South American travelogue, winter 2008
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- Week 7 (March 8-14): Mostly Rio de Janeiro, plus to and from
March 16, 2008 - Saturday, March 8
Good hotel breakfast—including breakfast in hotel charge seems universal where we’ve visited, although quality and range of offerings vary significantly. Some tourism in nearby historic center with
nice old (mostly 19th-century) buildings, then shopping and on the road. Curitiba isn’t that much of a tourist stop but is a major city of about two million and one of Brazil’s most prosperous and
best-run cities. About an hour figuring out how to get out of town and headed toward São Paulo--terrible signage. Some rigorous traffic enforcement on freeway into and out of city--posted radar
checks requiring you to slow to 60 kph briefly (all do) and a few speed bumps. Yes, speed bumps on urban freeway. No checkpoints as in Argentina, but frequent police posts where they funnel you down
to one lane and make you slow down without stopping. Despite that kind of rigor, the major four-lane roads have pedestrians walking across and beside them, bicycles riding on shoulder, etc. Susan,
reading about Portuguese in books we got in Curitiba as Tom drives, learns why we can understand so little even though we can read much of what we see: Portuguese pronunciation has both heavy
nasalization of many vowels (São is sow, not say-oh) and variant sounds for several consonants (such as “ch” where we see “t”). The softness of the consonants does make it a pleasant language in
which to hear someone sing. If anyone tells you that you can get along in Brazil or Portugal by knowing Spanish, that’s mostly not true as to speaking and hearing although it works pretty well for
reading. (One amusing false semi-cognate, however, is that “borracho” in Spanish is “drunk” or “drunkard”; we kept seeing “borracharias” in Brazil and wondering if they were “drunkeries.” Turns out
they’re places you can get your tires fixed.)
We find out the hard way that the main highway from Curitiba to São Paulo, about 250 miles, although four lanes nearly all the way is in abysmal condition. The government is responsible, not a
private concessionare, so there are no tolls—and far too little maintenance. You can mostly make reasonable time, but you’re forever dodging potholes and big cracks in the pavement. It’s a national
scandal, having such an awful road between two of the country’s most important cities, and it’s known as the “road of death.” We made it to São Paulo, a monster city (about 20 million) that we’ve
decided not to try visiting. It has a wonderful brand-new eight-lane ring road to get you around the city--with even worse signage than in Curitiba. It took us two hours, with several wrong turns and
struggling to understand directions given to us in Portuguese, to get on the right road heading on toward Rio de Janeiro. By then it was about 8 p.m. and Susan, in particular, was beat and not up for
another four-plus hours on the road. Fortunately, we were near the airport on the way out of town and looked for an airport hotel, finding a quite nice Marriott with decent food (and the Book of
Mormon in Portuguese in our room).
Sunday, March 9
The highway from São Paulo to Rio is all four lanes or more, with fairly expensive tolls from the outfit that has the concession--and the maintenance is fine. Several major cities along the way,
especially near the São Paulo end; smaller towns not as spiffy as those we noticed heading east from Foz do Iguaçu. Green and fairly hilly, with mixture of cultivation and unworked land. Reached Rio
in about 4½ hours, this time being able to follow directions and get straight to apartment of Duke friend Steve Wallenstein without a wrong turn. The apartment is terrific--a modern, two-bedroom
place on the tenth floor overlooking the heart of famous Ipanema Beach, which was packed on Sunday. Broad beach with volleyball courts near the road; games were both as we know volleyball and
soccer-style, using feet, head, and chest but not hands. Even the serve is by kicking the ball off the sand from behind the service line--and they do very well getting their serves in.
Steve’s German international-financier friend, Oltmann Siemens (of the industrialist family), is here until Monday for a conference and staying in the second bedroom. Steve’s wife Tereza Carvalho is
from Rio, and the three of us staying in the apartment went out for dinner with two of Tereza’s sisters, Gabriela and Béatriz, at the fairly nearby Jockey Club. Nice outdoor setting overlooking the
racing track, and pleasant dinner; Gabriela teaches economic history and had to be getting up for a 7:00 a.m. class the next morning, poor thing. Brazilians do seem to eat dinner and get up earlier
than Argentines and Chileans, perhaps partly because it’s dark so much sooner—in southwestern Argentina with the country on double daylight saving time it was light until 10:30 when we were there,
whereas here with daylight saving just ended the sun goes down shortly after 6:00. Patrons at Jockey Club, as opposed to some of staff, appeared to be 100% Caucasian despite Brazil’s having very
large numbers of people of color. From what little we can tell they’re nowhere nearly as far along as the US in bringing some minorities into elites.
Monday, March 10
Morning stroll along beach sidewalk to neighboring Leblon neighborhood just west of Ipanema, pretty much a continuation of ritzy Ipanema area. Lots of joggers, walkers, bikers, etc. Back through
street market where vendor got us to pay more (about $3 US rather than $1) than we should have for a nice mango; still, he was an enjoyable juking, jiving sort and was generous with samples. Mostly a
work day on casebooks for both of us. Out in evening to very good nearby Via Sete restaurant; open air in comfortable weather.
Tuesday, March 11
Another morning walk, this time inland to Lagoa (lagoon), which gave us a good sense of the setting of this part of the city. Ipanema and its twin Leblon just to the west are largely narrow strips
about five blocks wide between the famous beach, which runs close to due east-west between rock formations, and a large inland lagoon, with the north edge of Ipanema and Leblon running east-west
along the southern edge of the lagoon. From there you look across at steep hills with tall buildings at their bases all around the lagoon; if you don’t have an apartment over Ipanema beach you can
still have one facing the lagoon and have a spectacular view. Rio is a city punctuated by many steep, large hills with some tunnels through them for traffic and very little development on the hills,
at least in the prosperous southern areas away from the northerly favelas (slums). After morning constitutional, back to apartment for work; taxi ride in late afternoon to Arpoador rock formation at
east end of Ipanema beach to watch sunset, which they say you have to do although we were unlucky enough to get significant clouds as sun went down.
Wednesday, March 12
Mostly a work day for both of us, taking advantage of Tom’s being able to work on Steve’s computer wile Susan uses her own. A neighborhood stroll out for some shopping, and dinner at another good
neighborhood restaurant—Alessandra & Frederico, serving very fine mostly Italian dishes. Plenty to take home and save to eat later
Thursday, March 13
You can’t leave Rio without seeing some of its (justly) most famous sites. So we took the old train up the steep hill to the top--about 2,300 feet--of Corcovado (hunchback), at the top of which is
the famous statute of Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) with arms outstretched and visible from most parts of Rio on a good day. Interesting plantings with signs marking them along railroad.
Stunning views all around from top of Corcovado with city spreading out in every direction. Somewhat hazy, but lucky timing as heavier clouds came in just as we finished our look around the top.
Short walk after train ride down to visit nearby Museu Internacional de Arte Naïf (International Museum of Naïve (we’d say “outsider” art--by unschooled artists; we have several pieces we like in
Durham)) Art. Turns out it just had to close indefinitely, perhaps for funding shortage--nothing on its Web site. We encountered very nice woman employee (director?) just leaving who spoke excellent
English and recommended an old-style churrasqueria for lunch; turned out to be an excellent and charming place, with server fully supportive of Susan’s rejecting two bottles of moderately expensive
wine--agreed they’d turned nasty. On to base of cable-car lifts (two stages) to top of Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf) at about 1,300 feet, large rock thumb near harbor with yet more excellent views of
downtown, domestic airport, marina, Copacabana, Niteroi city across harbor entrance, etc. Rio is really a spectacular place, somewhat reminiscent to Tom of Hong Kong with steep hills, tall buildings
at bases, ride to cool elevated peak. Taxi ride back to apartment along famous Copacabana strip, now apparently somewhat less safe than Ipanema area. An American tourist we met a couple of days ago
told us she’d had a necklace stripped from her near their Copacabana hotel. (We leave rings and Susan’s necklace in the apartment when we go out.) Back to apartment for dinner off very good
leftovers. Thunder, rain, and wind in late evening; we were fortunate in the timing of our sightseeing.
Friday, March 14
Off for Curitiba in late morning in considerable rain, which slackened and turned to intermittent after a couple of hours. We missed a key (but late and obscure) sign to stay on the São Paulo ring
road and ended up going through that mega-city on surface streets. Plenty of stop-and-go but not as bad as trying to get through LA on I-10 at congested time! When we stop for gas, interesting fuel
options here: Expensive gas with, I think, some methanol often mixed in; cheap alcohol for cars so equipped (ours from Argentina isn’t); and also cheap (subsidized?) diesel. By contrast, in Argentina
the choices are less expensive and unmixed gasoline, expensive diesel, and compressed natural gas for equipped cars (ours isn’t). Brazil has done quite a job getting much of its auto fleet enabled to
run on alcohol; perhaps as a result, there are virtually no cars on the road here with major visible emissions, in sharp contrast to Argentina. Brazilian trucks, on the other hand, are every bit as
bad as those in Argentina and Chile; we’re forever switching to inside air on our car ventilation as we pass stinkpot trucks--nearly all have exhaust on the left--on the road. It turns out that the
westbound road to Curitiba seems nowhere nearly as awful as the parallel eastbound highway, although it’s often still pretty bad. Late arrival in Curitiba at same good Crowne Plaza hotel; got better
room with nice balcony overlooking pretty old town center after recent carpet cleaning in first room made Susan feel sick. Another good room-service dinner with restaurants closed at late hour.
