River of January
We arrived in Rio just in time to catch the final days of Carnaval. We met up with Sara, thanks to Carolyn, and got to participate with the locals. Think of a block party/street party that actually walks in the streets with singing and dancing and when one finishes you move onto the next block or park.
Sara and her friends were great tour guides the next day. They navigated us around the city, showing us the famous beaches and taking us up to the top of Sugar Loaf for great views of the city.
Thursday was back to work for everybody, so we arranged for a city tour that took us to the places we didn’t have time for the day before. The most famous stop was of course the statue of Christ the Redeemer, locally known as “the Christ”. Our tour guide tried to take us there first but that he was shrouded in mist. Rio had been having very hot and sunny weather for the past 2 months, but when we showed up it decided to rain. We continued the tour through the national park which is the largest urban forest in the world. We went to the the holiest place in the city, Maracana Stadium (the soccer stadium) and placed our hands and feet along the walk of fame. The sky started to clear so the guide decided to race back up the hill to try to catch of glimpse of Jesus again. This time the fog cleared just long enough for us to take a couple of pictures and as we stood there he disappeared into the fog again. Do you think this has anything to do with the beginning of Lent? Kinda eerie…
By now we were starving, we had a late lunch in the historic, bohemian neighborhood of Santa Teresa. Of course, the tour guide helped us pick out the traditional food, feijoada. This is a black bean, rice and meat stew dish with a couple of sides to sprinkle in. Very good and very filling. The last stop on the tour was at the famous steps of Lapa. A Chilean painter, Selaron, moved to Brazil and transformed the steps into beautiful artwork. We got to meet the man and look around for tiles from all over the world.
After our day long adventure, Sara and friends took us to a safe favela, Santa Maria. The police have had a strong presence in the community, the government installed a tram to go to the top and they even did an extreme makeover on one of the houses. The tram was only functioning half way up, but it still provided terrific views of the city. We found the made over house, which sells refreshments and then went back down to find dinner. We finished the evening trying some microbrew, DeVassa. Apparently, Paris Hilton does their advertising.
We are currently “enjoying” our 24 hour layover in Lima.