RIO DE JANEIRO
Arriving in the Centerpiece City of my trip, I was prepared but a little fearful because of all the bad press about crime and violence Rio de Janeiro gets throughout the world. So, it may have seemed a bit odd that soon after my post-midnight arrival,
I ventured forth on a damp, dark evening after being assured by the hotel clerk that to do so wasn't particularly dangerous.
My purpose in going out was to scout bus stops for my planned visit with a film executive the following morning. Unlike
the meetings in central São Paulo, I'd been asked to travel twelve or thirteen miles to a studio in the suburbs. While I was looking forward to spend time chatting with a Brazilian movie guy, my experience doing so in other foreign locales told me the odds were that nothing eventful was going to happen and I didn't feel like paying fifty to seventy-five dollars on a round-trip
taxi ride just to say hi.
So, I checked bus routes on the Internet and without much difficulty found one that went directly from Copacabana Beach, where I was staying, to the studio. The only problem as I walked gingerly from the hotel at about one a.m. was that there
didn't appear to be any bus signs on Avenida Atlantica, the main drag that separates the hotel and restaurant strip from
the famed Brazilian beach.
Oh, well, I thought, I'm sure it will be all right, except that while eating breakfast the next morning my view from the rooftop restaurant showed that all the traffic was moving in one direction -- the opposite way I needed to be going.
The hotel clerk told me that this was just until ten a.m., and then the boulevard would revert to two-way. Only problem was
that I was scheduled to leave at 9 a.m. in order to make certain I would arrive at my scheduled meeting in time. However, part
of my research included a map of the bus stops so that I could be certain the line would indeed go to where I needed to be.
So, I knew where the subsequent stops to Copacabana Beach were and just walked a few easy blocks inland from the beach and without waiting too long at all, the magic bus number rounded the corner.
Once again, the infrastructure of Brazil -- at least in the instance of rapid transit -- appeared to be in good working order.
The bus was clean, air conditioned and populated by good law abiding folks.
I'd somehow feared the buses might be crammed as they are in Egypt or India with bodies half out the doors and windows,
but it wasn't the case here or in the other places I visited in Brazil. The fare was slightly higher -- and by that I mean about a dollar, and that might have made the ride even more comfortable as those on a tighter budget than I was might have opted
for a different bus.
It was a very nice drive -- about an hour to the studio. It's conceivable, depending on traffic, that a cab might have gotten there in half the time. But it was comfortable, I wasn't in a hurry and I got to see parts of the city I might not have been able to see,
so for me it was worth the effort. And at a round-trip cost of about four bucks.
From the outset, it was clear that Rio had much more to offer than São Paulo had -- certainly at first glance and from a tourist perspective. That's why the city is renowned and São Paulo for those purposes is not. However, while it was livelier and
more majestic with broad streets and better architecture, it was not the fantastic city I was prepared for and so it was a bit
of a let down.
This isn't to say Rio is not worth a look. Certainly not. Copacabana Beach and the nearby Ipanema are beautiful expanses,
the former with the famous view of Sugar Loaf Mountain. But I've been to prettier beaches, most notably Waikiki with its
view of Diamondhead in the distance, not to mention the sands and vistas of the French Riviera up and down the
Mediterranean coast.
With a week to visit, I did things at a leisurely pace and was fortunate that the inclement weather during my arrival only lasted one more day, which was fine in that I was engaged in my screenwriter business pursuits. My second day, the sun was shining and I decided to go downtown to compare it with São Paulo and to use the relatively new subway, which is attractive and
works well though doesn't take you enormously far.
When I disembarked I immediately saw a city that looked like an important metropolis -- maybe not Paris or London or Madrid
or Vienna or Prague, but with wide boulevards and stately old buildings befitting the former capital it once had been.
I left the weekend for doing typical tourist stuff. Saturday to see the Christ the Redeemer Statue and Sunday for the Sugar Loaf Mountain cable ride. In both instances, I took ordinary city buses, which often were peopled with other tourists, mostly from America or Europe.
The bus to the Christ the Redeemer Statue took about half an hour and took us around a number of neighborhoods in the city, so I got a chance to see areas I never would have seen. The places where middle class people live, and they were generally attractive.
In order to ascend the mountain at Corcovado to see the Christ the Redeemer Statue, you take a train that slowly goes up
the hill, interrupted by a guy at one of the stops who tries to sell soft drinks and candy. The tickets were about $20 and I was able to pay with Master Card -- though not VISA -- in order to save my Reals for every day expenses.
Upon getting to the top you can take stairs or escalators, some of which are not always apparent, which I regretted after
huffing and puffing my way to the summit. But the views of Rio are great, and even with the hordes around the statue you
can take lots of pictures or ask people to take them of you. Plus, you get to engage foreign travelers in conversation, which, since I was traveling alone, was important to do.
Going to Sugar Loaf the next day was a shorter distance from Copacabana, but the price of the cable car I found exorbitant, considering, unlike the Christ train, it was about a two minute experience. The view of the top was quite good, though unlike
the statue there was not much to see or do up there except take pictures and engage still other tourists in a bit of chit chat. Since it cost so much to get up there, I dawdled a bit to get my money's worth. What made things a bit worse is that I learned when I descended I had not actually been to Sugar Loaf but to nearby Urca hill, the mid-point of the trek upward. With all my painstaking research about the trip I had somehow missed the news that there were two cable stations and that I completely missed Sugar Loaf!
I didn't even realize it until writing this report, because it didn't look like anyone who'd shared my cable car up went on their
way to another cable station once we reached the top of Urca Hill. People were looking at the same views I was and when
I later came down and realized we were not on Sugar Loaf, someone else said the cable car didn't go there as he fulfilled
my request to snap a photo of me with the mountain just behind.
Well, he was wrong and so I'm evidently not the only one who made this mistake. So, if you go there, be prepared and look
for signs that apparently go to the other side of Urca Hill in order to take another cable car that goes a like distance upwards.
Well, that's what happens when you're traveling, isn't it, and when you return you can share your experiences and mistakes
so that others like yourself can hopefully profit from your trip down there.
For example, if you like traditional pizza, Brazil is not the place to get it. And when you order dinner in Rio, don't bother getting
a starter salad or soup.
My first night in Brazil, I wanted a quick dinner so I ordered a pizza in a big, fancy hotel next to the one where I was staying.
I was struck by the fact that it was all white with vegetables on top. It was all right, but nothing great and I figured it was because I'd chosen a Portugese-style pizza. Yet there didn't seem to be any tomato sauce on the pie. And as to its appellation, I'd had pizza in Lisbon the previous year and it was perfectly normal.
Indeed, I've had pizza in many places throughout the world: Paris, London, Budapest, Florence, Santiago and Athens.
The levels of quality may have been different, but they all were standard pies. However, every time I tried to get pizza in Brazil
I was presented with an albino concoction. Even when I asked the waiter beforehand, "Do you speak English." In most instances, even when they said "Yes," they really didn't.
This is the total opposite of the European experience, where they usually reply, "A little," and it turns out their English is better than mine. However, I painstakingly asked one waiter after another if there was tomato sauce on the pizza. I even saw
tomato sauce written in the ingredients of the English language menus presented to me. Finally, I gave up and sent the last
one back to the kitchen on principle, as I felt I'd made my desires plain and the restaurant didn't deliver what I was expecting. Interestingly, an Irish guy came up to me, apparently someone who'd been living there, and told me the only place I was going
to get traditional pizza was at an Italian place, which I frankly thought I was in judging by the signs and other items on the menu.
However, even when I surveyed a "no questions about it" Italian place a couple of days later -- you know the kind where they have the pies in the display cases -- every one of them seemed as if they'd been through bleach, nary a drop of tomato red among them. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible to find tomato sauce based pizza in Brazil, just that it appears not to be
the norm and it isn't worth the effort. Yeah, I know that you don't go to Brazil for pizza, but sometimes during a long stay you want something quick and comfortable.
I did want to sample the local food, and so my first evening in Rio I ordered the Charrusco barbecue plate. It looked yummy
on the menu, and I was starving, so I ordered onion soup as a starter. When the soup arrived it was in a huge tureen that
could have served two or three people. That should have forewarned me. Plus it wasn't so good. It had the bread croutons, but no cheese and was unfortunately a bit bland.
But when the main course arrived, after having almost filled up on the soup, I was inundated -- that's the only word that can describe it -- with a humongous plate of four different meat concoctions, only three of which I found edible, plus two huge covered platters, one with potatoes, the other with some sort of risotto. I looked at all this food, which could have easily fed three men or four women or maybe two large men and two large women and couldn't believe what I was seeing. It wasn't cheap, nor enormously expensive but it seemed so wasteful as there was no way that any reasonable person could eat all this. And this was Charusco for one. God only knows what Charusco for two looked like.
So, for the rest of my trip, I never ordered a salad or soup. Even so, when I went to a restaurant, the food -- especially
the side dishes -- greatly exceeded a normal appetite's requirement.
In between I went to the beaches and at night shopped at the 6-day a week flea market on Avenida Atlantica, bargaining
with the shopkeepers to get a better price for T-shirts and other little gifts.
The weather was generally good, but not too hot, and with 30-level sun lotion I never got too burned. There are beach vendors who are very aggressive and try to get you to rent chairs and umbrellas. However, most will leave you alone if you signal that you don't want one.
Unfortunately, there's always that rotten someone who spoils the proverbial barrel and the man kept following me shouting
at me in various languages when I didn't appear to understand anything he was saying. Finally, I stopped and yelled at him to leave me alone, to which he responded "This is Brazil. If you don't like it, go back to America."
Real nice, but mostly, I was left alone. Even the occasional beggars were not too intrusive. Interestingly, the Favelas, or Brazilian slums, intertwine with the Rio neighborhoods, and I'd heard that a very large one was right near Copacabana Beach.
One day, I happened to be looking up at the pretty hillside and thought it would be a nice place to live, sort of like the Santa Monica Mountains or the Hollywood Hills. Then, I realized, wait a minute, I think that's the Favela, and it turned out to be true.
Despite a view of the ocean that most would die for, a closer look would have revealed horrible shanties and people climbing long, long staircases to get to their hovels, because the roads were scant or non-existent. The entrance to the Favela was
on a side street near my hotel, and I followed the advice of the tourist info books and never entered the enclave.
That's what you have to do. Be careful. If you're on the subway or on a bus, make sure you're holding your bags tightly and
have one of your hands right next to the pocket where your wallet rests. I never had a bad moment in Rio, nor anywhere in Brazil, even when I walked the dark streets in São Paulo looking for the São Paulo Film Festival Gala.
I'm not saying that crime doesn't happen. However, the only time I saw it in action was on one day while I was walking down Avenida de Copacabana, one block in from the beach, and I heard "Stop!" followed by two Brazilian youths running fiercely down the street, one clutching a bag. They were followed by a frantic tourist, who, no doubt had put down his bag to look
at a map or some such and with the distraction allowed his valuables to disappear into the nearby Favela.
So, yes, crime exists in Rio, and perhaps statistically more so than in other cities, but it's not like it's happening all over and everywhere you go, night or day. Certainly, I would not go out alone late at night and onto Copacabana Beach waving a
fistful of hundred dollar bills, while shouting, "Look at me, I'm a rich American." But if you're careful and watch where you're going and are aware of your belongings, there shouldn't be a concern taking public transportation or walking throughout the city.
Rio de Janeiro is definitely worth a look -- perhaps more so during Carneval. Whether it's worth going back without a reason
or people to visit, well, that's up to you.
Follow Michael Russnow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrloy
Contact Us
I ventured forth on a damp, dark evening after being assured by the hotel clerk that to do so wasn't particularly dangerous.
My purpose in going out was to scout bus stops for my planned visit with a film executive the following morning. Unlike
the meetings in central São Paulo, I'd been asked to travel twelve or thirteen miles to a studio in the suburbs. While I was looking forward to spend time chatting with a Brazilian movie guy, my experience doing so in other foreign locales told me the odds were that nothing eventful was going to happen and I didn't feel like paying fifty to seventy-five dollars on a round-trip
taxi ride just to say hi.
So, I checked bus routes on the Internet and without much difficulty found one that went directly from Copacabana Beach, where I was staying, to the studio. The only problem as I walked gingerly from the hotel at about one a.m. was that there
didn't appear to be any bus signs on Avenida Atlantica, the main drag that separates the hotel and restaurant strip from
the famed Brazilian beach.
Oh, well, I thought, I'm sure it will be all right, except that while eating breakfast the next morning my view from the rooftop restaurant showed that all the traffic was moving in one direction -- the opposite way I needed to be going.
The hotel clerk told me that this was just until ten a.m., and then the boulevard would revert to two-way. Only problem was
that I was scheduled to leave at 9 a.m. in order to make certain I would arrive at my scheduled meeting in time. However, part
of my research included a map of the bus stops so that I could be certain the line would indeed go to where I needed to be.
So, I knew where the subsequent stops to Copacabana Beach were and just walked a few easy blocks inland from the beach and without waiting too long at all, the magic bus number rounded the corner.
Once again, the infrastructure of Brazil -- at least in the instance of rapid transit -- appeared to be in good working order.
The bus was clean, air conditioned and populated by good law abiding folks.
I'd somehow feared the buses might be crammed as they are in Egypt or India with bodies half out the doors and windows,
but it wasn't the case here or in the other places I visited in Brazil. The fare was slightly higher -- and by that I mean about a dollar, and that might have made the ride even more comfortable as those on a tighter budget than I was might have opted
for a different bus.
It was a very nice drive -- about an hour to the studio. It's conceivable, depending on traffic, that a cab might have gotten there in half the time. But it was comfortable, I wasn't in a hurry and I got to see parts of the city I might not have been able to see,
so for me it was worth the effort. And at a round-trip cost of about four bucks.
From the outset, it was clear that Rio had much more to offer than São Paulo had -- certainly at first glance and from a tourist perspective. That's why the city is renowned and São Paulo for those purposes is not. However, while it was livelier and
more majestic with broad streets and better architecture, it was not the fantastic city I was prepared for and so it was a bit
of a let down.
This isn't to say Rio is not worth a look. Certainly not. Copacabana Beach and the nearby Ipanema are beautiful expanses,
the former with the famous view of Sugar Loaf Mountain. But I've been to prettier beaches, most notably Waikiki with its
view of Diamondhead in the distance, not to mention the sands and vistas of the French Riviera up and down the
Mediterranean coast.
With a week to visit, I did things at a leisurely pace and was fortunate that the inclement weather during my arrival only lasted one more day, which was fine in that I was engaged in my screenwriter business pursuits. My second day, the sun was shining and I decided to go downtown to compare it with São Paulo and to use the relatively new subway, which is attractive and
works well though doesn't take you enormously far.
When I disembarked I immediately saw a city that looked like an important metropolis -- maybe not Paris or London or Madrid
or Vienna or Prague, but with wide boulevards and stately old buildings befitting the former capital it once had been.
I left the weekend for doing typical tourist stuff. Saturday to see the Christ the Redeemer Statue and Sunday for the Sugar Loaf Mountain cable ride. In both instances, I took ordinary city buses, which often were peopled with other tourists, mostly from America or Europe.
The bus to the Christ the Redeemer Statue took about half an hour and took us around a number of neighborhoods in the city, so I got a chance to see areas I never would have seen. The places where middle class people live, and they were generally attractive.
In order to ascend the mountain at Corcovado to see the Christ the Redeemer Statue, you take a train that slowly goes up
the hill, interrupted by a guy at one of the stops who tries to sell soft drinks and candy. The tickets were about $20 and I was able to pay with Master Card -- though not VISA -- in order to save my Reals for every day expenses.
Upon getting to the top you can take stairs or escalators, some of which are not always apparent, which I regretted after
huffing and puffing my way to the summit. But the views of Rio are great, and even with the hordes around the statue you
can take lots of pictures or ask people to take them of you. Plus, you get to engage foreign travelers in conversation, which, since I was traveling alone, was important to do.
Going to Sugar Loaf the next day was a shorter distance from Copacabana, but the price of the cable car I found exorbitant, considering, unlike the Christ train, it was about a two minute experience. The view of the top was quite good, though unlike
the statue there was not much to see or do up there except take pictures and engage still other tourists in a bit of chit chat. Since it cost so much to get up there, I dawdled a bit to get my money's worth. What made things a bit worse is that I learned when I descended I had not actually been to Sugar Loaf but to nearby Urca hill, the mid-point of the trek upward. With all my painstaking research about the trip I had somehow missed the news that there were two cable stations and that I completely missed Sugar Loaf!
I didn't even realize it until writing this report, because it didn't look like anyone who'd shared my cable car up went on their
way to another cable station once we reached the top of Urca Hill. People were looking at the same views I was and when
I later came down and realized we were not on Sugar Loaf, someone else said the cable car didn't go there as he fulfilled
my request to snap a photo of me with the mountain just behind.
Well, he was wrong and so I'm evidently not the only one who made this mistake. So, if you go there, be prepared and look
for signs that apparently go to the other side of Urca Hill in order to take another cable car that goes a like distance upwards.
Well, that's what happens when you're traveling, isn't it, and when you return you can share your experiences and mistakes
so that others like yourself can hopefully profit from your trip down there.
For example, if you like traditional pizza, Brazil is not the place to get it. And when you order dinner in Rio, don't bother getting
a starter salad or soup.
My first night in Brazil, I wanted a quick dinner so I ordered a pizza in a big, fancy hotel next to the one where I was staying.
I was struck by the fact that it was all white with vegetables on top. It was all right, but nothing great and I figured it was because I'd chosen a Portugese-style pizza. Yet there didn't seem to be any tomato sauce on the pie. And as to its appellation, I'd had pizza in Lisbon the previous year and it was perfectly normal.
Indeed, I've had pizza in many places throughout the world: Paris, London, Budapest, Florence, Santiago and Athens.
The levels of quality may have been different, but they all were standard pies. However, every time I tried to get pizza in Brazil
I was presented with an albino concoction. Even when I asked the waiter beforehand, "Do you speak English." In most instances, even when they said "Yes," they really didn't.
This is the total opposite of the European experience, where they usually reply, "A little," and it turns out their English is better than mine. However, I painstakingly asked one waiter after another if there was tomato sauce on the pizza. I even saw
tomato sauce written in the ingredients of the English language menus presented to me. Finally, I gave up and sent the last
one back to the kitchen on principle, as I felt I'd made my desires plain and the restaurant didn't deliver what I was expecting. Interestingly, an Irish guy came up to me, apparently someone who'd been living there, and told me the only place I was going
to get traditional pizza was at an Italian place, which I frankly thought I was in judging by the signs and other items on the menu.
However, even when I surveyed a "no questions about it" Italian place a couple of days later -- you know the kind where they have the pies in the display cases -- every one of them seemed as if they'd been through bleach, nary a drop of tomato red among them. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible to find tomato sauce based pizza in Brazil, just that it appears not to be
the norm and it isn't worth the effort. Yeah, I know that you don't go to Brazil for pizza, but sometimes during a long stay you want something quick and comfortable.
I did want to sample the local food, and so my first evening in Rio I ordered the Charrusco barbecue plate. It looked yummy
on the menu, and I was starving, so I ordered onion soup as a starter. When the soup arrived it was in a huge tureen that
could have served two or three people. That should have forewarned me. Plus it wasn't so good. It had the bread croutons, but no cheese and was unfortunately a bit bland.
But when the main course arrived, after having almost filled up on the soup, I was inundated -- that's the only word that can describe it -- with a humongous plate of four different meat concoctions, only three of which I found edible, plus two huge covered platters, one with potatoes, the other with some sort of risotto. I looked at all this food, which could have easily fed three men or four women or maybe two large men and two large women and couldn't believe what I was seeing. It wasn't cheap, nor enormously expensive but it seemed so wasteful as there was no way that any reasonable person could eat all this. And this was Charusco for one. God only knows what Charusco for two looked like.
So, for the rest of my trip, I never ordered a salad or soup. Even so, when I went to a restaurant, the food -- especially
the side dishes -- greatly exceeded a normal appetite's requirement.
In between I went to the beaches and at night shopped at the 6-day a week flea market on Avenida Atlantica, bargaining
with the shopkeepers to get a better price for T-shirts and other little gifts.
The weather was generally good, but not too hot, and with 30-level sun lotion I never got too burned. There are beach vendors who are very aggressive and try to get you to rent chairs and umbrellas. However, most will leave you alone if you signal that you don't want one.
Unfortunately, there's always that rotten someone who spoils the proverbial barrel and the man kept following me shouting
at me in various languages when I didn't appear to understand anything he was saying. Finally, I stopped and yelled at him to leave me alone, to which he responded "This is Brazil. If you don't like it, go back to America."
Real nice, but mostly, I was left alone. Even the occasional beggars were not too intrusive. Interestingly, the Favelas, or Brazilian slums, intertwine with the Rio neighborhoods, and I'd heard that a very large one was right near Copacabana Beach.
One day, I happened to be looking up at the pretty hillside and thought it would be a nice place to live, sort of like the Santa Monica Mountains or the Hollywood Hills. Then, I realized, wait a minute, I think that's the Favela, and it turned out to be true.
Despite a view of the ocean that most would die for, a closer look would have revealed horrible shanties and people climbing long, long staircases to get to their hovels, because the roads were scant or non-existent. The entrance to the Favela was
on a side street near my hotel, and I followed the advice of the tourist info books and never entered the enclave.
That's what you have to do. Be careful. If you're on the subway or on a bus, make sure you're holding your bags tightly and
have one of your hands right next to the pocket where your wallet rests. I never had a bad moment in Rio, nor anywhere in Brazil, even when I walked the dark streets in São Paulo looking for the São Paulo Film Festival Gala.
I'm not saying that crime doesn't happen. However, the only time I saw it in action was on one day while I was walking down Avenida de Copacabana, one block in from the beach, and I heard "Stop!" followed by two Brazilian youths running fiercely down the street, one clutching a bag. They were followed by a frantic tourist, who, no doubt had put down his bag to look
at a map or some such and with the distraction allowed his valuables to disappear into the nearby Favela.
So, yes, crime exists in Rio, and perhaps statistically more so than in other cities, but it's not like it's happening all over and everywhere you go, night or day. Certainly, I would not go out alone late at night and onto Copacabana Beach waving a
fistful of hundred dollar bills, while shouting, "Look at me, I'm a rich American." But if you're careful and watch where you're going and are aware of your belongings, there shouldn't be a concern taking public transportation or walking throughout the city.
Rio de Janeiro is definitely worth a look -- perhaps more so during Carneval. Whether it's worth going back without a reason
or people to visit, well, that's up to you.
Follow Michael Russnow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kerrloy
Contact Us