Ramblings

I decided to do a city tour today…initially I wanted to do this early on (obviously makes more sense) but the weather sucked…Unfortunately the weather sucked again today, so it was all for nothing. With that said, I still had a good time.

We first went up to see the Christ Redeemer statue. This is the statue seen in all the postcards such as this-

Anyways, we saw a monkey on the way up-

Here was a fancy hotel that went out of business…soccer players used to stay here after matches and were the primary guests. It was abandoned in the 50s? (Mightve been earlier) and the government owns it now-

The view up there was fantastic, and you could see a full 360 degree view around the city…though, you couldn’t see the west side (which has the City of God favela, more on this later) due to mountains.

We went to Santa Theresa, an old neighborhood that features alot of art. It was occupied by many French and Portuguese immigrants, and the architecture shows it.

here was a funny painting -

The story is this- Adriano is a famous player from Brazil who also plays/has played in European club teams in the past. He had the opportunity to play on the current national team for the upcoming world cup this June but rejected it, mainly due to his constant partying. The picture shows Adriano riding a bike, away from the national team. He recently bought two very nice bikes; one for himself and the other for a childhood friend from his favela, who is now a drug lord. This raised alot of controversy in current news. I believe he’s going back to Italy to play, though, I could be wrong.

Afterwords we went to the Lapa steps in Santa Theresa. These are the work of Selaron, a Chilean artist who is famous around the world. He has a bizarre infatuation with a black pregnant woman, and she is in every piece of his art.

Here is me and the crazy looking artist, Selaron (I bought a $5 tile and had him sign it, pretty cool)-

After driving around some more and seeing other parts of the city (Centro, etc), we went to the waterfalls in Tijuca National Park.

The waterfalls are pretty cool there-

We saw another mountain…I can’t recall it’s name. There was a gorilla face on it and it was named as such-

The stories and anecdotes were very interesting. City of God (popular from the movie) was an area in the west where the government provided electricity and water. They said “Come here! Come here!” and the people did. The government did not hold up their end of the bargain however, and the people suffered. From the start of its existence, the City of God was a favela, a slum.

The police are really cracking down these days on the favelas. They are just occupying the areas completely, cracking down on the gangs and violence. Our driver said that the average number of muggings is very low now in Copacabana, the area next to mine (ipanema). They want this city much cleaner than it currently is (crime wise) for the upcoming World Cup and Olympics, in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

Not sure what I’ll be doing the next few days. I’m tentatively planning on climbing on Thursday…I also want to scuba dive once but reading the prices here it seems like they rip you off. Whatever…not sure how much longer I’ll be in rio…maybe until Sunday?