| Rio In
The Rain |
| In Brazil |
| by Elienne M. W. Lawson |
| Rio de
Janeiro, long before it was Rio de Janeiro, first saw a tourist in
the form of Amerigo Vespucci in 1502. After much letter writing between
Vespucci and his patrons, the great Medici family of Florence, Rio was
already a legend in European literature and folklore. It certainly did
not take any considerable time for it to gain a reputation that has lasted
to this day: a tropical oasis with beautiful beaches, gorgeous women and
hedonistic fashion.
Two years after
Vespucci, a group of French pirates sailed into Guanabara Bay and were
greeted by naked women tossing flowers and giving them copious amounts
of kisses et cetera. Needless to say, most of those Frenchmen never left.
I wish I could say for those of you out there dreaming of Copacabana that
such greetings have remained the same for five hundred years, but I am
afraid I need to disappoint. |
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| There are
certainly many women a slight breeze away from nude, but I saw not a single
naked woman draping flowers on a Frenchman.
In the interest
of keeping dreams alive, I should point out that I did not actually go
to a beach in Rio itself. Before you howl in protest and criticize
me for wasting a perfectly good Brazilian vacation, allow me to point out
that the weather was most non-cooperative. Every day that I was in Rio,
without fail, it rained. But certainly, if I could not visit the beaches,
I would enjoy the art museums, right? Three words…”cultura em greve”. Culture
on strike. All museums in the nation of Brazil were closed in celebration
of my trip.
I should not
pout…the great statute of Christ on top of Corcovado and Sugar Loaf, the
famous hilltop setting for some of the finest views in Rio, were still
open, and while the sky was gray, the city still sparkled. To reach the
famous statue of Christ with his outstretched arms, one must either take
a little train packed with tourists up the hillside or drive a winding
road that takes you past dense foliage and luxury homes fortified like
military bases. |
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| A lovely
panoramic view of Rio and the surrounding areas is your reward for making
the trip. It is an amazing kind of map to the city, a way for you to
see all the beaches that wrap around the bay, spot the Maracena soccer
stadium where the Samba Festival is held during Carnival and note the many
favela, or slums, built up into hillsides around the congested city. The
view from atop Sugar Loaf is just as lovely, though only reached by a series
of cable cars that stretched my trust in suspension technology. Sugar Loaf
is a great location to feel the wind in your hair and reflect on the sweetness
of life…that is, if the rain is not threatening to wash you off the side.
I would make
one suggestion to the tourist planning on going to Rio in December or any
other time of the rainy season…bring clothes that are not white. It will
make for a much more modest and opaque adventure. Not that modesty is held
in great regards here when it comes to wardrobe choices.ss |
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Offshore
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| Although it
might seem like I am complaining, I am not. Rain is a motivator of serendipity.
It is because of sudden downpours that I left the center of a square for
cover under an awning and found the Arco de Teles, a literal arch that
allows you to walk out of modern Rio, with its gray grittiness and metal
jumble, into the warmth and jewel-toned colors of colonial architecture
that has somehow escaped being razed in the name of progress. I saw
the younger crowd of the city on stools, laughing, flirting, and listening
to samba. It was strangely voyeuristic, as if I were spying on these happy
people, tip-toeing through their secret world, observing their mannerisms
and patterns of speech.
It was also
because of the rain that I ran into Café Colombo, wet and hungry,
not knowing that the food and elegant décor, with story-high mirrors
and gildings, could rival any of the grand cafes in Europe. The hot chocolate
in the Café Colombo cannot be rivaled (except perhaps by the
Café Einstein in Berlin, just off the Brandenburg Gate).
Hot chocolate,
when you look remarkably like a wet cat, has tremendous restorative powers,
although a stout glass of cachaça, the Brazilian sugar cane liquor
that tastes somewhere between whiskey and rum, would undoubtedly also have
done the trick. |
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| The rain
forced me to take refuge in a car and thankfully so because driving became
one of my favorite activities in Rio. True, the roads are a mess, air
quality laughably bad and signage a cruel joke, but there is much to be
learned from watching children with dirt smudged on their noses sell bits
of fruit on the side of the road.
I experienced
all kinds of new fruit there: fresh goiaba (guava), white graviola
(which, by the way, make a delicious sorbet), oddly-shaped jaca (jack fruit)
and maracuja (passion fruit). It was also from the car that I made the
comfortable observation that despite all the travel guides telling me that
the Lapa district was hip for nightlife, that it was also hip for transvestites
and drug dealers and a place I preferred to skip.
From the windows
of the car, it was perhaps the colors of Brazil that struck me most, the
turquoise blues and corals, the tomato reds and corn yellows, and the colors
of the people. |
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| There are
whites and blacks, but there are also the most extraordinary series of
browns and most of the people fall into the latter category. It has
been said that if America is a blending pot, then Brazil is a blender,
and you can see the accuracy of the statement in the features and skin
tones of the people.
Just as there
are many hues of skin, there are also subtle shades of green in the extraordinary
flora that makes up the remaining Mata Atlantica, or Atlantic Forest. For
Brazilians, what differentiates a forest and a jungle is not the kind of
plant life in it, but rather its density and proximity to modern civilization.
The closest thing to the jungle you will find in modern Rio is the Botanical
Gardens, which afford you the opportunity to stroll down lanes of vines
and leaves in competition for the sunlight. The potted plants you commonly
find in American households grow as tall as houses in their natural environment
and provide a “starter kit” to jungles for those of us less inclined
to traipse through the Amazon basin.
Even when you
are not in the forest, you can hear the pleasant sounds of singing birds
echo throughout the residential areas of Rio de Janeiro and its sister-city
across the bay, Niterói. Brazilians are inclined to keep birds in
cages hanging outside, so at any point during the day you can find your
mind wandering towards the gentle chirps coming from somewhere nearby.
Most carioca
(natives of the city Rio itself) do not spend their time listening
to birds chirp from cages hung on laundry lines, but rather devote considerable
time and energy to music. Brazilian music is something of an experience
for a first-timer like myself. The pulsing rhythms of Bossa Nova, Samba
and Forró may be recognizable to some Americans, but how about the
Gafiera, the Choro, or the Maracatu? Many tourists are familiar with Tom
Jobim’s classic Bossa Nova song “The Girl from Ipanema” and have
heard of the Samba schools that make the parade during Carnival so magnificent,
but the remarkable thing is that their international popularity has not
vulgarized their existence in their native land. Jobin’s gentle song is
still lovingly sung by Brazilians…try stopping one on the beach and asking
them to sing it. One did for me. Ask them about Samba groups and they may
laugh and nod and tell you stories of the more well-known clubs with cheeky
names such as Vem Ni Mim Que Sou Facinha (Harass Me, I’m Willing).
Sharing music
with another person is a gesture of friendship that can cross language
barriers. I was having some jewelry made in Copacabana, and the jeweler
became excited that I was American and told me about his son’s performance
of jazz that evening on the lake near Leblon. Jazz, after all, is an American
art form and is under-appreciated in Brazil. His gesture turned into
one of my best nights in Rio, spent sitting next to the glittering waterfront
with his large family who all happily tried to speak English with me, listening
to a saxophone play jazz inflected with Brazilian.
In the end,
the rain forced me out of the city. I went up the coast to Buzios and enjoyed
a few days of sun, until the rain caught up with me there too. If you are
stuck in the rainy season, wake up early and enjoy the morning hours of
sunshine that generally disappear into soggy afternoons. Have brunch
on the beach. There are vendors that carry trays of oysters with
lime and shrimp kebab, pushcarts that serve steaming corn with butter,
and waiters that run coconuts with a straw stuck in the top out to your
lounge chair for a refreshing drink.
The Guanabara
Indian women, whose nude friendliness so endeared them to sailors far from
home, have faded into legend, but the spirit of hospitality which they
embodied remains strong. Open arms, rich food and smiling people
invite the explorers of today for a rest, perhaps a dance, in sultry Brazil.
Rain or shine.
The following
is Elienne's first article for the magazine:
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