you had the people that did some really random things. There was a random guy outside the bar that had a connection in the bar. There was a long line, he was able to get us in without a wait (for a small fee of course). We met a guy who offered to drive us around and show us around. He wasn't a taxi, we would just agree on a price. We told him to meet us around 10pm, but that we would call first. He just showed up at 10pm without giving notice. We were at a restaurant eating, he came inside and sat down and started chatting with us. When we told him where we were going and asked for a price, he wanted us to give him and price and we would bargain from there. I don't think it was fair that he was asking us to bargain in the first place and especially not fair to ask us to go first. It made us feel like he was out to take advantage. He tried to make us feel guilty - I'm at your service, I came here and I waited for you, etc. We don't know how much it should cost to go to these places and so we don't have much bargaining power. The only power we had is that we wanted his service, but it was available from someone else if not him. He would have to work hard at trying to convince someone else to do the same. In the end, it got ugly and we decided to take a taxi instead.
Once I asked for directions and the guy insisted on walking and showing me exactly where it was despite my trying to cinvince him I would find it. I was sure he was going to expect something in return for his "guide services", but he was just a nice guy trying to help me out.
I felt like I was watching my back the whole time. Nothing ever happened, but several people had told us to be very careful because Rio can be a very dangerous place. Also with the favellas being so close, tourists are perfect targets for these poor, desperate people. We didn't take our cameras or money to the beach. We were very careful about where we wore jewlery. We would only go to the Mac Machine during the day, among the other precautions we took.
I love the beach! I love Brazilian music and Dancing! I had to get used to the new language and the new currency - It's as if I had gone to a whole different continent! Good thing Nia speaks Portugese because I was clueless. She also knows a good amount of Spanish and so that was handy. We were able to blend in sometimes just walking down the street as Brazilians, but obviously when we began to speak English they knew we were foreigners. We decided that at the markets, we didn't want to pegged as Americans. The vendors have a reputation of jacking up the prices for us and so Nia would speak to the vendors in Portuguese and then translate for me into Spanish. I was from a different country everyday - Panama, Uruguay, you name it! lol
Apparently this is my second wonder of the world (The Colloseum in Rome, Italy is one of them). The Christ Redeemer statue was huge. The view of the city was absolutely amazing! We had fun trying to take pictures. We had to lay down on the ground just to get the whole stuatue and us as well.
Brazil was a lot of fun, more expensive than BA and I wound up spending way more money than I had planned, but i had a lot of fun! My only experience in a hostel wasn't all bad and considering I needed to save money I was leeaning toward staying in one, but Nia didn't want to. We were in Ipanema, one of the nicer, popular tourist and middle to upper class neighborhoods. We stayed in a little studio apartment and it was nice enough, but when we got there, there were these tiny ant-like bugs all over the bed and almost everywhere. We were extra freaked out. The window had been open and so these "harmless tropical bugs" as the owner called them had crawled in. He tried to reassure us that we had nothing to worry about, but we weren't buying it. We went to the nearest shop and got a can of raid and Lysol and sprayed the apartment down. It solved our problem and we lived peacefully in our apartment for the rest of our stay.
It was interesting that in many rest stops and clubs (areas where you have more than one counter), you are given a card and when you ask for something from the bakery or a drink from the bar - they scan or swipe your card and you pay for everything before you leave. I imagined that there would be a lot of fraud with the system, but it seemed to work well. Big bouncers (in bars) or gaurds (at shops) stand at the exit and ask for your card and for you to pay your balance. There is typically a hefty lost card fee if you miseplace the card or try to skip out on your balance. This minimized the amount of money being changed through many people's hands, if something was missing, there was only one source!
Overall, it was an awesome trip, a few surpises, pero vale la pena (but worth the trouble).
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