ODO: 358,343
No one slept well last night. Going east by five hours is tough. The final four hour drive back to Rio is a slog. The rear end is angry and loud today. We break up the drive with a stop at a Graal, the Brazilian version of Buckey’s. It’s a absolutely insane rest stop in the southern US, that’s essentially a destination in itself. Running behind for some evening meetings, we make the poor choice to stop at a unknown grocery store in a suburb of Rio, something we’ve been warned never to do. It’s sketchy from the second we pull off the highway, but we don’t think much of it because lots of South America looks like this…right? Leaving the store, we drive a little too far down the road looking for a place to turn around when we notice him. The boy, youth, late teens kid waving a gun at us. And then the other boy walking towards us on the passenger side with his hand behind his back. The truck has never u-turned so fast or so sharp. We are the fuck out of there with the extreme quickness!
Rattled, but navigating the relative safety of the highway, we each recount what we remember seeing and hearing. There was the guy that yelled a bunch as we started down that road (maybe a warning). There was the posture of the kids with guns, non aggressive and confused. And then there were the gut feelings we each had and didn’t vocalize (we have a strict rule about this! We ALWAYS speak up, and we HAVE to default to the person with the feeling, no questions asked. It’s really our only hard and fast rule!). And on top of everything, the store didn’t have anything so we still need to stop at our original destination store. We’re just going to be later than we planned tonight and that’s fine. We finally arrive to camp during the tail end of a vicious thunderstorm. Relaxing is not in the cards tonight.
Big surprise, no one sleeps, again. We have a day out in Rio planned very carefully around staying in the safe and tourist areas. First up, the library, aka the Cabinet of Literature. It’s a small place with antique books, dark wood and gold accents. Oh, and a beautiful octagonal skylight.
Stop two is the church, aka the Catedral Metropolitana. Very modern interpretation, lots of stained glass and statues.
Stop three: The famous tile stairs. We opted to walk between these places, but the last small road to the stairs reminds us of last night. KoKo even sees drugs change hands (the location of her first Portland apartment made her an expert in spotting these transactions). We are on extreme high alert today. Whenever one of us is checking directions, the other is spotting for phone thieves and other trouble (the other thing we were warned about in Rio). When we finally get to the stairs, it’s madness, the most touristy place by far. The crowd at the bottom is huge, and there are stores along the climb selling cocktails and playing dance music.
Our final stop for the day takes us to the museum of technology, which we miss entering by about an hour. Oh well, at least the outside is very interesting. The sun here is brutal, we’ve been hopscotching to stay in the shade as much as possible as we walked around town, but now it’s evening, and we are hot and tired. Our Uber home is extremely aggressive, almost hitting a group of pedestrians in the crosswalk at one point. A mediocre Mexican restaurant is our decompression spot, before heading back to the campground for the night.
Day two of Rio’s greatest hits starts with a double cable car ride to the top of Sugarloaf, a large rock/hill on the ocean with views of the ocean on one side and Rio on the other. We step out of the second cable car to find a marmoset sitting in the tree. Strong start. The views are pretty great, as you walk around you get a 360 degree view of the area.
Our second, and final stop is to see Christ the Redeemer. We arrive in time to walk right onto the arriving train, which is a gear driven, fifteen minute journey straight up the hillside. At the top we still have several flights of stairs, and one escalator to get to the base of the statue. Which is incredibly crowded. Crowd is not what we feel like right now, so we fight our way around the statue, taking pictures as quickly as we can. Our visit is short. There are two churches up here, one in the back of the statue base, the other directly below the statue. Both are empty. Back down on the street, and away from the madness, we decide on a quick grocery run before dinner and a relax.
We ease into the day with some office from the pool. Several capuchin monkeys play in the trees in the garden next to the pool, awesome! Our big outing for the day is to pick up our Carnaval Parade tickets, which are actually t-shirts. This is odd news because we thought we got to wear fun costumes to the event. We actually bought fun costumes for this event on our work trip. Oh well. The ticket/shirt pick up isn’t just a ticket/shirt pickup, its a full event. People check our passports so confirm our identity before sending us upstairs. There is a DJ, a small hair and make up studio, and fridges upon fridges full of free drinks. Once we receive our shirts, we’re directed to the shirt modification area, a giant counter staffed by 20 people modifying shirts. They are cutting them apart, and gluing shiny trims and bobbles onto them. This is unexcpectedly awesome! Some people have brought their outfits to make sure their ticket/shirts will work. What we thought was going to be a quick in and out, turns into an all evening event. We get our shirts modified, and enjoy all of the free beers. We walk out with our gift bags full of expensive skin care samples, and more free beers.
On our way back, we stumble upon our first bloco, the street parties that are planned all over Rio for the week. This seems like a good time to stop for some pizza and enjoy the band that is playing. Instead of meeting up with our friends, we call it early to save our energy for the big event tomorrow. We return to the campground and it’s a world changed. Instead of our nice spacious spot, there is a van crammed behind us, literally inches from our awning. All the parking area lights are on too, so no more nice dark area. We’ll deal with this in the morning.
The vehicle parked too close to us is there because the occupants are going on a multi-day bike tour, and will not be back before we leave. This makes more sense. Awake, we immediately get into the pool, and wait for the monkeys. They no-show us. After a little research, we find a bloco we want to try and photograph. The internet is split on if cameras will be stolen as readily as cell phones, so once again, we are on high alert. We find the party, its easy, just follow the flood of people in sparkly costumes. There are several sources of music, and lots of sun. Not being terribly skilled street photographers, we don’t really know what to do with ourselves, and don’t end up staying long. Which is fine, we need to rest up for the night ahead of us!
How did we end up at Carnaval? When we went to Antarctica, we made friends with everyone we could, including the travel agency we booked the cruise through. A couple of months ago, they reached out to us to ask if we were interested in going to Carnaval with them. Knowing nothing about Rio and Carnaval, other than Rio is dangerous, and we didn’t plan to go there, we said yes. And then we let them handle everything because, travel agents. We asked not enough questions, and did no research on our own, just blind faith. And they delivered.
The night starts with a very quiet, and expectant, hour long bus ride with our friends to the SambaDrome. The plan is to watch 4-6 Samba schools showcase their costumes and dancing over the course of 10-12 hours. We arrive at 8pm, good luck to us. The bus ride in is part of our VIP experience. Once inside our VIP section, we discover there are three levels, all stocked with gourmet free food, free beer, and free booze. They also give us a free pair of Havianas, the official shoe of Brazil. The third floor is a dance club, the second floor has balconies overlooking the Samba floor, and the first floor is the Samba floor. There is minimal separation between us and the performers.
The first school is in progress when we arrive. The music is deafening. The crowd is electric. The costumes are incredible. And this is the lowest ranked school of the night! There are sections in the stadium full of fans for each of the schools, and they explode with song and cheer when their schools are performing, only getting louder as the night goes on. Our view from the floor is incredible, we are basically in the parade. Performers look like they are having a great time, as do the staff monitoring everything. We get fist bumps from both as they pass by. For all the people in the VIP area, we never wait for anything, not food, not drinks, not even the women’s bathroom!
Before we know it, the sun is coming up, and the final school is leaving the floor. The crowd (and of course, us with them) rush the barrier, pouring onto the floor to celebrate the end of an indescribable night. We backtrack through our VIP section, losing all of our friends, and end up on the street in a random part of Rio. We see one of the floats leaving the area…badly. It crashes into a wall and loses several parts as it tries to turn a corner. This is a problem, because there is one more round of performances next weekend. We were worried we wouldn’t make it all night, but here we are trying to get an Uber at 6:30am.
We manage to sleep through our usual hot-wall alarm clock, until 1pm, and then it’s straight into the pool. We are VERY tired, and VERY dehydrated, and also VERY hungover. And VERY tired. The pool helps cool us off and give us a little life. So excited were we about the previous day’s events, that we did no planning for afterwards. We have no food, so we’re forced out into public for some sushi and groceries. KoKo drops a bottle of water in the grocery store and it explodes everywhere. That is the state we are in. Dusk is settling in, so now we can go back into the tent to continue our recovery for the rest of the night.
It’s bloco day again, but this time no cameras, all party. The plan is to meet up with our Parade group at the botanical gardens for Vagalume Verde Bloco. Established in 2005 in this historically significant neighborhood, they were attempting to revive childhood memories of their community coming together to celebrate. We think they succeeded.
Unfortunately, we confuse the start time and miss the whole thing. So instead of a bloco, we go with the flow of humanity, towards a delicious restaurant. We finally try the Brazilian empanada, and it is good! Our next stop is the beach for more party, and some sunset. We’ve been in the heat, and sun, and drinking all day, and it takes it’s toll. Berne gets heat soaked, so we decide it’s time to call it a day. Back at the campground, we get into the pool, partly to cool down, partly to wash the sweat and sand off. As always, the pool is life giving, and we are back in action! But our friends were not far behind us, and have all headed back to their respective hotels for the night too. Probably for the best, we can use all the sleep we can get.
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