rjbs in Rio, part ⅰ
So, I went to Rio de Janeiro! It was great, and it’ll probably take me several entries to sufficiently cover the trip. Here we go!
Background
The background for this trip is worth mentioning. For years, I’ve been seeing my friend Breno at the annual Perl Toolchain Summit. He was also a regular in an online D&D game I ran. All the time, he’d say, “Look, man, you’ve gotta come visit Brazil. It’d be so great!” I would say, “I bet it would, but I really mostly travel where work sends me, and I can’t see a work trip to Brazil happening any time in the near future.”
Then, early last year, I got an email from a frequent flyer program telling me that if I didn’t use my reward miles, I’d lose them. I managed to not lose them immediately, but it seemed like this was a sign. I tried to think of where I might go, and I remembered all of Breno’s exhortations. I looked it up, and I could definitely get to Rio and back on miles. I emailed him and said, “Okay, when would be good?” He wrote back with a long enthusiastic analysis of the year, including this:
The Festas Juninas are probably less known outside Brazil but also very typical and popular, happening all over the country in June/July, usually in the afternoon or at dusk. it’s less crowded and “partyesque” but there is dancing and fire and costumes and very typical food and drinks that are harder to find the rest of the year.
Sounded perfect! I decided to make plans.
Getting there
Over the course of the next year, this went from vague idea to definite plan, and I started to put together a list of things I’d like to see or do. I read a lot of “what you must see in Rio” pages, plus ones that covered more obscure topics. I asked Breno and Barbara (Breno’s wife, also a friend) to tell me whether my list was any good. By the time the trip was upon me, I had what felt like a great set of things to do. Even better, Barbara provided a suggested day-by-day agenda, which would’ve been a pain for me. It included a bunch of “and then we’ll take you to something we think is really worth it.” Who could ask for more?
Meanwhile, though, the articles I read kept saying, “You’re going to love Rio! It’s so wonderful! You are definitely at high risk of getting mugged, though!” Mostly I shrug this stuff off. I live in Philly, and I’m used to people talking about my home like it’s a warzone. Still, I got a little anxious. Breno reassured me, I decided to keep my phone in my purse, and I tried to put aside any fears. Then, on the 18th, I got my bag and headed to the airport. It was going to be a bit of a long trip, but I’m used to going to Australia. This would be no big deal.
Really, it mostly wasn’t. The only complication was that instead of a 6 hour layover between flights, I had a 6 hour layover plus a 16 hour delay. It was mostly overnight, so I didn’t get to tool around Miami. I mostly sat around the lounge and the Holiday Inn and watched TV. It was fine, but I didn’t love losing a day.
Eventually, I landed at GIG. (Did you know that Rio’s international airport is named after the guy who wrote The Girl from Ipanema? It is!). Instead of landing at 8:00 in the morning, I landed around 1:00 in the morning, and then I had to get through immigration and customs and find a cab. Then the cab got pulled over by the police, who ordered me out of the car at gunpoint and searched all my stuff. Honestly, I might have been more nervous if I wasn’t so tired.
Thursday
I feel a bit badly about beginning my trip story this way, but it’s how it began. The good news (spoilers!) is that it was the only remotely worrying event of my trip, and I wan’t even really worried at any point. We were let go pretty quickly, and then I was in my apartment and asleep. The next day, I was on the beach and everything was good.
My first day was supposed to be Wednesday, which I would’ve spent exploring the beaches and maybe finding one of the nearby art museums, but that was shot. It was Thursday, and that meant lunch with Breno and Babs and their daughter. We had “angu”, which I’d describe as something like a polenta-and-offal stew. It was great, right up my alley!
Then it was on to the Museum of Tomorrow (the architecture was great, but we mostly coasted through the exhibits), and then São Cristóvão Fair, which I later described as “what if Philly’s Reading Terminal Market was in Brazil and had three competing live music acts at all times”. It was great, although a little loud. We had a bunch more delicious food (lots of photos on Flickr), and I had my second caipirinha of the day. If I have one regret of the trip, it’s not drinking more of those. I suspect it’ll be hard to find or make a good one at home, but we’ll see.
A caipirinha is a bit like a daquiri. It’s made with cachaça, which is a bit like white rum. Then sugar, lime, and ice. It seems like the drink of Brazil, or at least Rio. (Brazil is huge. If you sort of vaguely agree that Brazil isn’t very small, go look it up. It’s the fifth largest country in the world, smaller than the USA and larger than Australia. I don’t want to get accused of saying something like “the mint julep is the drink of the US”.) Anyway, I had probably four or five across the trip, and I could’ve done with more like eight.
The music at the fair was foreshadowing. There was lots of live music all over the place, and it didn’t seem like a tourist gimmick. It was always pretty upbeat, and everybody sang along and danced with everything. “Oh, this is a very famous song,” was definitely one of the things Breno said to me the most.
Also notable: the ice cream. Breno pointed at the menu – and I’m sorry to say I didn’t get a photo! “On the right,” he said, “are all the boring flavors you know. Chocolate, vanilla, mint. Who cares? On the left, though, it’s all fruit flavors, and I won’t bother translating, because you don’t have words in English for any of these. They’re all South American fruits.” I had jaboticaba. The ice cream was very good, but the exciting thing was this list of weird fruits that I’d never heard of. Weirder, jaboticaba fruit grow right on the trunk of the tree? Just weird.
There was at least one fruit on the list that I did know: pineapple. I was surprised and pleased to learn, though, that in Brazil they don’t call pineapple ananás, as they do in Portugal and nearly everywhere else. They call it abacaxi. Rejecting the worldwide standard name for that fruit made the people of Brazil seem even more like my brothers and sisters. Too bad they still use the metric system.
After the fair, Breno dropped me off at my apartment. There’s only an hour of time difference from home to Rio, but I was beat. I wasn’t ready to collapse into sleep, but I was no good for any kind of conversation by the end of the night. I zoned out and eventually crashed.
Friday
Friday was my first day on my own, and I had a plan: Sugarloaf! Sugarloaf Mountain is a 1300’ mountain at the mouth of Rio’s bay. It’s called Sugarloaf because it looks like a sugarloaf. A sugarloaf is how sugar was sold for hundreds of years, well until the 19th century, so I guess at one point it was pretty useful to say “it’s that mountain that looks like a sugarloaf!” Now, I think of a sugarloaf as “a compressed hunk of sugar shaped like that mountain in Rio”.
I knew the mountain would have a good view of the city and the bay, but I was mostly in it for the cable car ride. I’m not sure why, since I’m not a huge lover of heights, but it seemed pretty compelling. Before I came down, Breno had said, “the cable car! Like in Moonraker!” I had never watched Moonraker, so I watched it on the flight down. I don’t recommend it. On the other hand, the cable car ride was great. Happily, the mountain was even better than that!
I’d hoped to ride up in the mid-afternoon so that I could ride down during sunset. In retrospect, I think I could’ve made that work, but it wasn’t a clear win at the time. I hadn’t been able to buy tickets online, so I’d have to go out to the mountain and hope to get timed entry tickets for a reasonable time. I didn’t want to get there only to find out that I couldn’t get tickets, so I ended up going early. I wasn’t disappointed, and honestly I’m not sure I’d have been any happier with sunset.
The cable car actually goes to two mountains. First, to Urca Hill, then Sugarloaf Mountain. It’s two separate cable car rides, and you can spend as much time as you want on Urca Hill between them. I spent a few hours, and it was great. There was food (I had corn, a sausage sandwich, ice cream, and later a beer), there were crafts, and there were amazing views in every direction. When I couldn’t appreciate the view any more, I sat down and read a book for ten minutes, then got back to the view. It was excellent.
That view above is actually from Urca Hill. In the distance, you can see Corcovado (“the hunchback”), the mountain on which Rio’s giant Christ the Redeemer statue stands. It was visible from all over the city, and I saw it up close and personal later in the trip. This was one of the cooler views of it, though.
From Urca Hill, I took the second cable car to Sugarloaf. It was very cool, and I think the views were marginally better, but it was much more crowded-feeling in that smaller space, and the food and shops weren’t inviting. I didn’t stay up there half as long as I was on Urca Hill. In fact, when I got back to Urca Hill I spend more time there, getting an ice cream cone and doing some people-watching.
After that, I was ready for a break. I got back to my apartment, zoned out for a little bit, and then hit the grocery. I picked up OJ, eggs, bread, and tea, which meant that I could start every day with a little breakfast. That meant I wouldn’t be hungry until dinner, most days, if I kept busy, which made every day easier. I also picked up a packet of Globo biscuits, which are a sort of flavorless cassava-based Funyun. They were everywhere, in Rio, but also had nothing much to recommend them other than the crunchiness.
I also also picked up some iced mate tea, which I enjoyed drinking most days. I think I’m going to see if I can get any tea leaves for making it at home, but we’ll see.
After I’d relaxed for a while, I headed to Arpoador, the peninsula between the Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. There’s a big rock there (Arpoador Rock), which some people say is the best place in the world to see the sunset. I was skeptical, but it was very good. The rock was swarming with people, but I managed to find a place to watch the sun set. There are lots more photos in my trip album, but here’s one:
After that, I walked slowly back to my apartment. I stopped at two concerts, both of which were great, and I had a Brahma beer, which was good, especially for the weather. I didn’t get to try many Brazilian beers, but I enjoyed this one. Looking back, I wish I’d bought one more beer to drink on the walk. I should try to enjoy “walk with a beer” time when traveling to places where that’s legal.
Eventually, I made it back to my apartment and turned in. More on the rest of the trip in future posts!