Brazil: First stop, Rio!

October 29 - November 1:

Our flight from Lima, Peru was through Sao Paulo and landed late at night in Rio. We had pre-booked a, night´s stay at a hotel in the center, an area specifically called Lapa, before moving on to the neigborhood of Ipanema. The hotel, was the cheapest we could find in one of the safer areas and had to laugh at its name, "Hotel Snob", which clearly does not fit our description!!

Since we did not arrive until midnight or so, we had no place to eat and luckily we could resort to room service! Maybe we are snobs after all, he he! It was while attempting to read the menu, that our realization of not knowing the Brazilian language was first tested...that ordering food (and, generally, communicating) would be a challenge from then on!! Other than a few names of items that appeared similar to Spanish, we could not disipher 98% of the menu. We pulled out our little Portuguese language book, which had a section for menus, but that didn´t help much either!! We finally decided on what we understood to be a mixed salad, a side of rice and a side of beans!! We were both famished and weren´t up to being too adventurous by ordering 'unknown' items. Yikes!...we figured out the food but then we had to order over the phone!! I dialled the operator and spoke in Spanish, praying that the person would understand! Luckily, she did. It took at least an hour for the food to arrive, by which point it was about 2am!! We uncovered the food and were surprised by the large portions!! We somehow managed to eat most of it.

The next morning, we enjoyed a nice buffet breakfast - a huge change from the usual bread and jam breakfasts of Peru. We left, our backpacks at the front desk and then went off for the day to explore the center of Rio. From the hotel, we walked through a park to get to the local bus stop. Once there, we spent about 15 minutes just to locate the correct bus stand. The road was lined with bus stands with corresponding bus numbers, but with little information about destinations. Finally, after asking 2 to 3 people, a man pointed us in the right direction and we boarded a bus towards the Natural History Museum.

We were already a little pekish by the time we got to the museum, that the very atmospheric restaurant, packed full of locals (having their lunch break from work), tempted us. We shared a couple of light bites and then entered the exhibit halls.

The museum was very interesting. Neither of us realized the oldness of Brazil´s history. The first section of the museum included information and artifacts relating to the indigenous people, or tribes, of Brazil. This section was actually relatively small in comparison to the rest of the museum, dedicated to the colonial period! The latter section had a huge amount of artifacts in comparison to that of the indigenous history (no suprise, I guess!).

After the museum we walked towards the commercial area of the center in order to locate a cafe that my sister had mentioned that we must go to. The cafe is called "Confeiteria Colombo" and is indeed a wonderful cafe that one could sit in for hours. The cafe is very untraditional and clearly an establishment among locals and tourists. It is beautifully decorated in an art-nouveau style and lined with giant wooden framed mirrors from Belgium!! Here they serve some lunch type foods (salads and sandwiches), but also a whole selection of savoury pasteries and delicious desserts.

The next stop on our list was to walk around the neighbourhood of Santa Theresa. According to our 2010 Lonely Planet guide book we could take a streetcar (tram), but once we located the station it all looked closed down. A guard emerged from behind the gate and told us we needed to take a bus, instead. A few days later we got into a converstation about this streetcar with some tourists from Spain. Sure enough, the service, which was mostly used by tourists, was made non-operational after 2 accidents occured.

Once we got to the edge of the neighbourhood of Santa Theresa, we got off the bus and walked towards a staircase, Escadaria de Salarón,  that I had read about in our guide book. In 1990, a crazy Chilean artist decided to cover the edge of about 215 steps with tiles from 120 countries. The work was still in progress at the time our guide book was published, but we reaped the full effect of the artist´s intentions as, unkowingly, all steps had already been covered. The effect can be appreciated especially when looking uphill from the bottom of the staircase, in which the stairs almost blend together into a mosaic of colours, words and designs - very unique and picturesque!

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the bottom, it was a little too late in the day for us to go back up toward Santa Theresa. As a result, we didn´t get to see as much of the neighbourhood as we had hoped. The neighbourhood is on a hill overlooking the city and is a popular place for artists to reside.

The bottom of the staircase ends up in Lapa and so we walked back for about 20 minutes to the hotel, passing under a random aqueduct-looking structure. We realized later that the discontinued streetcar passed over this structure, at one point. We picked up our backpacks at the hotel and got into a taxi to our hostel, Mango Tree, in Ipanema.

After leaving our bags in our bedroom, we ventured out to walk along the beach of Ipanema. Even on the way to our hostel, we noticed that the area was nothing like we imagined. Neither of us expected the beach to be lined with highrise buildings, mostly hotels and apartments. We both had envisioned low buildings, including houses, restaurants, bars and stores. Instead, the commercial area of Ipanema (and Copacabana) is all around the interior side. There were actually no restaurants by the beach, only shacks selling fast food, fresh coconut juice and other drinks could be found at several points along the sidewalk. I was looking forward to sitting at a restaurant, overlooking the ocean/beach - I think that´s the Greek side of me! Ok, so we did come across one restaurant by the beach, but then we decided that it was too windy to sit outside and nothing too special sitting inside at night...so picky!!

Back to our walk along the beach...We strolled along for quite a while, people watching and taking in the views. Along the sidewalk, there is a lane for pedestrians running, jogging, cycling etc. This was being used by quite a few people. We also noticed several workout stations on the beach where people could do their sit-ups, pull-ups etc. using a metal frame structure. In other spots along the way, there were groups of people playing a volleyball type game, which neither of us had seen before. Instead of using ones arms/hands to hit the ball, they used their shoulders, foreheads or legs/feet...I guess like playing football but with a volleyball net!?! It was quite amazing to watch. Other people were working out with instructors who had set up various strengthening and cardiac exercise stations. One pays the instructor to participate in these and, again, there were several of them along the way! Overall, at night, the beach becomes one long place for people to do their workouts!! No interior gym needed! How nice, I would workout everyday, if only I had a beach like that to go to along with hundreds of other people doing the same to motivate me!

As we approached the adjacent neighborhood of Leblon, we began to head back and walked the interior streets a little to find a restaurant. We ended up in a bar/restaurant where we had risotto and our first Brazilian beer. The risotto was good and the beer...well, let´s just say it tasted very mild!

The next day we headed to the beach in the morning. Swimming is not so easy in these waters, as the waves are quite big and strong. Rakesh got his legs wet and I managed to take a quick dip before getting knock over by the next wave coming toward me! Otherwise, we hung out on the beach for a little and had to ignore   (or constantly shake our heads to say "no" to) the many vendors who came our way, selling drinks or merchandise.

Back at the hostal we asked for a restaurant recommendation for lunch. We were told about a lovely "per kilo" restaurant, called Papafina, close by. In fact, we had read in our guide book that Brazil has a lot of these "per kilo" restaurants, which I think is a fantastic idea and is actually cheaper than going to a regular restaurant. It was good for us, too, as we could see the food (buffet) and not have to guess the items on a menu. For some reason, however, other than doing our own cooking, we still ended up going to regular restaurants and continued to have the same problem of not knowing what to order. As a result, overall, we weren't as adventurous with eating local Brazilian food, as we would have if we understood what the items were. Instead, we often had the same food (i.e. Rice, beans, shrimp, pizza, pasta) etc.).

After lunch, we boarded a local bus to get to the famous "Christo Redentor", or "Christ the Redeemer", situated on top of a 700m mountain. One can walk up to the peak, but we chose the lazy way and took the funicular. The statue is very impressive. According to wikipedia, it´s the largest Art Deco statue in the world, measuring about 30m in height and width and sits on top of a 9.5m pedestal. The views down on the city of Rio and beyond were also quite impressive, though obscured a little by smog!

We took the bus back toward the hostal, but ended up getting off at the wrong stop, way in advance. We were in the neighbourhood of Leblon at that point, I believe a little ritzier than Ipanema, but I may be wrong. 

That night we took a long walk along Ipanema beach and into Copacabana, hoping to find a restaurant overlooking the beach. Copacabana is similar to Ipanema, but not as populated and not as safe at night. It has a lot of Petrobras gas stations along the middle of the road, too, so probably not as nice as Ipanema. We came across the restaurant I mentioned above, but because it was not worth sitting outside, we ended up back near the hostal, at an Italian restaurant. Maybe that´s how much we needed to have some familiar food!! We ordered a pizza, and much to our regret, it wasn´t very good at all...and expensive, too!!

The next morning, we got up early and took a taxi to the airport for our departure to Manaus!! It was still dark outside and this was the first time where it dawned on me that taxis (and other vehicles, I believe) do not stop at red lights, at night, in order to avoid the risk of an assault!

We returned to Rio before leaving Brazil. More about this city, later.