The party city - Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Rio at night
(with Christ the Redeemer statue)

During our trip to Brazil, we flew in to Rio from London and stayed there only for a day. Initially, I was a bit unsure about that as everyone I have met has loved the city, and I thought one day might be too less for it. Though now, I think that was more than enough. I haven’t figured out why there is so much hoo-hulla about the city - its definitely pretty, has nice beaches and all, but other than partying, I don’t see much you can do there for long. And given that that wasn't what we were looking for, it was the right decision to not stay there longer.

We took the official taxi from the airport to the hotel, which cost twice as much as the regular ones you can take from right outside the airport. And that was true for the rest of our time there too - we were quite cautious in Rio because of its reputation as an unsafe city and so ended up overpaying almost all the time.

View of Rio from afar

Rio is famous for its beaches, the most famous of which is the Copacabana beach. And then there are the less famous ones of Ipanema, Leblon and so on. Most of the tourists stay around these beaches and so the hotels here are quite pricey. We stayed at the Mar Ipanema hotel, which was a relatively cheap option. It is in the Ipanema area and I would totally recommend it. Its 5 mins walking to the beach, has good views of the beaches, lagoon and the Statue of Christ, and is of good enough quality.

Ipanema beach

We spent half of our day on the Ipanema beach and the other half visiting the famous tourist spots around. The Ipanema beach was pretty, it was sunny and warm and looked like everyone in the city was out in the sea! The water was clean green, and quite warm; enough to enjoy the water with the waves providing extra fun. The weather was perfect for the beach too, 26 degrees (and that too in winter)! There were also helicopters circling the beach areas to ensure tourist safety.

The road next to the beach had been turned into a pedestrian zone for the day, and you could see everyone walking around, taking in the views while the hawkers were trying hard to sell their wares. The whole beach was lined with high rise posh hotels and then on the other end of the beach was a favela. (The favelas are the famous slums of Brazil, made famous for their drug business in the movie City of Joy). An interesting thing was that this favela did have one of the best location in the city - located on a hill, with a view of the Ipanema beach, the sea and the mountains beyond! Not bad at all. Also, this whole area reminded me a bit of Bombay, there was just so much similarity between the two.

The city and cathedral

For the second half of the day, we took a guided tour in a mini-bus for about 4 hours to cover the main tourist sights of the city. It felt like quite a relaxed tour and we figured out that timing wasn’t of any importance to anyone, given how behind time everything was running! The tour started with a visit to a modern cathedral in downtown which was definitely missable. Then we stopped at a place where the Samba schools practice for the Carnival which was again missable. On the way, we drove by the bay area, where all the boats are parked and the river comes inland. It looked like one of the more up-market areas of Rio.

The next stop was the statue of Christ the Redeemer or Corcovado. The statue is located on top of the mountain and is visible from many places in the city. Its covered by the Tijuca rainforest all around (Rio is one of the few cities with a rainforest in the middle of the city!). Not sure if there is anything to see there though, other than some wildlife like monkeys etc..

Christ the Redeemer

When on top, you need to go up some stairs to reach the statue. To be honest, I had expected the statue to be bigger than what it is. Its majestic but not as much as I had expected and I was definitely underwhelmed.

The view from the top though was impressive. You get a 360 degree view of the city - its hills, the airport, a lake, bridges across the sea and the neighbouring city of Niteroi across the bay. The whole view was a little misty though given the time of the day - might be because of pollution. Its a very impressive view and a must. Very few cities in the work could boast such a view. Though when on top you can see the high rises interspersed with the favelas - it brings to mind immediately the inequalities of most of the developing countries in the world. But still, its a definite must see.

Sugar Loaf mountain

After that, we went up the Sugar Loaf mountain, which is one of the iconic features of Rio. To reach the top, you have to take two gondolas - one to the top of the smaller mountain and then another to the top of the one behind. From the top, you get a similar view of Rio as Corcovado but since we went there in the evening, we saw the night view. The twinkling lights especially around the beaches was picturesque. But it was still missable. Going to just one of the two places is enough in my view.

Copacabana beach at night

We also realised how much your photographs depend on the lens that you use. We were using our recently bought zoom lens and it changed the look of all the photos we took. And then one of our fellow passengers took a picture of us with his own lens - it was completely different from what we had been taking till then. Totally convinced my that buying the right lens is most important to get good photographs.

It was easy to get to all the tourist places, as they weren't crowded. Apparently in the summer its the opposite - queues and queues everywhere. Overall, people felt very chilled out too, all were dressed in relaxed and colourful clothes. Women overall seemed quite healthy, and not like the hot women they show in Rio movies:).

We ate dinner near our hotel at a restaurant called Viasete, it was nice. There were a couple of very nice restaurants nearby but we had read so much about the city being unsafe, that we did not venture out much or explore anything on our own - maybe that might have brought us more in contact with the real city but we missed it.

The next morning we were to fly to Fernando de Noronha and realised when in the taxi that we were going to the wrong airport! We figured that out soon enough, so was good. We also did our first successful haggling with the taxi guy, very proud of it:). One caution though - be careful of using ATMs in Rio airport. We used our debit cards there trying to take out cash and got none. And then a couple of days later, fraudalent transactions had been made on those same cards.

Overall, I must say that Rio did not feel like something to write home about - it was just a normal city with a beautiful location. It did have a mixture of old colourful Portuguese buildings and gothic churches peeping out from between the high rises and the favelas. But overall as I said, we were underwhelmed by the city.

Other articles on Brazil:
Fernando de Noronha
Pantanal
Impressions of Brazil