RIO DE JANEIRO

For me it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, visited for the first time in 1984 at the end of a long month-long group trip that started in Lima, Peru and ended in Rio, but we only stayed there for one day as almost always happens with the World Adventures Agency. I returned a few years later in the company of my daughter's mother during a trip to visit the whole of Brazil with the Brasil Pass, a ticket costing only 300 dollars which allowed us to travel anti-clockwise throughout the country, starting and returning to Rio where for I wanted to spend almost half the month because I liked it too much and then we came to attend its famous carnival which lasted 4 days from Friday to Ash Tuesday. We saw the parades at the Sambodromo, a one kilometer long structure with stands and bleachers on the sides for the public. We attended the Saturday night parade from 9 in the evening until 7 in the morning of the best companies which are 12 and belong to the special group but then there are 14 from the gold series and another 14 from the silver series and others from the bronze series, practically a championship with promotions and relegations. Lately, another type of carnival has been created outside the Sambodromo which is reserved for tourists and is that of the blocos, local groups who also gather starting in January and dance in their free time on the street corners. They are becoming increasingly successful because the major carnival is created by the poor to cater to the two million tourists who come to Rio. Many citizens, however, flee from Rio and go on holidays elsewhere to stay away from the carnival chaos. Each samba school had around 5,000 members and the parade lasted about an hour during which they always sang the same song and completely filled the route with floats and participants who danced and paraded between one float and another. At the beginning there is the symbol of the company which for example for Portela is an enormous eagle, the group of company commanders and the flag-bearing couple. There are the Bahianas, about 200 rather robust and black women all dressed the same and dancing turning on themselves, the band of percussionists who perform the "batucada" or the simultaneous beating of the drums which provides a thrilling emotion. The carts are very tall, enormous and are pushed by hand because they are made of light, generally non-polluting material Often the companies exercise unbridled imagination by proposing not only compositions on the proposed theme but also astonishing machinery and tricks of all kinds, in addition to enormous papier-mâché figures which often represent gigantic animals that move their eyes, open their mouths, etc... Then of course there are the sexy Brazilian girls, some of whom parade practically naked with stars on their nipples and genitals and for the rest their beauty and erotic charge and lately they have also focused on men who have just left the gym with alpha male physiques and often famous personalities of Brazilian culture are hosted on the floats. In the stands the Brazilians dance the samba as below while the others move as they know how and drink a lot of beer, I continued all night undaunted while my companion hated the carnival and all its nonsense (according to her) and sat there waiting the end that came at dawn. In Rio there is not only the carnival, there are above all many beaches, from Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon and the more distant Barra da Tijuca which at the time of my visit was only just beginning to be built, the water was blue and transparent. I know that now it is all built like the others and that nearby they built the Olympic village which hosted the 2016 Olympics. Immediately behind the lower city and the beaches there are the morri, i.e. the hills where the favelas of the poorest are located, some of which have been renovated and are inhabited by bourgeois but others are dangerous for intruders, you have to be accompanied by someone from the favela to avoid taking bad risks. In some, not even the police dare to enter, there is crime and drug dealing. The right-wing president Bolsonaro was elected, having promised to make a clean sweep, but then I don't know if he succeeded. Another problem when I visited Rio were the meninos da rua, that is, the street children, kids who had run away from home and who went around in small groups and lived by their wits, stealing above all, a bad situation, it was said that in all of Brazil there were twenty million of them , they also created the specific ministry to solve the problem, I don't know if they succeeded. Then the women had many children by different men, without work they were unable to support them and they left to make do, with a bathing suit and a cardboard box that was their bed, it seems that the shopkeepers and restaurateurs paid the policemen who outside time they went to shoot these poor creatures. To talk about the happiest things that I remember, they are the musical improvisations that take place in certain bars when the locals start playing using any object, from cutlery to glasses and manage to create a pleasant concert that involves for its imagination and its rhythm . In Rio it is compulsory to go up to Corcovado with the little train that crosses the forest and once you reach the top you can enjoy the stupendous view of the bay a stone's throw from Christ the Redeemer, the enormous statue located at the top. You can also go to the Pan de Azucar, the hill that can be reached by cableway and from whose top you can enjoy another stupendous panorama. Finally you can take the bonzinho, a tram that takes you to Santa Teresa, a district in the mountains above Rio. For football fans you can go to the Maracanà which was once the largest stadium in the world with a capacity of around 200,000 spectators but which after the renovation for the 2016 Olympics can hold less than 80,000 What about the kitchen? The grilled meat churrasco that the waiter keeps pouring out for you is excellent, the Portuguese-style pizza, the fejoada, a black bean soup, the batides and tropical fruit juices, many of which have never been seen in Europe, the cafezinho that they serve in very small glasses of white plastic and the choppy, a medium glass in which they serve beer and drink a lot of it, the caipirinha based on cachaca (sugar cane juice brandy), lime, sugar and honey, caipiroska (with vodka) and caipirissima with ron white.

Michael Elkan