So this is the final stage of my holidays and soon I will be heading for home, but I think that first there a couple of myths that need getting out the way....About Rio....
And I don't think some people are going to like it....
My Rio experience started at the airport, at immigration. Now I don't know about you but I always find immigration officers slightly difficult, they look at you as though you shouldn't be there, that you are almost certainly a criminal on the run, or at best just a drug runner....In Rio airport they have developed this skill to the level of an art form. I will not say that the immigration officer actually threw my passport back at me, but she certainly slid it under the glass with sufficient force that it went straight past me and on to the floor.....Welcome to Rio!
I have booked a New Year package with Oswaldo at Gay Travel Brasil, I can't remember why, but I think it was because I wanted some information which I couldn't find, or maybe it was because I was having problems finding a hotel, whatever the reason, Oswaldo was very helpful and organised a New Year package for me which included a one day city tour and also transit to/from the airport, and at a price that was not a lot more than I was going to have to pay for a hotel which are extortionate prices in Rio at the best of times, let alone at New Year!
My hotel is the Merlin Copacabana Hotel in Avenida Princesa Isabela, (and the link that is there is to my review of it on TripAdvisor), which is really the very edge of Copacabana before you get to Leme. The hotel is literally only 5 minutes from the beach. I will say no more about the hotel here except that from New Year's Eve round until New Year's Day I had to use the lavatory in Reception because mine would not flush, and the shower was a joke...
So let's start with the tour, bearing in mind that I have been all over Peru on bus tours so have a bit of experience with them, all I can say is that this one suffered from a total lack of organisation. I was picked up late and then spent an hour on the bus as we picked up other people, we even went back past my own hotel nearly an hour after I had been picked up, finally we got to Sugar Loaf Mountain which luckily did not have much of a queue for the cable car, while we were standing in the queue the tour guide went to buy the tickets.
After spending nearly the entire day on the bus we had seen virtually nothing except the Cathedral which actually beats Coventry Cathedral hands down for ugliness, which I guess makes it a must see. We did stop outside a football stadium but I am not exactly sure why.
Eventually we arrive at the Corcovada funicular to go up to see Christ Redeemer, and are informed that we will have to wait until 8pm to get on the train up, by which time it will be dark. The alternatives are get a minibus which is going to cost BR$10 extra, or that they will put us on a tour the following morning. As I had only had 5 hours sleep I was happy to take the following day.(Getting a good nights sleep was a priority because the next day was, I was told going to be a late night and I probably wouldn't get any sleep at all, so that is one night of going out gone already).
That evening I head off to the Copacabana Beach, because you have to.....I spot a place where I can get a beer and maybe something to eat not far from the petrol station which graces the middle of the highway right next to the beach. I walk in and look around for a clean table, there aren't any. In fact all the table clothes are dirty and have obviously not been changed all day, but that apparently is normal because other people walk in and also sit at dirty tables.
I order a beer and unfortunately food too, before the beer even arrives two very plain prostitutes take up residence at the next table and start giving me the eye, I am lucky that I have a very wide field of vision so I can see what other people are doing without even looking a them directly. My beer arrives, but wait up, it is in an ice bucket and there are three beers not one...The inference is obvious. A few minutes later two more tarts arrive and sit down, one of them lights a cigarette even though it is a no smoking zone. At this stage I wish that I had not ordered food.
I will brazen it out. My food arrives, and the smoking tart leans over and asks me for a light, strange, 15 minutes ago she had a lighter of her own. I eat and get the waiter to open another bottle of beer, at which point one of the tarts leans over and starts to take the third beer from the bottle. A stupid move because I had a knife in my hand with which I gave her a sharp tap with the back edge of the blade.
In the morning I was collected at 8.15am, after one and a half hours on the bus, we drove back past my hotel again. We then headed for Sugar Loaf to drop some people off and headed for Corcovada again, arriving there we are told that the first train we can get it is at 5pm about 6 or 7 hours time. Again we are offered the option of a minibus at extra. Bored and annoyed I went and bought a packet of cigarettes which is the first time in over a month that I have smoked. Getting back to the station a Frenchman who is in the same tour asked if he could have a cigarette, his wife informed me that he hadn't smoked for five years.
Meanwhile the French have been talking to a Portuguese man who is from one of the cruise ships. He is sitting holding a wad of tickets, he had been there since early morning to buy them, and all the time people are arriving and getting off their coach and getting straight on the train, because their tour company had someone there early to buy the tickets. Where is our tour guide? In the queue waiting to buy tickets.
At this stage I threw in the towel and decided to drop the rest of the tour which goes nowhere, (the tour guide got the money back on the train tickets by the way although he didn't offer to give me mine back), and head for the Botanic Gardens which I have heard are excellent. I get myself a taxi and head there only to find that they are closing at 2pm because of New Year. In fact virtually everything was closed because of the New Year and after some questioning it seemed that most of the things I would like to see would not be open until Tuesday.
Moral: If you are doing this don't bother with a city tour, get up early, get a taxi to Sugar Loaf or Corcovada, and buy your own ticket.
I decide a coffee would go down nicely......In one of my guide books it says 'Do not expect to get a good cup of coffee because they export most of it', I can now edit that phrase to read 'Do no expect to get a cup of coffee.' Can you find a coffee shop? No you cannot. Around where I was staying you will have trouble finding somewhere to eat as well, unless you are prepared to go and have your evening meal at about 4pm, because there are so few restaurants that with both tourists and residents trying to eat at the same time there are long queues for anywhere decent.
Having said that the food is excellent, particularly in the 'buffet' type restaurants where you help yourself and then they weigh it and charge you by the 100grams, and the barbecue meats they serve are excellent. And the vegetarians are not forgotten as there are all sorts of things made with pulses, and same great salads too.
And here we can dispel another myth about Rio...Rio is expensive....Actually no it is not expensive. I am sure of course that you can find some horribly expensive restaurants if you try but using the buffet style restaurants as above you can get a good feed for less than €15...Beer runs out at less than €2 for a can and half a litre of Coke Zero about €1, for lunch you can pick up a couple of pies for about €2, if you can find one a decent cup of coffee and a cake will set you back €6 or so.
What can make Rio expensive is that you never see the change......Unless you carry small notes with you and then you can decide what the tip is going to be. I saw some Americans put down a BR$100 note for a restaurant bill of BR$70 and they never did get the change! Taxi drivers use the meter fitted but do the same thing so a BR$22 fare will cost you BR$30 if you don't have any change, and beware of the licensed tour operators that hang around your hotel, they are licensed and they will quote you a price of say BR$35, but expect to get asked for BR$50. Drinks in nightclubs can be expensive but that happens everywhere!!
So let's look at the beach itself....And I am only talking about Copacabana here, the postcards and the picture in magazines make it look like a long stretch of beautiful sand, right? Well no not really, in general it looks more like something left over from the First World War trenches that has since had a herd of elephants stampeding across it. There are big pits dug in it where presumably people have been burying their beer cans in it, and probably even more unsavoury things lower down and if it wasn't for the flood lights at night it would be easy to break a leg falling over on the holes and humps that are on it.
When it is occupied during the day (which was only for one afternoon while I was there because it was raining the rest of the time), it is a collection of haphazardly arranged faded red umbrellas and underneath them a collection of faded red haphazardly arranged people very few of whom accord with the imagined lissome, tanned, swaying-hipped figures that we are led to believe makes up the carioca population, and as for the men, please someone tell them that if you have a big fat belly do not roll up your T shirt to make a bra out of it.
And the city itself? Looks modern and clean doesn't it? Forget it....Most of Rio is a collection of nondescript high rise concrete buildings, generally very slightly tatty and needing a coat of paint separated by 4 and 8 lane highways. No I'm sorry, let me rephrase that...Most of Rio is a collection of 4 and 8 lane highways separated by a variety of nondescript high rise concrete buildings, generally very slightly tatty and needing a coat of paint. Around my hotel the ground floor of most of the buildings contained a collection of rather seedy looking shops and fast food outlets, although as you walk towards Ipanema they do get better.
Normally the process of 'urban renewal' involves the gradual replacement of buildings that have outlived their useful life, their replacements being modern buildings conforming to modern standards of design and aesthetics. As most of Rio was built within such a short space of time I am rather afraid that sooner or later they will have to knock the whole place down and start again.
But having said that there are areas which contain some fine examples of old colonial architecture much of which is being allowed to fall into decay to such an extent that it will soon be lost forever and such places could be the beginning of Rio's revival as a true tourist city.
Did I just suggest that it is not a tourist city? Let's get rid of another myth, almost by definition 'carioca' indicates friendliness and willingness to help, (look it up on Wikipedia if you like, and my guide book says the same somewhere), and yet compared to Peru, Chile, and even from my short time in Argentina, the people of Rio are the most unfriendly that I came across in South America. They are not actually rude, but unlike the Peruvians, for instance, they do not greet you with Good Morning, or Evening, or even Hi, in any language not even their own. In the four days in my hotel only one of the staff, the chambermaid, actually greeted me at all. People in Rio hardly ever smile either.
And yet this only seems to apply to people from Rio, I had the good fortune to end up sitting with people from other parts of Brazil and they were as friendly as any others that I met in South America and with the aid of my phrase book and their broken English we actually had a really good time!
As one Australian girl put it on the last morning I was there, when we were talking about Rio, 'It is not a place for tourists'. At the time I assumed she was talking about Lapa, but I realised afterwards that she was talking about Rio as a whole. The people of Rio it is said (!), know how to party, but I am afraid to say that the party is for them and not for anyone else.
To the two Australian guys who wanted to know where they could buy cocaine, (do I REALLY look like a person that might know where to buy drugs in a foreign city?), I could have helped you out because it was pretty obvious, but I do hope you enjoyed the nightclub I suggested you try out.
And yes the fireworks were spectacular and lived well up to expectations and beyond but I suspect that many go to see them out of a feeling of obligation, I know it was raining but even I was wearing shorts, but what a shame that not so many people wear the traditional white like they used to.
Of course, 'The Girl From Ipanema' is now just about old enough to be a great grandmother and although she might not need a Zimmer frame, no amount of silicon, Botox, or surgery can hide the fact that she is not what she was.
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