I traveled all night from Santa Cruz, Bolivia towards my destination of Rio. My flight was at 4:40 a.m. and I slept in the hotel lobby until about 1…The flight to Sao Paulo lasted about 5 hours and I periodically slept throughout the day for 1-3 hours at a time.
I didn’t get into Rio until about 4 p.m. the next day, a 12 hour journey. I probably got ripped off at the airport for a taxi, paying about $30 for my ride to ipanema, the touristy area of town. For reference, about $2 Reais (Brazilian currency) = $1 USD (approximately). My area has many stores/shops around and seems very modernized. I think it’s probably going to be fairly safe all around. I ate subway for dinner and was actually somewhat craving a decently made sandwich (it was excellent…I’m so pathetic).
Rio is an incredibly beautiful city. It’s surrounded by mountains, and has a ton of lakes/beach areas throughout. I know there is a ton to do here and the city offers alot- great night life, tons of outdoors stuff, relaxing at the beach, etc.
I plan on rock climbing, scuba diving, maybe some other stuff. I wanted to take the city tour the first day I was here (today), but the weather kindve sucks. I’ll probably end up doing a city tour later on in the week, hopefully when it is a bit nicer outside. Unfortunately, the weather is probably going to suck for most of my duration in Rio, as I saw mostly cloudy skies as a weekly forecast.
Today I decided I wanted to do a Favela tour. It cost $R 65 and lasted about 3 hours. We went into Rocinha, the largest favela in South America, home to 200,000 people.
We parked our van outside of the favela and rode on the backs of motor bikers up the hill. We walked down throughout the favela.
A favela is defined as a ‘slum’ or ‘ghetto’ in English terms. The area is very poor, with a mix of both regular trades (shop, restaurant owners, other commodities such as internet cafes or pastries) as well as the drug trade. The primary drug of choice is cocaine, which is imported from Bolivia and Colombia. Brazil does not grow cocaine and has minimal marijuana growth as well. Both are imported into the favelas, who then export various drugs both within the favela and outside.
The drug business is profitable, bringing in about $1 million + a month. The area that we visited was ran by ADA, or Amigos dos Amigos.
The most dangerous times were “all day” our guide said. The worst cases are when the police come into the favelas on drug raids, oftentimes early in the morning (5-6 a.m.). He said that the drug dealers don’t want to be caught (obviously) and use a variety of weapons to elude capture (rocket launchers, machine guns, grenades).
We walked by one drug dealer who had a gun in his pants. We were assured that everything was safe and cool, as long as we were with our guide. These tours are actually quite popular with tourists and our proceeds help fund some of the day cares within the favela.
We met with local shop owners and ate some home made pastries. We also heard some local kids making street music, using metal bins and other tools as drums. We tipped the kids after. Our guide urged us not to give any of the street kids free money, even with them knowing 3 words in English- “Money”, “hi”, and another word that escapes me. He wanted to teach them to learn how to do stuff for money, be it make music, paintings, or other jobs.
He told us an interesting story: Some favela guys stole a crate of machine guns from the army head quarters, hiding them within the favela. Within hours the army stormed in, bringing hundreds of soldiers, tanks, and armed vehicles within the favela. He said it was a demonstration of power and sent the message to “not fuck with the army”. Even though the drug lords fought with the local police (who are highly specialized in urban warfare), they didn’t fuck with the army. The army got a local call from someone within the favela telling them where the guns were located and the army vacated shortly after.
The tour lasted about 3 hours round trip and was well worth it. It didn’t seem tremendously dangerous, as the residents were friendly and the mood being pretty nice overall…that said, I’m sure that we saw the tamer areas with fewer drug dealers.
This made me think about some of the nasty areas in the U.S., places like New Orleans, Baltimore, Compton, etc…I wonder how they compare?
Probably going to spend tomorrow rock climbing and then going to the beach. Need to find a bathing suit. Rio is looking to be pretty fun…