Brasil (14-21 feb)

Once carnaval was over, I finally got a chance to actually explore Rio. Thursday I met up with Sam and his friends to go on a favela tour in Santa Marta. I was surprised how self-contained it was. There is a school, a community centre, little shops, and even a wall separating it from the next favela. Santa Marta is one of the safest favelas, having been pacified over 5 years ago. There are community outreach police officers that work there, but none carry weapons. Rio is really trying to clean the city up before the world cup and the olympics, and apparently in some of the most violent favelas they have forced the druglords to move out. There were also a lot of community projects going on such as free martial arts classes got kids if they participated in a sustainability education project. Santa Marta has 991 steps to the top, but luckily they built a fernicular in 2005; only 4 or 5 favelas have them- the rest have to face the sweltering steps everyday. There were a 91 and 89 yr old women who still refused to use it though, and walked up and down every time they went into the city!

 

Favela Santa Marta

Before going into the favela, I assumed that everyone would be living in tiny shacks, but there were some shantys that were like 7 stories high with the front half of them built in stilts...the structural integrity did not look so sound... The tour was good and really eyeopening, but I felt like we were trying to get sold on Brazil's new image. At the bottom when we were finished the tour, we got açai which is pretty much the greatest thing in the world. They sell it from stands all over the city and it's frozen açai berries from the amazon sweetened with guarana juice. You can add granola or sprinkles, and if you want it as a dessert there are flavour syrups you can add. Not only is it the most delicious food ever, it's also the perfect hangover cure which made it pretty clutch during carnaval. I'm like obsessed and wish we could get it in Canada!  I had it pretty much every day.

In front of the Lapa Arches outside Sgt Pepper

That night I had the most hilarious dinner experience with Colin, Kyle, and this new guy at our hostel Joe. So we all went out and Colin being the only one that speaks Portuguese did the ordering for the table and gets something to share. About 45 minutes go by (because good service is a concept that doesn't exist in south America), and then the waiter brings one single portion of food to Colin and no one else. At that point we didn't want to wait another 45 minutes, so we all shared his one plate and then got a few slices of pizza down the road. So ridiculous.

 

Sgt Pepper

That night Sgt Pepper was playing yet again, so we went for the third time.  There was this awesome girl group that opened for them.  The show was at a venue beside the lapa arches, which get quite sketchy late at night as we cam to know... When we left the show around 3 or 4 there were all these hookers hanging out there who kept harassing all the boys I was with and wouldn't leave them alone.  There was even one pregnant hooker who was drinking beer.  It was really sad.  The cab ride home we took was terrifying.  There were 5 of us, but we decided to all cram into one cab, and since I was the smallest I was sitting on Kyle's lap and had no seat belt, and this crazy cabby was going into turns at like 70km/hr in the city.  I thought I was going to die.  I hate the drivers here.

 

Friday Maria and I went to the centro and went into a free centro cultural with a bunch of great exhibits--it was like 3 floors of mixed medium art, and the best part was that there was no religious iconography!  We also went into the legislature, which used to be a prison.  Before this we headed to the National History Museum which was in an amazing building, and taught us the really interesting history of Brazil.  Women got the right to vote in 1933!  And their second King was just a baby when his father returned to Portugal; aides ruled for him until he was 14 at which point he took control of the throne!  And he instituted a bunch of reforms to make education accessible, and to eventually lead to democracy...not your average king.  Maria and I also went to 2 more cultural centres in the afternoon...Rio is full of all these free art exhibits all over the city--it's amazing!

 

National Library Foyer

On Saturday Joe and I went into the centro again and did a tour of the National Library.  It was all in Portuguese, but Joe was translating some of it for me, and I could pick out a few of the sentences.  The library is HUGE and so grand, and they are getting thousands of new arrivals every single day.  The stacks aren't public, and there's a dumbwaiter to send books up and down from the stacks to the desk.  After that we went to the Museo de Bela Artes which was also huge and free!  They had a few awesome temporary exhibits, and a really extensive permanent collection...a giant room of religious iconography which I practically ran through, and some really great contemporary art as well.  We didn't get through the whole place though, because we were getting hungry for lunch.  Practically everything was closed in the centre, as it's the business centre, so it's dead on the weekends, but we managed to find a nice place with an outdoor patio, and Joe ordered some delicious Bahian dishes.  After lunch we went to the Modern Art Museum which was amazing!  It was also huge, and after completing 2 and a half giant floors, we didn't have the energy to finish the last exhibit.  I could spend a month easily just going to museums and cultural centres here in Rio--they're all so interesting, but you can only cram so much into a day.  We had been planning on going to Scenarium that night--apparently it regularly ranks in the top ten of the world's best bars, but it was expensive, and I was tired so I figured I'd give my liver a rest.

Sunday was the very last Bloko and it was so much fun!  Kyle, Colin, Fiona, Brett, Maria, and I headed down to the city centre at like 10am for the start decked out in feathers, leis, facepaint, devil horns, and festive spirits.  Even though Carnaval officially ended on Mardi Gras, there were final celebrations until the end of the weekend.  There was a huge float with musicians on it slowly making it's way through the thousands of people filling the streets.  When it was over Colin, Kyle, and I had the most ridiculous lunch ever.  We were all decked out in our gear, me with a huge feather sticking off me sitting on this patio surrounded by normal looking people.  Colin did the ordering and redeemed himself from the one-man dinner debacle--he got this really yum rice dish to go with the fish and meat.  We later found out that one of Colin's friends saw us lunching, but didn't want to come say hi because we were too ridiculous looking.

 

When we got back to the hostal after lunch we started to get ready for the futbol match that night!  A vancab picked up Fiona, Brett, and I from the hostal and again drove so terrifyingly that I was sure my death was imminent.  To curb violence in the stands, there is no drinking allowed in the stadium, so the driver dropped us off in a gas station parking lot a block from the stadium and told us we had half an hour to chug beer before heading to the entrance...um ok.  The match was super fun--the stands were full and the crowds were insane!  And we had really good seats.  But there were these super creepy guys who kept like staring me down which was really uncomfortable, so I ended up moving to a higher seat.  When we got back to the hostel, everyone was pre-ing for an apparent beach party in Ipanema.  So Colin, Kyle, a couple Norweigan girls, and I set off for the beach, but when we got there it was completely empty.  No DJ, no people, no party.  We found a little bar on the beach to hang out at, and then super randomly out of the blue Pedro shows up!  He had been working when we left, but he decided to join us when he got off and just turned up.  Then some of them decided that swimming in the ocean at night, in the dark, while drunk was a good idea.  And despite my protests they did, so I became neurotic staring at them and getting angry convinced they were going to go out too far and get caught in the current.  They were all fine, but one of the Norweigans had left her purse alone on the beach at one point, and Colin saw some guys steal it: he chased them down and got the purse back, but they had already stolen the phone out of it, and we had no way to prove it/get it back.  Despite the drunken swimming and stolen phone, it was still a really fun last night in Rio.

 

Brett, Fiona, and I at the Futbol match  

Monday our little crew went out for Acai in the morning before they headed off for the beach and I hopped on a bus to Paraty.  I did nothing other than lie on the beach and swim while in Paraty--my hostel was across the street from the beach, and although it wasn't the nicest beach in the area, it was empty, and conveniant.  I also ran into Sam and Sophie and my last day there--they were staying in Trinidade, but had come to Paraty for the day for a boat trip, so that afternoon we met up for some drinks on the beach, and then they came to my hostal for one of those all-you-can-eat meat BBQs that seem to be so popular on this continent.  It was really nice to see them again, but they had to catch the last bus back to Trinidade, so it was an early night.

 

Last night in Brasil!

I got back to Rio on Thursday, went to Copocabana and walked around for a bit, and then was convinced by Kyle and Colin that if I tried to sleep and wake up for my 4am pickup for the airport, I would probably sleep through my alarm and miss the flight, so the more responsible thing to do would be to stay up all night and just sleep on the plane.  Seemed reasonable.  So we all went for dinner, and then headed to Lapa to see some local bands play.  Even Pedro and Maria were there!  So it was really nice to hang out with everyone one last time before I headed to Ecuador.  And after staying up til my flight, I slept for the entirety of both flights.  The line though in Lima for security for flight transfers took 50 minutes.  So all connecting flights were delayed to ensure all passengers would make their connections.  I don't quite understand why you need to go through security again if you literally just stepped off the plane, but Lima needs to get its shit together.  And then after waiting that long in line, there were idiots who hadn't taken off their belts, or had stuff in their pockets and were setting off the sensor.  Unimpressed.  And then in Quito, they had opened their new airport the day before I arrived, so obviously nothing was running smoothly, and it was a 2 hour cabride into town.