Rio de Janeiro - Lapa and Santa Teresa

I go to Rio...de Janeiro

Brazil's first Portuguese colonial masterpiece needs no introduction. After all, it stars in so many bossa nova classic songs such as Copacabana, Girl from Ipanema and as my mother pointed out, Peter Allen's cheesy classic I go to Rio. It's barely a fifth of the size of Sao Paulo, but Rio de Janeiro is in many respects the pulsating heart of Brazil.

From its steep rainforest-covered outcrops overlooking squeaky clean apartment towers and precariously perched favelas clinging to the sides of the hills, this bayside city oozes energy from every oraface. Although probably most known for its beaches, there are endless things to see and do Rio's city centre and inner ring of suburbs, Lapa and Santa Teresa.

Walk a few streets this way and that, and the urban landscape changes completely. The commercial centre of Rio is, like most major cities, pretty non-descript, but just a few blocks over in the bohemian district of Lapa, the streets are lined with the plastic tables and chairs of Brazilian-style bars called botecas, restaurants and samba clubs.

Street murals in Santa Teresa

Lapa attracts big crowds on the weekends, especially on Friday night when its main drag Mem da Sa closes for a carnaval-style street party. Drumming troupes wallop out driving rhythms to the crowds drinking and dancing all over the street. Music erupts from the samba clubs lining the main drag, and there were also several clubs open in nearby alleyways. On one section, on a median strip underneath Lapa's giant white Roman-style aqueduct which splices the district in half, street vendors sell beer, popcorn, hamburgers and delicious Brazilian churrasco - an exotic word for chunks of grilled meat on skewers. But if you didn't want to leave your place in the crowd to go and get a drink, it didn't matter. Guys with trays of caipirinhas, Brazil's ubiquitous sugar-cane cocktail, circulated through the crowd.

While the party is on every night in Lapa - which in the past well-to-do locals wouldn't touch with a barge pole as it was a seedy, depraved red light district - Fridays is the night to go and experience it. Unfortunately the samba club owners realise this, and charge hefty entry prices for acts that on other nights you can go and see for free. We refrained from paying a cover charge, and instead opted to revel in the street outside the clubs, where you could still hear the music.

Colonial mansions of Santa Teresa

The street party attracts a diverse crowd. Everyone was there, from well-dressed groups of girls on the prowl to pickpocketing favela youths - one wandering hand dived into the pocket of my dress, where luckily there was only a map and some lip balm. There were even a few old guys busting a move outside the samba clubs at 5am. One guy with a toothless grin was asking us for money one minute, and then laying down his moves with us the next!

Lapa's parties showcase Rio's diversity in its full splendour, but the stark contrasts between the haves and the have nots are more blatant when you take a walk up any one of its steep hillsides. Giant, swanky white apartment blocks line the beaches and the trendy suburbs around the city centre, while rambling colonial mansions are tucked into the hillsides of leafy neighbourhood Santa Teresa. Its cobblestoned streets, lined with concrete retaining walls, are decorated with an amazing variety of street art, from council-commissioned murals, to throw-up graffiti pieces to all types of weird and wonderful characters and other spray-painted decorations.

One of Rio's many favelas

The area is quite mixed, with everything from schmick mansions to run-down tenements and even a giant castle jutting out of the hillside. Then there are the favelas, which occupy the steeper parts of the hillsides. Santa Teresa has no less than six separate favelas, interestingly all of which are marked on google maps, perched a stone's throw from stately colonial mansions protected by big rendered walls and razor wire. It is easy to make a wrong turn and accidentally stumble into a favela. It would be easy to get lost in the maze of streets but thankfully there is a tram line on the main one winding up the hill, which ferries people to and from the Corcovado, atop which the behemoth concrete Christ the Redeemer sits.

Santa Teresa's open-sided trams, or bonde as they are known locally, are an iconic part of this hilltop suburb. But tragically the day after we visited the area, there was a horrific accident where one of the trams lost control, skidded 50 metres down a hill and then hit a lamp post. This nearly sliced the tram in half and left 5 people dead and 27 injured. The accident made the bbc news and took place just minutes from our hostel. Some people staying there were walking up to take the tram and arrived on the scene right after it happened.

Visiting the famous Cristo, recently voted by internet poll as one of the new seven wonders of the world, is readily do-able by either tram, bus or simply walking up the hill. To admire the statue itself it is easier to go to one of the surrounding hills. The main point of going to the statue itself, and paying the entrance fee, is to admire the stunning 360 degree city views. Its height and central location means you can see all the weird and wonderful pockets of Rio, from the south zone and the beaches, to the city centre and all the way up to the less wealthy northern region.

Looking out to the Sugarloaf and the Atlantic beyond

The problem is, the weather isn't always amenable to a pretty Cristo sighting and Corcovado visit. Many tourists get their way up the hill, only to discover that the statue is shrouded in clouds, making it impossible to see the city laid out below. This was the case when we walked up the hill - so instead of going up to the Corcovado and paying the entrance fee, we opted for the lookout on a lower hill opposite. Looking out across the city, we didn't quite get the same panorama but were still able to see out to the beaches and over the coastline to Rio's other hilltop stunner, the Sugar Loaf, an almost vertical lump of rock that sits on a peninsula jutting out to the Atlantic.

There is so much to see in Rio that we thought it easier to try out two different neighbourhoods - the samba capital Lapa and leafy Santa Teresa for the weekend, and then relax at beachside Ipanema and neighbouring Leblon for a few days afterwards. It´s not always fun staying in the middle of a big, bad city but fortunately we lucked in on a fantastic hostel which made our stay so much better. Books Hostel is located in the heart of Lapa, right near the arches under which the weekly street party takes place. It´s a great place to hang out and meet people, and owners Renato and Felipe are really friendly and helpful and create a relaxed vibe.

Island fun on Morro de São Paulo

Our search for the perfect Brazilian beach led us as far north as the idyllic Jericoacoara and south to the pristine sands of Arraial d'Ajuda, but in the end we found the best option right under our noses. The secluded peninsula of Morro de São Paulo, one of five settlements on the island of Tinharé, can be reached by a two hour speedboat ride from the city of Salvador.

Beach 2, Morro de Sao Paulo

Morro de São Paulo is not exactly a tranquil tropical paradise; it has definitely been "discovered" by Brazilian and foreign tourists alike. Yet it somehow manages to retain a laid-back feel - development has been kept to a minimum. Many of the homes and shops have been there since colonial times, their painted façades and terracotta roofs looking out at the calm turquoise Atlantic ocean. 

To get there we took a catamaran for 75 reais (about $40) from Salvador's Terminal Maritimo Turistico, in the centre of town behind Mercado Modelo. It was a rough ride, despite being in a two-hulled boat, and we were covered in sea spray after the 60km journey.

The peninsula consists of three beaches (uninspiringly named beaches 1, 2 and 3) connected by a long walkway. Along the second, biggest beach, it becomes a wooden boardwalk, separating a wide, sandy expanse from a row of shops, restaurants and bars. After running alongside the first beach, the path winds its way up the hill and over to the ferry wharf on the other side of the peninsula. Every shop along this part seems to be selling havaianas, Brazil's famous native brand of flip flops (sorry to my fellow Aussies but as this is a blog also read by non-Aussies, I have to use international English) - you can even find a pair in the supermarket for $5 a pair.

Sadly, the beaches here aren't great for swimming, thanks to great colonies of rocks implanted in the sand. It's possible to swim at high tide, when the water comes up so far it practically envelops the entire beach. There are some tracts of beach that are rock-free, but the bottom is a little muddy so the visibility isn't great. After searching for a perfect swimming spot for days we abandoned our plan to swim laps, and instead were contented to wallow in the shallows.

Luckily, there is plenty to distract you from the lack of a perfectly-formed beach. In Brazil, it seems that most of the action takes place out of the water. Morro de São Paulo offers people watching par excellence. Its most interesting mix includes locals hanging about selling coconuts, playing soccer and beach volleyball, toned young Brazilian couples in skimpy bikinis and super-small male briefs (Tony Abbott eat your heart out), middle aged women dressing as 20-somethings and the odd French or Scandinavian family on holiday. 

Brazilians have invented their own take on beach volleyball, combining it with soccer so that instead of using your hands, your feet, knees, head and even chest are used to get the ball where it's going. Instead of serving with their arms they place the ball on a little mound at the back of the court and boot it into play. There is also a steady stream of locals going around to people on the beach trying to sell a host of other activities, from boat trips to kayaking and trying out the peninsula's zip line, which runs from the lighthouse on the cliff top down to the first beach.

On Brazilian beaches, less is more

Before embarking on a beach holiday, Brazilians seem to check their inhibitions at the door. No matter what their body type (although some obviously work pretty hard on theirs), they appear totally comfortable strutting about in extremely brief swimwear. I couldn't believe how popular budgie smugglers are on the beach, especially among middle-aged men. Brazilians have adapted the humble speedo, giving it slightly more coverage, sort of a very brief bike short look, and this is what the majority of them get around in.  

At night time the local guys, after an intense beach football match, would fire up a charcoal grill and make churrasco - lump after lump of exquisitely tender beef, which is cooked medium rare, sliced up and consumed on the spot. Stalls bursting with fruit and vegetable displays line the boardwalk, offering to liquify your favourite fruit into a caipirinha, made with Brazil's version of sugar cane rum, cachaça for five reais ($3), or for a little more into a caiprioska made with vodka. 

It was often tricky to negotiate the section of the boardwalk on the second beach that was lined with restaurants, especially when you walk along as a couple. When alone, everyone assumes you are not in the market for a meal. Some of the touts were a little enthusiastic, and would bail us up with either a big diatribe in Portuguese that we could barely understand, or worse, a fog-horn style of English with all of the vowels mixed up. On the whole though they were not too pushy and you are able to say 'no' politely and easily.

Restaurants and eateries at Morro de São Paulo offer everything from cheap sandwiches and hamburgers, to buffets where they weigh your food and charge by the kilo and fancy seafood restaurants serving up giant dishes that two people can share, from lobsters, crabs and other shellfish to local favourites moqueca, a palm oil and tomato based fish stew, and bobo de camarão, prawns in a hearty cassava stew. 

There are also churrasco restaurants where you can get all the grilled meat you can handle for 30 reais - $18. We found the best-tasting and good value meals away from the over-priced beach zone. Further up the hill you can find places selling executivo meals of the day for 15 reais, where you can chose from prawns, fish, beef and chicken and sides of beans, rice, mash and salad.

Absolute beachfront

Lining the beachfront is a row of bars with plastic tables, chairs and deckchairs selling snacks such as pasties and empanadas, perfect for washing down caipirinhas and beers. To our surprise and relief, Brazilians are masters at keeping their beers super-chilly. Fridges are turned down to just above zero degrees and each drink sold is encased in a screw-on cooler that leaves the stodgy Aussie stubby cooler for dead.

We arrived with an open-ended schedule, and eventually booked a flight out of Salvador which then gave us nine days to bask in the sun (and occasional storm) and sand. We had reserved Pousada Barra Vento, on the third beach, for three nights. It was a nice loft room with a great balcony in a thoughfully-run place, but we changed after three days to the beachfront Pousada Grauça, where we scored the front room with a balcony overlooking the beach and the walkway. Our first-floor room was so close to the beach that when the tide comes in, you could stare over the balcony directly down to the waves lapping gently at the sea wall. A very difficult place to leave, needless to say!

Our first-floor balcony

Dancing to a different beat in Salvador

Vibrant Salvador is a feast for the senses, yet its charm does not lie in the colour explosion that is its immaculately preserved colonial district, the Pelourinho. Nor is it drawn from its fortuitous location, perched atop a rugged peninsula jutting out onto the Atlantic Ocean.

Salvador’s true appeal comes from its defiant and indefatigable people, many of whom are descended from West Africans captured and brought to Brazil as slaves to work on sugar plantations over three hundred years. Slavery was abolished in 1851, yet the traditions it entrenched in these people in the face of adversity continue to this day.

It’s incredible how much of their culture Africans have brought with them and preserved in Brazil over the centuries. Salvador, capital of the north-eastern state of Bahia, remains the hub of Afro-Brazilian culture. Most notably, the Africans did not have their multi-deity religion, Candomble, squashed by the Portuguese, as happened to many other indigenous nations throughout Latin America.

Candomble survived because the African slaves cleverly disguised certain aspects of worship to resemble Catholicism, and were thus permitted to practice their religion. It is based around a group of deities, known as Orixas, each with their own unique outfits, responsibilities and a day of the week. Ogum is said to closely resemble Jesus, being the son of God, and has a nemesis that dwells in hell like the devil.

The female Orixas are illustrated wearing head turbans and brightly coloured skirts with big hoops in them. It’s easy to spot women dressed up as various Orixas throughout the Pelourinho, ready to lure unsuspecting tourists into restaurants or to eat at street stalls.

Woman dressed as an Orixa goddess

Another tradition kept alive during slavery and after is the capoeira dance, which has been popularised into a form of aerobics around the world. It was originally just a free fight between slaves, but when their masters beat them for fighting they adapted their moves into a slower-moving, but equally confrontational dance, set to pounding bongo drum rhythms.

Capoeira artists, whether talented or amateur, also prey on tourists wandering around the Pelourinho. Cast even a sideways dance at a mock fight and inevitably you will be mobbed by people demanding money for looking at the performance. The nicest way I can describe it is an extremely pro-active form of busking, bordering on consensual mugging in some instances. Sadly, the pushiest people are often after money for the more average performers.

Salvador is a sightseer’s delight – there are a zillion museums, monuments and churches to check out – but as usual we couldn’t really be bothered with all of this, even though we were disappointed when we later found out that some churches were decked out with gold bullion. We did visit the Afro-Brazilian museum, which catalogued the history of slavery in Salvador and had displays on the Orixas and contained some wooden carvings and intricate metal ornaments (and to Adam’s delight, and anyone who has seen the Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live sketch, a big cowbell).

The Pelourinho is perched atop a hill overlooking the Atlantic, its cobblestoned laneways running parallel to a sheer drop, below which the city’s commercial district sits. Scores of police patrol this hilltop touristy area bordered by disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but apparently this hasn’t stopped large numbers of muggings from taking place.

Ironically, children pose the biggest threat. A guy staying in our hostel was approached by one who threatened him with a broken bottle, and got away with his wallet, camera and phone. Another guy we met in Bolivia had been surrounded by a whole group of them who had promptly relieved him of the contents of his pockets. Sadly, many of these kids live on the streets and some are addicted to crack.

Salvador provides instant evidence that Brazil is a country of dramatic wealth contrasts. Its downtown area is ragged and rundown. We found ourselves on a street leading down the hill from the immaculately presented Pelourinho is lined with dilapidated buildings housing drinking dens and whorehouses, with hookers hanging about on the cracked pavements.

Barra Beach

The neighbourhoods lining the upmarket marina area on the waterfront are also run down and contain many condemned buildings. The small beaches opposite them are lined with rubbish, tents and shanties. But then again, I can think of plenty of worse places if you are going to be homeless.

Further up this coastal strip, the shanties disappear, making way for imposing modern apartment towers enclosed in razor wire fencing with security guards sitting in locked offices at the entrances. But the seediest part of town had to be the pedestrian walkway on the side of the freeway leading to the flashy apartments. Even though there were police stationed at the entrance, about 200 metres further down, groups of people were sitting down against the concrete walls, preparing crack pipes.

We were pretty surprised to see people doing it in public, and not really sure how these people would react to a couple of tourists interrupting them. But to our amazement, they simply smiled and said “Olá.” Maybe it would have been different if they didn’t have any crack left!

Closer to the tip of the peninsula is the affluent beachside neighbourhood of Barra. It is home to a strip of fancy hotels, apartment buildings and waterfront restaurants, but when we strolled up and down the road that hugs the ocean on a Sunday afternoon, the atmosphere was electric. Narrow beaches were crowded with people sitting fading beach umbrellas with stalls selling coconuts, guarana drinks and beer everywhere you looked.

But the best thing we observed about Brazilian beach culture was how liberated people are with their bodies. They just stroll about town in their super-brief swimsuits, men in little more than boy-leg budgie smugglers and women in microscopic bikinis. In short, there is a lot of flesh on display (in some cases a little too much), but everyone just seems so darn…comfortable in their own skins.

A final upside of the African influence on Salvador is its amazing cuisine, made even better by the variety of seafood on offer thanks to its coastal location. A standout is the moqueca, an amazingly rich fish and seafood stew cooked in dende or palm oil, and flavoured with tomatoes, onions and about a million spices. It tastes even better washed down with a few caipirinhas, made with Brazil’s famous cachaca sugar cane spirit, which go for just under $2.50 a pop.

Delicious moqueca fish stew

Bolivia’s wild east

Bolivia's appearance usually conjures up images of its bleak and unforgiving highland region where nothing but short tufts of grass, llamas and women in bowler hats and layered skirts can survive. It’s true that the altiplano, a 4000m altitude plain sandwiched between two mountain ranges supports 70 per cent of the population but most of Bolivia’s land is far more inviting. As you descend, the bald mountains turn into rolling green hills covered in dense rainforest, leading eventually to the flat, steamy Amazon jungle.

Heading east and away from the mountains, we stopped for a night at Cochabamba (a name that sounds curiously like the Spanish coche bomba, meaning car bomb). The town’s name was the most exciting part in an otherwise bland, westernised grid of streets surrounding a typical Latin American central plaza. It was filled with bland Sizzler and TGI Friday-style family restaurants, latino style, with funny names like “Dumbo” and “Globo”, which seemed immensely popular with the local, wealthy-looking inhabitants.

It was when we arrived in Santa Cruz that we began to notice stark differences between the highlands and eastern lowlands. Firstly, everyone we spoke to seemed a lot more laid back than their Andean counterparts. That’s not to say that people at bus stations, hostels and shops were any more competent than other Bolivians – there was the usual litany of mistakes at every turn. In total three separate hostels double-booked our rooms, and one even had to turn us away even though we had paid in full because they had nowhere else for us.

Toffee apple man

Santa Cruz, despite being Bolivia’s largest “city” with well over one million inhabitants, retains a cozy small-town feel in its bustling but relaxed centre. It did not have the chaotic, manic feel of La Paz, but the drivers were still mental and it was difficult to cross roads. There’s more diversity in this area of Bolivia than in the highlands, where indigenous Quechua and Aymara people dominate.

In the east, up to 10 per cent of the population is of foreign extraction, with groups from other South American nations, US and European expats and curious colonies of uber-religious German and Russian Mennonites. These oddballs get about in traditional garb, the women with scarves that look like the habits that nuns wear, aprons and flowered skirts. The men meanwhile dress like American trailer trash, with blue denim overalls, flannel shirts and high-peaked truck stop hats.

Samaipata

The city has some fairly fancy-looking neighbourhoods, with sprawling Spanish villas surrounded by razor-wire fencing and expensive cars trawling the streets. We spotted at least three Jaguars. But there are also a lot of homeless people on the central streets, toothless hawkers selling nick-nacks that no one wants and women with small children curled up on rugs and begging on street corners.

Santa Cruz is a nice place to walk around and hang out in for a day, but there’s not all that much to do here, so we headed to Samaipata, a beautiful colonial hamlet tucked into the surrounding foothills, for a few days. The town is a stone’s throw from the Amboro national park (which is a loose term given that people still live within its bounds).

Tree-fern love

If Santa Cruz is laid back. Samaipata is practically horizontal. Everyone knows everyone and it is very easy to find people. We ran into the people we had met at the hostel in Santa Cruz within a couple of hours of arriving, so we had a group to go on a hike with into the national park the next day.

Amboro Park was only set up in the 1970s, and it quickly became clear that hiving off a big chunk of land that was already used by local people for various purposes was not going to work. The government eventually allowed people back into sections of it, and cows are given virtually free reign through the lush primary rainforests that cover a row of mountains that face Samaipata and neighbouring towns. Still, the park is home to pumas, ocelots (small, leopard-like cats) and many bird species.

Cow-pats aside, it’s a great place to witness Bolivia’s incredible diversity, as you can hike up to the ridge line and pass through a number of completely different eco-systems. We started the hike on a creek bed surrounded by cacti and other desert-style scrub and walk up to where the forest starts, where there are acacia trees and other dry scrub with crackly bark and dry leaves.

Horsing around with Frank

As we ascended, we reached the point where the clouds hang over the forest, providing more moisture and humidity, which makes the canopy far thicker and means that shade-dwelling plants can thrive. Here, amazing giant tree ferns, some up to 10 metres in height, started popping up among the other trees. The forest floor was also covered with many types of smaller ferns, which reminded both Adam and I of hikes we did in New Zealand as children.

This wasn’t really a strenuous hike, as we stopped regularly to listen to explanations about the different types of trees, which ones had medicinal properties and general information about the local area by Frank, our eccentric German guide. 

Frank had the energy and of a small child, and enthusiastically explained all the amazing properties of ferns, how they reproduce by little leaf stubs unfurling (that we know in kiwi speak as the Koru) and charged his machete into the dead leaves that created compacted mounds after they fell to the forest floor. Also popular was the “cement tree,” that emitted a tough metallic noise when Frank tapped it with his machete.

Toucans

A highlight was seeing a group of four green toucans – which are notoriously difficult to spot in the wild – screeching and play-fighting in the tree tops. They were smaller than the other more common orange-beaked black toucan which I had seen at an animal refuge in Peru, with pointier beaks.

From the top of the ridge, we could see all the way along the tops of the mountains to another chain of hills behind, and peeked into the Amazon jungle that lay beyond it. Opposite the ridge was a totally pristine area that the government forbids access to, and on either side were hills used by farmers that had fields in a patchwork of colours. The sky was amazingly clear (often it is clouded over by farmers burning their fields), and the only clouds visible were ones that clung to forested hills a fair distance away.

Our time in Samaipata coincided with Bolivia’s independence day festivities. All week, schoolchildren had been marching around the main plaza with instruments and batons, practising their marches for the big parade. On the night, kids held cute upside-down five-pointed cellophane stars lit from the inside by candles in green, red and yellow, Bolivia’s national colours. 

Independence day merchandise on sale

 The musical skills of most of the kids left a little to be desired, but there was usually two or three kids that could hold the tune while the rest struggled to follow. It was cute to watch the smaller children taking their role in the parade really seriously, marching in time with the music with their knees high in the air, while the teenagers just rushed on through as quick as they could. There were also big cellophane floats made of the same colours in the shape of model aeroplanes and larger upside-down stars.

The temperature had shot up by at least 10 degrees when we returned via the bumpy, half-paved road to Santa Cruz, with gusty warm breezes blowing through town. Apparently the big fluctuations in temperature are due to northerly winds blowing down from the Amazon, alternating with southerlies coming straight off the Antarctic. It was great to have that warm balmy feeling in the evening after weeks in the chilly highlands. We stayed in a colonial guesthouse with a leafy courtyard and a pet toucan called Simon roaming around, whose giant orange beak was so big it looked like he would topple over.

Toucan Simon

Santa Cruz is our last stop in Bolivia. From here we are travelling by train across the low-lying savannah of the Pantanal and over the Brazilian border to a town called Corumba. This trip used to be known as the “death train,” but we have been assured that improvements have been made to the tracks, and that our 13-hour first-class service will be comfortable! But this is Bolivia so it’s anyone’s guess!

From the Brazilian border we will take a bus to the nearest big town, Campo Grande, and then fly across Brazil to the Atlantic coastal city of Salvador. Travelling overland to Brazil rather than flying straight to Salvador saves us hundreds of dollars, as airfares shoot up when you travel international in South America, but domestic flights are relatively cheap.