OK, so I’ve changed my mind about this city. I’m sure everyone who’s been here knew that would happen.
We spent the first couple of weeks in a tiny studio in a sleazy part of Copacabana with an asshole host. The refrigerator wasn’t working (he tried to make it out it was, it just “wasn’t very cold”), the toaster oven wasn’t working (he tried to make out that, despite the fact there were clearly two heating elements in the toaster oven, only one of them was supposed to work: “that’s how they work in Brazil”), the apartment building backed onto a favela, the entrance hall stank of sewers, there were cockroaches in the hallways that weren’t cleared away for days, the apartment was humid and dark… I could go on.
Anyway, when we did complain about the refrigerator (quite reasonably, given we were staying for a month and a refrigerator is ESSENTIAL in 30C-35C heat) he firstly tried to make out it had been working until we got there, we then reminded him he’d said himself it wasn’t working very well when we arrived, he then backtracked and said it was a new refrigerator under guarantee he just hadn’t gotten around to calling the repair service because he would have to wait around for them to come and he’d need our permission, we gave it to him, he then backtracked again and said we’d have to wait, we said “fine, because we need it working”. Long story short, it took 3 days out of OUR holiday that WE had PAID FOR waiting around for a repair man to service HIS refrigerator, he got very unpleasant when we started getting annoyed, we ended up complaining to the booking website and they rebooked us into a much nicer apartment.
We are now 10 seconds from Copacabana beach in a much nicer part of Copacabana near the Copacabana Palace Hotel, the apartment is still a studio but has at least another 10m2 to it, it’s brighter, it’s not humid, there aren’t cockroaches, the amenities in the flat are old but they work, and our new landlord couldn’t be more helpful and welcoming.
Apart from that, Rio has really grown on me. Most of the favelas have been pacified – especially near the tourist areas – so all those warnings about safety in Rio are mostly redundant. I wouldn’t walk around with a massive SLR camera strung around my neck and R$500 in my wallet, but then I wouldn’t do that in London either. Copacabana beach is a very interesting place to take a stroll of an evening: lots of people out, live music on the beach, restaurants and bars along the front, art and tourist fairs.
I’ve been to the Botanical Gardens, several museums in Centro (especially the National Historical Museum – finally some Brazilian history has been filled in for me), Sao Bento Monastery to hear Gregorian chants at Sunday morning mass, Flamengo Park, Lage Park (it’s like Neverneverland), Petropolis to see the Imperial City, walked all the way around the Lagoon, and had a night out in Lapa.
We’ve got plenty of stuff left like Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf mountain), the Christ, jeep tour around Tijuca forest, the zoo & winter palace, Fiscal island….
Basically, Rio is about more than just sitting on the beach, getting a suntan and sipping a caipirinha. It’s stuffed full of culture, art and history – and finally I am really beginning to enjoy it.
P.S. I don’t have a reliable internet connection here, which is why I’m not posting so much.
P.P.S. I have taken shitloads of pictures. Due to aforementioned unreliable internet connection, I am not posting any pictures to my blog until I get back to SP. I’ll do a blog with a few selected highlight photos later.
