El Blog: First Days in Rio

Our first days in Rio de Janeiro were spent with a good friend from Seattle, Alex, who was visiting on vacation. In true touristic form, we made a list of all the top sites in Rio and systematically crossed each activity off the list - a departure from recent travel style but a nice way to quickly see a lot of this interesting city. Now a brief breakdown of highlights.

We started with a visit to the statue of “Christ the Redeemer,” the iconic image of Rio perched on top of a ridiculously steep mountain. The Christ is shrouded in scaffolding at the moment, part of a Catholic church restoration project, but we could still see His face and the greater appeal for us was the incredible view of the city.

We went to a local soccer game in the (formerly) largest soccer stadium in the world. It was fun, but no beer inside? C’mon.

Botanical garden, beaches, art museums, samba clubs- check, check, check, check!

We spent several days outside the city on “Ilha Grande”- a large car-free island full of hiking trails. It rained quite a bit while we were there, this was during the terrible floods and landslides in Rio, but we got in a lot of hiking. At one point we decided to take a boat back from the trails due to the pounding rain, only to return to the small central town with streets full of water. The highlight was hitting the summit of “Parrot Peak,” with no other hikers on the trail and bearded monkeys near the summit.

Pão de Açúcar, or “Sugarloaf,” is another classic mound of granite in the middle of the city, and a site very popular with rock climbers. There are over 100 climbing routes in and around the loaf; we hiked up partway and then took the gondola, but we plan to be back with climbing gear.

One of our favorite activities was a guided tour of two favelas, loosely translated as “slums.” At first were hesitant to do this, it just seemed weird and voyeuristic to us, but the tour was specifically advertised as “not voyeuristic” and came highly recommended. Also, most of the tour fees go towards school projects in the favelas and it feels better than spending money on hang-gliding. The disparity between the impoverished favelas and 5 star hotels across the street is stupefying. We’ve been in equally poor areas during our trip, but to have them so close to filthy rich areas was a new sight. The favelas are areas without urban planning, only a few roads exist and most travel is made through a dizzying maze of alleys and stairs between buildings. Drug cartels/gangs control the favelas, complete with machine gun guys at the entrances to keep an eye on who is coming and going. There is a general lack of basic services, but things are improving - we even saw high-speed internet lines. Most favelas are built in the hills around the city, which makes them especially vulnerable to the type of landslides that happened last week. Despite the problems, poverty does not equal misery and we saw a lot of positive people living “normal” lives in the favelas.

Our first days here have been an enjoyable blur.