Wandermusings

The next days find us mostly beaching ourselves.  I sit on my lounge chair while Steve tries his damnedest to drown himself in an ocean that somehow had a grudge with him.  Occasionally we break for meals and fresh coconut milk drank with a straw from coconuts the size of your head.

But before we left I was lucky enough to be talked into touring a favela or what Hollywood calls the City of God. 

Sort of slums built on the side of a hill, I don’t know what I was expecting a tour to be like, but it will definitely be listed as a highlight of South America.  There were about 15 people on our tour that began by taking public transportation to the top of the hill.  What you probably didn’t know when you signed up for the tour was that the transport to the top is on the back of a motor bike clinging to your driver as he weaves in and out of traffic and up winding roads of hair pin turns or what toochi would call twistys.  At the top we are greeted by the local armored police van that in theory is keeping the drug dealers that run the favela at bay.  But really the only time there is trouble on the favela is when the police make a raid, otherwise this town of wooden homes and power meters that read all zeros is safe.  Kids go to daycare at the recently created children center, (largely funded by the tour we were on); parents go to work trudging through the narrow alleys,  piling into busses that we passed on our way up the hill.  And perhaps most surprisingly, artists have a home.  Luis our guide took us into a small art studio for local artists, and nearby we saw some of the art of the graffiti where some of the older taggers teacher the younger how to paint the concrete walls. 

We sampled goods from the local bakery, wandered the back alleys of town, and saw the local children put on their own samba drum…

Sure the tour group stuck out like a sore thumb but by the end you knew what it was like to "Be A Local", if only for a few minutes.  Thanks Luis.

Welcome to Rio.  The city of 12 year old muggers, the city of carnival, the city of beautiful beaches and the "City of God". 

Rio is city that for me will be down on the list of places to return.  Far from being My Kind of Town, I found it dirty, expensive for South America, and really lacking in charm.  Yep everything the Simpsons made it out to be.  But once in your life you must come to be part of the spectacle that is Carnival.  Maybe the part y animal in me is gone, (or never there).  Carnival, once you get there, is nothing short of dumbfounding.  Bright colors, elaborate mechanical floats and a droning samba beat keep even a soggy crowd moving underneath their 2 dollar ponchos. 

Women dance and the men step from side to side, or just gawk at the gyrations.  And from 9 till about sunrise it goes on like this where the only thing really changing is every hour and a half the 4 minute samba sample changes and is replaced with a slightly different beat or clave.

We left the hostel at 8 taking the long way there arriving at 11, did our 3 hour two but unlike the cast of Gilligan’s island made it back to civilization, and our hostel to enjoy the last 5 hours of sleep before the AC goes off and the heat of the day steals any desire to sleep.

I apologize for my absence from blogging but well I’ve been busy you know enjoying my vacation and such.  But for the next thirty hours I’m stuck on a train steaming its way from Brisbane to Cairns so I’m scribbling in this notebook to later be typed in.  That said I’m going to spin the wheels back just over 8 weeks I guess and to Rio… where this journey began.