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Post by ilbonito on Aug 18, 2010 9:06:18 GMT
Ten years ago, Rio was the first place I ever went. Last year I decided go go back and renew my love affair with the city that had blown me away. When I touched down in Rio I was amazed how familiar it seemed, how I could still navigate the streets, so long after the fact. But there were also things I forgot; the 70s-ness of it, all tiled walls and Volkswagon Beetles and curving, rushing concrete freeways. The palm trees, the smell of it; a flowery night breeze tinged with the sea, and stale urine and rotting vegetation and that unexplainable “tropical night” smell (although its not unpleasant, as you might think from that description). The burger chain called “Bobs” which I now remember seeing everywhere back then, too. I have changed a lot in the last ten years, but ( my first impression anyway) is that Rio hasn't. It didn’t hit me at first – I felt strangely flat as the plane touched down. No “Wow! I`m back!” feeling. But the next morning, when I dropped into the local butcher (who also sells snacks and soft drinks), I heard a strange whistling sound, and looked up to see a canary in a little cage. Suddenly the radio changed, to a song by local star Marisa Monte. Here I was in a rough-as-guts butcher shop, with blood dripping onto the tiles as the old man hacked into huge pieces of meat, singing along to this dream-like music, with the chirping canary hitting the high notes. Fucking hell, I thought. I’m in Rio. It happened again on a crowded bus, where a boy started banging out a rhythm on a styrofoam crate (loudly!) as if it were a drum. In other countries people might be pissed off, or (more likely) just sit sternly and give him the look of death, but here half the bus joined in, tapping away at the bus poles with their hands to keep time, and seemed disappointed when he stopped. This is the spirit of this most fun-loving, life affirming city where people famously stand to applaud the dying sun each night, as it sets over Ipanema beach, thanking it for a job well done. (Brazilians love an enthusiastic round of applause, often for things that Anglo-saxons might not consider worthy of such encouragement: they clap when the sun goes down, they clap as planes touch down at airports. At the Botanic Gardens one day a group of kids spotted a toucan sitting in a palm tree, and amid excited bursts of “tucano, tucano” they all started clapping. Of course the bird flew away). Another time, as downtown traffic (on a narrow road between two jungly peaks) ground to a halt, the drivers decided on an impromptu protest at the cops directing traffic. They all put their hands down on their horns, and left them there, the canyon filling with the echoes of their irritation. A tall, tanned, stunning, curly-haired blonde boy got out of one one car, and with impossible grace, pulled out a skateboard and glided down the centre of the street (topless), quickly disappearing out of sight, between the lines of stalled cars. That is Rio to me; taking joy in life wherever you find it – the setting sun, or a song on the radio, or riding on a bus. Feeling the sun on your back, or seeing a beautiful person on the beach or the street, or the freedom of skating down a busy road, or a canary or a toucan. Everything here is a cause for celebration. The Olympics should be spectacular.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 18, 2010 9:08:38 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 18, 2010 9:19:29 GMT
I have always thought though that Rio has an image problem. Tourists fly in for sun, sand and samba, or ready to party through Carnaval, and usually, fly out more than satisfied. But there is so much more to the city that somehow goes unnoticed; it is less a beach resort that a city of almost ten million people, and a Third World city at that, with all the complexity that implies. It is also a city of history; once the capital of a worldwide empire (the Portuguese court fled from Napoleon to set up there)/. Thereafter it was the capital of Brazil for three hundred years, a city of palaces and colonial villas, presidents, writers and artists. It was home to a host of the most important Brazilian cultural figures: architects like Niemeyer and Burl Marx, slaves and emperors, classical composer Hector Villa-Lobos and blonde TV hostess Xuxa, great dramatists and writers and Hollywood pin-up girl Carmen Miranda. It is a city that has been at the vanguard of Twentieth Century architecture, and given birth to music like samba, bossa nova and baile funk (not to mention the Carnival itself!) , and that reverberates with a unique urban mythology. Rio is rich in folklore figures; heroes and villains, ghosts, spirits and gangsters, Afrobrazilian religions and spiritualist cults. All of which makes it fascinating.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 18, 2010 9:21:04 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 18, 2010 9:26:34 GMT
Apparently a lot of tourists are disappointed with Copacabana. I can’t imagine why; its endlessly entertaining. I guess it depends on what you are expecting. With its famous beach and glamorous oceanfront hotels, I guess people expect it to be an idyllic holiday resort. But in fact, its a thriving mini-city. Squeezed between the sea and jagged mountains on three sides, Copacabana was virtually uninhabited until the 1920s, when engineers drilled tunnels through the mountains to connect it to the rest of the city. The population boomed. Today, 500,000 people live in Copacabana. That is the highest population density in the world, higher even than Hong Kong. They live piled on top of each other in the graceful early 20th century apartment blocks that still line most streets, and pour out at all hours to fill the streets with noise and color. (As I have discovered from staying in one, one of the downsides of these otherwise beautiful buildings is that the rooms get very little light. Maybe thats why everyone is always at the beach?) The streets themselves are planted with lush native Brazilian trees that twist and tangle, or sprout up in little groups of palms, or are draped with vines and lianas, and the pavements throughout the district are made of that lovely (but slippery in the rain, and costly to maintain) black and white patterned tile. And just when you tire of the noise, and constant honking of bus horns and blaring music, you look up and see something like this: What other city in the world can compare? Another surprise for many visitors is that Copacabana is not a particularly exclusive area. Just one block from the 500 dollar-a-night hotels along the stunning beach, are middleclass neighborhoods where black and white Brazilians live, and the commercial zones that serve them: shoe shops, 24 hour supermarkets, the kind of things real people actually need to live, not just selling tourist trinkets. Copacabana is also statistically one of the oldest suburbs in Brazil. Parts of it are virtual retirement communities, where elderly ladies stroll with their grandsons or hired (always black) helpers. Perhaps not as glamorous as some people had in mind, but its charming and “real” nonetheless. I stayed in the Bairrio Peixote, Copacabana’s Jewish neighborhood (though you wouldnt know it from the mostly black faces in the street), in a converted 1930s apartment building right under one of the hulking green mountains, that opens on to a charming square with mosaic footpaths and overgrown trees, and local teenagers playing football and a guy who sells popcorn in the evenings. I love it.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 18, 2010 9:27:43 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 18, 2010 10:24:10 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2010 13:34:34 GMT
I'm sold. Really, Rio is a place that I've always known that I must experience, like Buenos Aires, without any agenda of "sights to see" but just because I like to let huge cities overwhelm me with their individual peculiarities, aromas and flavours. Your photos are perfect to give a non spectacular view of Rio as a real place and not just as a photo op. But a sheer cliff dropping right down into a city is breathtaking no matter where it is. I would imagine that even if Pão de Açúcar squeezes the city in certain ways, it also provides a sort of ecological protection that cannot be covered with buildings.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 19, 2010 8:42:07 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 19, 2010 8:56:39 GMT
Away from Copacabana's beaches, Rio's Centro district hums away as you would expect from the nerve-centre of a city of ten million. Its a fascinating place, full of old historic corners, crowds and cafes, markets and grand old squares, brutal 50s urban planning and rotting warehouses turning into deluxe nightclubs. Swathes of the city are now being redeveloped as the city's fortunes bounce back after decades of gentle decline. The Olympics, new oil money, a booming national economy and a reborn pride in the city centre's (considerable) attractions means that the area is once again attracting considerable investment. It is still far from squeaky-clean, however: The Saara ("sahara") is a network of little streets full of shops selling cheap clothes and tinselly Carnival costumes, run by Jewish and Arab merchants: This was spooky in a shop selling items for the form of voodoo-like black magic known perjoratively as "macumba". In one leafy upperclass street in a suburb of the city I saw a dead frog lying outside a building's door. My brazilian friend insisted we cross the street. he explained that it was a curse; you write a name on a piece of paper, put it in a frog's mouth and sew the mouth shut. When we walked past again the next day, a host of white candles were burning on the footpath. The inhabitants were fightign back with quimbanda or "white magic".
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 19, 2010 9:01:23 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 19, 2010 9:06:55 GMT
The centre of Rio is also blessed with some modernist masterpieces: a striking comic book-style art deco tower for a train station, a brutalist art museum in a tropical garden by the sea, and most amazing of all, this building, the old Ministry of Education. It is hard to believe now the world's cities bristle with them, but this was the first glass-fronted office tower in the world, standing on columns in a marble-and mosaic, palm shaded courtyard. Also - the Rubics cube like headquarters of state oil company Petrobras The love-it-or-hate it Aztecs-meets-UFO Cathedral (above hung with a sign by - of all people - antiHalloween protesters saying "Brazil is a Christian country, Halloween is satanism!" And across the bay in the adjacent city of Niteroi, looking abck at Rio, the sensually curving new Modern Art Museum by 101-year old Oscar Nieweyer, to be the centrepiece of a series of twelve new designs by the ageing master.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 19, 2010 9:24:30 GMT
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Post by Jazz on Aug 19, 2010 17:14:23 GMT
I’m canceling the new roof and going to Rio for 10 days. What a sumptuous thread. You always give a vibrant and unexpected sense of wherever you travel. Two of the photos I love are the tiled staircase, and the magnificent photo in #4, the mountainside. I am stunned that the art gallery was designed by Oscar Nieweyer…101 years old!. Thanks, Il Bonito.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 19, 2010 21:05:00 GMT
The staircase is marvelllous. It was designed and built by a Chilean artist called Jorge Selaron, as a gift to the people of Rio. You will often see him working there and he is happy to talk to visitors. He asks people to send a tile from their home country to add to the mosaic.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 20, 2010 1:38:35 GMT
What a great look, Ilbonito. All I could think was, "WHY haven't I been there?!" I'm not a beach person, so was grateful that you showed the look of the city in pictures and deftly summed up its character in words. The bus story is wonderful. Fabulous photos, as always -- the modern buildings, then that first one in #12 that seems soaked in essence of colonialism, the guy running next to the beach (1st one, #8), the mimosa shreds on the old bricks, but most wonderful of all -- that photo you caught from under the yellow awning, looking up at the building facades ~
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 6:22:01 GMT
Yeah I think Rio gets overshadowed by its own spectacular setting - the mountains and beaches and forests are amazing, but a lot of the design and architecture is pretty cool too, and it is often not really appreciated...
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 6:28:33 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 6:34:41 GMT
You can’t really go to Rio and not talk about the favelas, they are such a huge (and now, famous) part of the city. And they are everywhere. One day I was walking through Ipanema, the uppercrust suburb where the huge Louis Vuitton store is, and turned a corner to find a stream of poor black people climbing down a cliff on a ladder, from corrugated iron shacks at the top. It was a stunning moment; of course you know that Brasil is like that, but when you see it, its still hard to comprehend. Up to one in four Rio inhabitants are said to be live in the favelas, which vary widely; most have electricity and cable TV, many favela-dwellers have credit cards. Some are little better than precarious fields of shacks, built on almost sheer cliffs. Some have horrendous levels of violent crime while others are considered (for locals, if not visitors) to be pretty safe. But to outsiders, they are a (scary) world unto themselves, cities within cities and societies with society. Historically, Rio has never know what to do with them; to ship favela-dwellers out to underfunded suburban housing projects (“The City of God”), or kill them (Candelaria) or simply to ignore them. In the last few years the city government has admitted this approach didn’t work and has now launched the “Bairrio Favela” program to integrate the shantytowns with the rest of the city, with parks, roads and healthcare centres under construction. Prices for properties in some of these areas have since increased 30% and the number of businesses in them doubled (according to wikipedia). The most famous, Rocinha, is currenty the site of a proposed urban regeneration project featuring a mall, a cablecar and a welcoming arch by Oscar Niermeyer (although how much this will benefit the existing inhabitants is the big question). Favela tourism, of course, is also booming. I didn’t take a favela tour. I’m not sure why. In the past I have defended them. Some people say they are expoiltative and dehumanising, like a trip to the zoo. But then travelling is supposed to be about opening up your eyes to the world’s different realities isn’t it, not keeping them shut? Since when has avoiding an uncomfortable truth been morally superior to at least acknowledging it and learning about it? Favelas are part of the world. Why not see it? But for some reason I didn’t, (maybe my offputting experience with the drunken backpacker crowd, which showed that seeing poverty firsthand doesn’t necessarily make you more sensitive to it.) I did drive through them though, on local buses, on my way to the bus depot (“rodoviaria”) or the suburbs or the airport, through hills of muddy streets and snaking wires and trash-strewn fields, or block after block of bare mortar and brick-walled boxes. Where does a normal, poor neighborhood end and a favela begin? Its not always easy to tell. On my last day in Rio, a huge religious festival was being held at the church at Penha, perched high on a precarious cliff in the city’s Northern suburbs. Pilgrims climb up a staircase of rock on their bare knees, to reach the church. It is a lovely little landmark, visible clearly from the airport, welcoming you to Rio. The base of the hill on which it stands is entirely surrounded by a vast sea of favelas. I had wanted to go to the festival there, but sounded different people out. Some said “no way”, others “go, but be careful”. I didn’t go to Penha either. In the end I decided to play it safe. I wonder what would have happened if I had gone? Guess we’ll never know…
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 6:39:07 GMT
Barra is Rio’s fast-growing satellite city. Its only a few km away from Ipanema and Copacabana, across the mountains and located on a strip of coastal plain with a beautiful beach, a rash of malls, freeways, waterparks and towering condos. Its the popularly known as the Miami of Rio. That may not sound too appetising, but there is one very compelling reason to go there; the busride. In the thirty minutes (and 2 reals) it takes to get from Copacabana you have gone over mountains, by plunging cliffs, through slums and into valleys. Its something no other city in the world could even come close to. I did it the other day, but as I was late for the bus I couldn’t snag a vital window seat (sit on the left!) , and besides I didn’t want to be waving my camera around too much on a Rio public bus. So I have lifted some pictures from google images. Disclaimer; these are not mine. You drive along Ipanema and Leblon beaches, traditionally home of the beautiful (and wealthy) people before twisting up the lower slopes of the beautiful “Dois Irmaos” (Two Brothers) double-capped mountain. The narrow road hugs the side of the mountain, before plunging down on your left into the ocean, with views back over the whole of Ipanema. Then you turn inland a little, with the upper slope on your right the fringes of Vidigal, one of the city´s most notorious favelas. To your left, lie holiday homes with million dollar views. The bus goes right along the dividing line. You sweep down past the beach at the Sheraton Hotel, lying in an isolated cove of white sand and crashing waves, and bizarrely, right at the foot of the slum. Then, the road powers over the last curve of the mountain and through a tunnel, then a stretch of high, stormy cliffs where car-crashing waves splash against the rocks three storeys down. Suddenly the bus curves in and you are greated with the dazzling site of Sao Conrado, surely one of the most incongrous and opulent suburbs anywhere; a hidden valley packed full of chunky 40-storey modernist apartment towers, set against another lovely white sand beach and a towering wall of green rainforest; the flat-topped Rock of Gavea. On the other side, Rocinha (South America’s biggest slum) pours down the slope to meet the gated compounds of the richest or Rio’s rich, who live here in seclusion and shop in the huge and vapidly named “Fashion Mall”. Above, hang-gliders soar through the heavens; the rock above is their favorite launching pad (although the landing beach below is not encouraging known as the Praia do Pepino, after a wellknown hang-glider killed there in an accident). (The rock is also believed locally to be a popular stopping spot for UFOs) Just as you are trying to get your mind around all of this, the road picks up again, through the lush green of the Tijuca forest, the largest urban wood in the world, and sprouts stilts, flying over the ocean itself as it hugs the banana-and-liana covered slope plunging into the sea. Then suddenly, another tunnel, and the road stretches out of a wide green river, backed by yet more cloudtopped, jungle-covered mountains, and passes a sign saying “Welcome to Barra”. (When I pulled in, the connecting bus to “City of God” – in the area – had just left.) An exhilirating trip.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 6:47:49 GMT
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Post by fumobici on Aug 20, 2010 15:28:18 GMT
Amazing. I'm left speechless except to say thank you and what an incredible thread.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 23:18:28 GMT
Thank you Thats pretty much how I felt touching down in Rio on my first overseas foray. The city blew my mind, and its reassuring to know that going back ten years, and a whole lots of travelling later, it wasn't just rose-colored glasses or inexperience - it was all justified. It is simply one of the most sensational places in the world.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 23:22:54 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 23:25:27 GMT
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 20, 2010 23:37:26 GMT
A white rose washed up on Leme beach. White flowers (and perfume) are the favored offerings for Iemanja, the ocean goddess and both are thrown into the sea to win her favor; and a couple clinch during sunset over Ipanema.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 21, 2010 4:17:43 GMT
This is intensely interesting, Ilbonito. I really like your method of posting a thread such as this bit by bit. Your commentary is always so thoughtful that it needs to be absorbed and re-read. The photos need looking at more than once, too, not only for enjoyment, but in order to really see the whole picture that you're presenting.
It's only when I went back and looked at everything that it hit me how very striking -- astounding, really -- but challenging the terrain of Rio is.
In what ways did the last ten years of personal growth and travel affect the way you saw and were affected by Rio this time, if you don't mind my asking?
Thanks so much for this. It is far more balanced and closer to "being there" than anything I've read about Rio in the past.
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 21, 2010 6:39:06 GMT
Thanx Bixa. I was really afraid of going back to Rio because in my memories it was this utterly flamboyant, sensual, amazing place and I thought that maybe after travelling in Asia it wouldn't seem quite so exotic and colourful the second time around. I didn't want to ruin my memories. But as it turns out I needn't have worried - Rio was every bit as magnificent as I had remembered.
It is certainly no paradise though:
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Post by ilbonito on Aug 21, 2010 6:42:13 GMT
The Candelaria Church is where old and new Rio, its beauty and its ugliness, collide. Built in 1775, it is the only survivor of the scourge of central Rio that saw many old mansions and churches demolished to make way for the 8-lane, office lined Avenida Presidente Vargas in the 1950s. Today the church stares down the street. But it is also known for a different reason. Under the influence of Liberation theology, the it became a sanctuary for the poor and the homeless. It was here in 1993 that seventy children, sleeping in the street, were attacked by a police gdeath squadh as part of a clean-up of gundesirablesh in the area. Eight children were killed, and of the 62 survivors (according to wikipedia) a sociologist found that 39 were later killed by the police or by life on the streets The world was horrified. The massacre had apparently been prompted by children throwing stones at police cars. They had been warned gweLll come back and get you later!h but thought little of it, until that night when the cars returned. Of the fifty police offers accused of participating, only 2 were found guilty. One of the survivors, Sandro Rosa do Nascimento, went on to commit one of Brazilfs most notorious crimes, the hijakcing of a bus ( even more shockingly, it was in the gsafeh neighborhood of Jardim Botanico). During a tense stand-off with the police and the media, he called for rights for the homeless and talked of the attempted murder he had escaped at the Candelaria Church. Footage from the bus siege was later made into the acclaimed documentary film Bus 174. In the end, one hostage was shot and Nascimento was arrested but died gof asphyxiationh in the police car back to the station. The horrific events of the massacre at Candelaria are today commemorated by this simple cross, but the questions they screamed out at Brazilian society have still yet to be answered. Compare and contrast it with this: But jarring as these contrasts remain, the city does deserve some credit. Brazil's wealth gap between the haves and have-nots is among the world's most savage but in recent years, the country has led Latin America in making progress. Sure, there is a long, long way to go but for the first time ever, the majority of Brazilians are now classified as "middle class". It is important to realise that favela-dwellers are a minority, not a majority, (even if as a minority they are much too large.) Recently the Rio city government has begun a program to integrate the favelas into the city and provide services - bus routes, garbage collection - for the first time. Under President Lula the country has beefed up its welfare system and now operates a much-lauded food coupon program called "Zero Hunger". Brazil does have huge social issues, there is no denying that fact. And in the setting of Rio's almost otherwordly beauty they are particularly glaring. But the country also deserves more credit than it generally gets (I think) for its progress towards solving them. Until the 1980s Brazil was a military dictatorship. Today it is a healthy democracy powering one of the world's ten largest industrial economies. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will Rio be!
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 22, 2010 5:32:51 GMT
Thank you, Ilbonito. I'm glad Rio was "still there" for you. Reading between the lines of this report, it seems as though you took even deeper pleasure in it this time. True? How do you feel about the news story of the "drug gang members" from "the slums" fighting the police?* Have you been in contact with anyone in Rio about what is going on there and whether or not it's being accurately reported? Are the areas cited real slums, or is that AP sloppy reporting? In the present civic climate of Rio, is a similar "clean up" such as you tell of in the previous post less likely to occur? * www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5juJkPto0-dv9ljbU9X3KkYwqlggwD9HO8FQ01
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