Rio de Janeiro: Part 1

At best, my image of Rio is that of the wealthy middle class, and at worst it is some kind of twisted tourist's impression of a city of beaches, scantily dressed people, and volleyball, but I’m happy to revel in it for the moment. We didn’t visit a favela (though you can see Favela Vidigal scaling the hills in the picture above), we didn’t see Christ the Redeemer, and we weren’t there for Carnaval. But it was sunny, gloriously sunny, and besides, one of the most significant influences on the culture of Rio is its fabulous coastline. Where else can you visit walk past Brazilian bikinis in the supermarket? That might be the single most important cultural experience for anyone visiting Brazil.

So, with that out of the way, I proclaim Ipanema to be one of my favourite places in the world. I'm not usually one to daydream myself into wealth and the easy life, but I would be much more than content to buy an apartment in Ipanema and do nothing with the rest of my life. I love city-by-the-sea culture. Cariocas are relaxed and friendly; there’s that vibe of permanent holiday. If you can play beach volleyball after work almost all year ‘round, you are probably going to feel pretty good about your place in this world. I'm pretty sure I learned more about the city, by sitting on the beach than a lot of other things we could have done.

One very important cultural difference between Brazil and most other parts of the Americas is society's perception of the ideal female body shape. On our first day there, my wife pointed out two groups of women walking down the beach. One group was mostly slender, pretty in a Californian kind of way. The other group was mostly busty with giant Brazilian bums. Now guess which direction the male heads turn. As if Rio needed to belabour this point further, later that evening we caught some weird Brazilian dating/game show on TV. The models were all just like that second group we saw on the beach. Simply, Brazilians don’t like thin women. So, next time you see that Pitbull music video, understand that he isn’t playing on cultural stereotypes to market his music, he’s just a product of cultural realities in Brazil.

Although it was amazing to finally have some proper sun, we didn’t just laze around and drink beach beer for 5 days. One day we went to an antiques fair, where we found a few cool Rio landscapes painted on bits of Coke cans, made into magnets, and some post cards. We also contemplated mugging what appeared to be an expensive camera owner convention. We saw about twenty people with Leicas milling around one end of the antique street, taking photos of each other posing with their cameras. Unfortunately, we didn’t have access to a Carioca fence and we weren't sure how to carry away twenty $5000+ cameras discretely. The logistics of the operation just wouldn't work themselves out so headed back and took a look at Copacabana beach on the way. It’s just not as nice. The sand is dirtier, the water’s murkier, and streets are seedier. Call me snob, but the Ipanema life is the only life for me. 

Ilha Grande: Part 5 of 5

For those thinking of going to Ilha Grande one day, here is what you stand to gain, if you manage to see the sun and find the right path. Pretty okay I guess:

Photo courtesy of here.

I took my time on the way back, looking at flowers and bugs and hoping to see some kind of wildlife even though it was raining. Initially I didn’t see much, but I kept hearing chirping noises in the trees. The chatter turned out to be monkeys, dozens of them. In fact, I realized that I had heard these chirping noises pretty much the whole time I had been walking but I hadn’t once just stood still and looked up.


If you’ve ever experienced dense tropical foliage, then you probably know how annoying it is to try to take pictures up into the trees. Everything is either too dark, too fuzzy or both. Worse, trying to capture animals leaping about overhead, without a good quality camera, is nearly impossible. But after some persistence, I got this:

Not an award winner, but clearly a monkey, beating out my other hundred or so photos by factors of between 50 and 500,000. I do not envy nature photographers; that is one brutal job.


I spent the next hour walking with my eyes on the trees, slipping, and falling a couple of times on the muddy path, once almost taking out a couple coming up the hill towards me. Soaking wet and covered in mud, but triumphant with my monkey photo, I returned to town and was ready to make plans to continue on to Rio.


Ilha Grande has a lot going for it. If we had had better weather, we probably would have stayed a bit longer and tried to get further away from the main town. You can hire a guide to take you to some more far-flung areas of the island, and there are small boat tours that might be worth taking when it isn’t raining. There are a whopping 102 beaches on the island. Bird-watchers and monkey photographers will love the immense, relatively untouched national park. The down side is the cruise ships that come in every day from December to March. The woman who ran the hotel told us that May is a much nicer time to go. Although it’s colder, there is less rain and no cruise ships. The town is busy, but friendly enough and I still feel that, in spite of the down sides, it was a worthwhile stop.


One final view of the main bay without cruise ship clutter.

Next stop, Rio.

Ilha Grande 4

The next day my wife was feeling lethargic and I was feeling adventurous, so I left her to the balcony and the beach to go jungle romping. I had two goals. I wanted to find a waterfall and I wanted to get a look at Praia Lopes Mendes, supposedly one of the most beautiful beaches in Brazil. I took a quick look at my guidebook before heading out to see if they had any recommendations. All it said was, if you head off the beaten track, “poorly marked trails and poisonous snakes can make things challenging.” Well, I didn’t plan to go off the main waterfall and beach paths so no problem. Of course, about 25 minutes out of town, the beaten track starts to look less and less well-trodden. Gradually the edges of the path close in, to points where you have to walk through high grasses and shrubs. Perfect “challenging” poisonous snake territory. I’m not normally one to be easily worried about silly things like The World’s Deadliest Creatures (!) but there I was in middle of nowhere, by myself, no longer entirely sure I was going in the right direction, imagining snakes in every bit of shrubbery, trying to remember what you’re supposed to do in the event of a snake bite. . . When suddenly, a couple bursts from a bush around a corner of the path, wearing nothing but their respective Brazilian swimsuits (read: tiny bikini and not-quite thong-like mankini). If they didn’t die on this path, then I probably wasn’t going to either. Eyes horizontal, I gave them a respectable nod and forged ahead.


I did find the waterfall after a couple of wrong turns, and a helpful park guide. It was small, but a pleasant place to sit for a while and watch more scantily clad survivors struggle down the slick mud slope, so they could splash around in the pool.


I did a bit too much camera experimenting, so most of my photos are either too dark or too bright.

I finally pulled myself away to go and look for this special beach. With some more wrong turns and some more asking fellow trekkers, in my zero-level Portuguese, for directions, I eventually found the wrong beach.


Here it is, as seen through my camera which has no wide-angle or panorama capabilities:

Nice enough to sit for a while but nicest beach in Brazil? I think not.


I prepared myself to try again, but it had started to rain once more and it seemed kind of pointless to try to get a beautiful beach photo in such poor weather. So, I started the trek home.

Ilha Grande 3

Most of the island is an ecological reserve and it’s managed to stay so well-preserved (in spite of being on the developed south coast) largely because of its history. It started as a pirate’s hideout, then became a leper colony and quarantine area for mostly European immigrants entering Brazil, and finally a prison for only the most dangerous and deranged criminals. The prison functioned until 1994, also serving as a political rival, erm, retreat for some time, so development has only happened quite recently.

There is still a part of the hospital/quarantine area left and it’s quite a creepy place. It was called Lazareto and you could expect to get stuck there if you were a new-comer to Brazil and you had a cold (or worse). Hell, even if you didn’t when you arrived, you’d probably pick something up before you were able to head to the mainland. Cholera was the main concern. Here’s what’s left:

There was also an aqueduct, built around the time of the hospital, which still runs through the jungle.

After pondering the ruins, we walked past a small waterfall with a pool filled with fat, speedo-clad men, took pictures of butterflies, and sat on the beach until it started raining.

We had an amazing dinner on the beach that night, Brazilian seafood and a bottle of wine, proper honeymoon stuff. 

Ilha Grande 2

Ilha Grande is a popular place for people from Rio, looking to escape the city for a weekend, so we tried to avoid the weekend crowds but we were still plunked right in the middle of the cruise ship season. Every day, at about 10am, two cruise ships come into the bay near the town, bringing throngs of people who wander aimlessly around the tiny town for about 4 hours, buy ice cream and head back to the ship. There is an absurd number of people in town at peak hours; you can barely walk through the streets. The good news is, if you are happy to romp through the jungle for an hour and a half or more, you can find several great beaches and lots of other cool things, that most cruise-shippers don’t have enough time to get to. The bad news is, if you just want to amble down to the pleasant beach ten minutes from town, you’ll probably be sharing a tiny space with a bunch of fat rich people.

We woke the next morning to an incredible feast of a breakfast, definitely the best of our trip. Our pousada was a properly German affair, run by a properly friendly German couple. (Nothing should be dirty, everything should be organized and no one should start their day without at east five or six sausages.) On our first day, we put on our damp bathing suits and went in search of the closest beach. We were still, jet-lagged and waking up early so we hadn’t hit the tourist tidal wave yet.

Here’s a shot of the beach near the town:

We still had to fight for a place to lay our towels though. I did a bit of masculine posturing and sent this fellow on his way:

It started spitting rain pretty soon after we sat down. My wife brought an umbrella so we read for a bit, lying underneath to keep our books dry, but eventually felt a bit silly and went back to our hotel. We sat on the balcony and watched humming birds and cruise ships come and go for the rest of the afternoon.

Hummingbirds are difficult to photograph:

The next few days were still a bit rainy so we took a couple of walks, to escape the cruisers herding through town. Our first trip took us on a short route up a hill near town and down the other side to a small beach. The forest is dense:

Ilha Grande

Hoping for good weather, we took another bus a couple of hours up the coast in the direction of Angra Dos Reis, which is a stepping stone to get to Ilha Grande, an island near Rio. There were a lot more waterfalls on the way there, just cementing this in my mind as a key feature of the Brazilian cultural experience. Angra is not pretty but the photo below shows an interesting element shared by a lot of the towns along this stretch of the Brazilian coast – they are built up the sides of hills. That’s another theme we’ll come back to regularly – things built on hills.


We got there in good time, and after some confusion while wandering around in the rain, we found a small, open ferry that was headed to the island. Fortunately, we had picked up some umbrellas before leaving Paraty so we didn’t get soaked finding the boat.


See the rain. :(

While we hung around and waited for the boat to fill up, I read a bit about Ilha Grande in our guide book. They call it a “pristine island retreat” that “owes its pristine condition to its unusual history.” I’d say, that’s about three-quarters right. They also say that during high season, it can get a bit claustrophobic in Vila do Abraao (the island’s main town). That’s a massive understatement. Still, there’s fun to be had, even at the peak of tourist season.

The highlight of the day was probably seeing a sea turtle from the boat, although I didn’t have time to get a picture of it. The Brazilian guy beside me, who spotted it, seemed more excited about our excitement than about the turtle itself. A lot of the other passengers really didn’t care. Facts of life in Brazil: waterfalls and sea turtles. Yawn.

The boat ride itself was decidedly NOT fun. We got drenched. It started pouring about twenty minutes in and between the rain and the waves hitting the sides of our small vessel, there weren’t many dry spots to be had. To my annoyance, my “waterproof” pack didn’t seem to keep much water out, but I mean, if I just threw it in the ocean (which is a pretty accurate comparison to the amount of water that washed over our boat), I wouldn’t expect it to keep water out, so I was probably being too critical. We decided to stay on the island until everything was dry at least. . .

Paraty 3

On our last day in Paraty we took a boat tour to some beaches and islands nearby. It was mostly cloudy again and rained on the way back but it was still a very pleasant afternoon. We met an unusual older fellow on the trip. He told us that he used to be an unemployed stone cutter (read quarry man?) in Paris until his parents died and left him quite a lot of money. Now all he does is travel 4 or 5 months of the year and write books about his true passion, architecture. Apparently, he’s just finished writing about the traditional huts of some specific tribe in Brazil but he hopes to start work on adobe architecture in East Africa soon. We talked to him for about an hour and then he ambled to another part of the boat.


On the way back we saw a few good places to buy a personal island. I believe the one in this photo is a fancy restaurant. If you make a reservation, they send a chauffeur in a boat to collect you from town.

Overall, in spite of the poor weather, we enjoyed Paraty a lot. There were a few tourists but it wasn’t swarming (though it will be soon as I just found out that it is a film location for the new Twilight movie) and the old town is just so freakin' charming. We could have stayed happily for weeks. But no, we have a lot of ground to cover. Time to move on.

On last picture, my pasty white self gracefully diving off the boat. No Brazilian sun to turn me into a bronzed god yet. Will that ever happen? Stay tuned to find out! (The water was also a little colder than I would have liked. The Arabian Gulf has ruined swimming for me around the world.)