Rio de Janeiro

Well, my flight schedule to get back home to California was a little strange and complicated, so this gave me a very short opportunity to see Rio de Janeiro, which was one of my top places of interest for this trip. For the first day, I booked a tour to see the infamous Christ the Redeemer Statue at Corcovado and then to take the tram car to the top of Sugarloaf mountain. Lucky for me, the day was sunny and fairly clear. I could see the entire city of Rio from both of the mountain top, everything from Copacabana and Ipenema beach to downtown Rio to the favellas on the hills. It's definitely worth the trip. The tour was kind of fun because I met some people that spoke English and had a nice lunch, but if you go, you can probably more easily hit these 2 destinations on your own.

Later on in that evening, I ended up meeting up with Christine from the Itaipu damn tour. We had a bite to eat at an all you can eat place where they keep bringing more and more meat until you explode or say no more. Christine and I had booked a favella tour for the following day. The favella tour was awesome, and the guide -- a german girl who had come to Rio to find work as a translator but ended up paying the bills as a tour guide -- was lots of fun with tons of great stories to tell. I was feeling a little nervous about the favella tour at first because of what people had said about being a voyeur of poverty and how shameful that is, but this tour was one of the most interesting ones I have been on and I highly recommend it. The guide told us stories about the history of favellas, and the life and culture of the residents favellas, the drug and organized crime culture, and the efforts to help them. They are basically a lawless part of the city run by drug lords who are fighting amongst themselves to increase market share and make more money. It sounds a bit like corporate America, but individuals trapped in the middle can have a quick and painful end. The favellas are not patrolled by police, who stay at the side of the favella towns and only venture in when told to go find the drug sellers. Since the groups doing the selling don't generally like this, they keep a tight ship and the favellas are pretty much petty crime free. They are more effective at this than the police are in any of the other parts of the city. It's a strange irony. What was really interesting is that the favellas can border some of the nicest houses in Rio. On one side of the street there is a mansion and on the other side of the street, there is a medley of construction grown from poverty and despair. The construction is very interesting too. People build wherever they want and mostly to make room for a growing family or new tenants. There can be a window of one house with a view of the entire city of Rio and then your neighbor comes by and builds a taller building about 1 foot away from the window and completely blocks the view. Nobody minds because they are all in this community together for the rest of their lives, and they share in understanding of the life of the favella.

In the afternoon after the favella tour, I soaked in the beach of Ipanema for a couple of hours before having to head to the airport for my flight back home. Rio was an excellent adventure and I long to go back soon.