South America Archives - Wandering North

Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay trip 2025 Paraguay South America

Asunción: Second Time’s the Charm

This was my second time to try to visit Paraguay. The first time was a failure. I wrote about it in a previous post. I was trying to fly from Brazil, and they would not let me board because I didn’t have the paper copy of my yellow fever certificate. Lesson learned. This time, flying from Uruguay, I made sure I had my yellow fever card in hand. Of course, no one asked me to see it. Anyway, I felt quite a sense of satisfaction to actually be on the plane headed to this country that had previously eluded me.

There is not a lot said about Paraguay as a tourist destination. It is a little under the radar and a little less appealing than its neighbours. Decades of war, corruption, and instability haven’t helped. And there are not a lot of big-ticket sites to see in Paraguay. Sure, you can cross the border from Iguazu Falls and technically enter the country, but beyond that, there are not a lot of very famous or appealing sites to visit. No problem, I wasn’t going for famous; I was just going to check out the capital: Asunción.

I landed and took a taxi from the airport to the city. No visas at all required and no hassles presented themselves. I arrived very early in the morning, but my hotel let me check in. I was staying at the Asunción Palace Hotel. A nice and moderately priced hotel in the city centre that I picked for its location and the fact that each room seemed to have its own balcony. It was nice but not fancy. My favourite thing was that when I left the key with the front desk every time I went out and came to pick it back up, they wouldn’t give it to me until I correctly said my room number in Spanish. I appreciated the push as I was being quite lazy with my language efforts.

I immediately set out to explore. Asunción Is not a particularly beautiful city. It has some beautiful things in it, and it has some pockets that are interesting, but the city centre itself is not the best. I enjoyed visiting it, but it had certain shortcomings. The main problem was that it was blisteringly hot when I was there. It was at least 40°C and most of the streets seemed to lack any tree cover. It was so hot that at one point I felt like I was going blind. Aside from that though, there are a lot of once beautiful buildings that have fallen into ruin. My favourite, but it meant that there were a lot of empty streets and not a lot going on in certain areas. Also, in a majority of the areas downtown the streets were quite broken and in poor repair with lots of garbage. It just didn’t feel like a super functional city. But then out of nowhere, I would be confronted with an incredibly well maintained and stunningly beautiful building. Surprising. There was beauty to be found but you had to look for it. There weren’t rows of interesting or cute little shops or cafes, and the market, when I went, was mostly empty, but there with some decent street art and the all the people I encountered seemed very friendly.

And this is where it should be said again that Paraguay has had a bit of a rough go. It got its independence from Spain in 1811 but following that it had a series of dictatorships and military rule, followed by a war in the 1800s that left more than half of its population dead. In the 20th century, the instability continued. The first 54 years of the 20^th century saw Paraguay have more than 30 presidents, most of whom were removed through coups or violence. In 1954 they got a new leader, Alfredo Stroessner, who lasted until 1989, however he was a dictator, apparently good for the economy, but bad for human rights. Violent oppression, torture, et cetera. After he was overthrown in 1989, things moved in a more democratic, though conservative direction. So, Paraguay had a lot going on for a long time and tourism wasn’t really the focus.

Notwithstanding that I was kind of underwhelmed by the centre of Asunción, there were some delightful things. I found at least one good cafe that was pleasant and had vegetarian things for me to eat.

At night, there were lots of little bars and restaurants that appeared seemingly out of nowhere on more quiet side streets and I found them all quite appealing. Of course, the question arose: was it even safe to be walking around Asunción at night? All the information that I had suggested that it wasn’t really that safe to be walking around late at night, but I wasn’t going to stay in my hotel. So on that first night, which just so happened to be Valentine’s Day, I went for a walk and tried to stick to the slightly busier streets, but on an otherwise desolate side street I came across a cute little bar and restaurant that was all decorated for Valentine’s Day and had good music and I decided to have a cigar and a bite to eat there. They were not happy about giving me a table given that I was there by myself, but I was not to be deterred. My sense is that it’s not really that dangerous to walk around the centre at night if you stick to the streets where businesses are open, but I would probably avoid the streets where it’s dark and everything is closed. I guess this is a situation is of ‘do as I say, not as I do.’

Another thing I liked about downtown Paraguay was an area called Loma San Geronimo. It was a little neighbourhood just a short walk from the centre of the city and is notable for its colourful buildings and public art. It seemed to be primarily residential, but tucked in here and there was the odd little restaurant, perhaps operating out of someone’s house, a church, and possibly a few other little small businesses, though none of them were open when I was there. It was delightful. The buildings were all painted bright colours and there were narrow walkways with tiled stairs and plenty of murals. Cobblestone streets and flowering bushes made it even prettier. Aside from one police officer and one guy on a motorcycle, I didn’t see anyone as I was walking through the neighbourhood, which was a little bit strange but all the better for taking selfies. The walk there was a bit odd as it led me down many streets with derelict buildings and dilapidated storefronts, but it was well worth it.

I didn’t stay only in the centre of Asunción; there were a few things that I wanted to see that were in different areas. One of those things was a chair museum. I don’t know why there’s a chair museum or why it would be interesting, but I wanted to go to it. Unfortunately, when I got there it was closed.

I also wanted to visit the Museo del Barrio. It is a museum with Paraguayan and South American artifacts as well as contemporary art. From the outside, it looks like it is going to be very small, but inside it had a multi-layered almost catacomb feel and I was surprised by how much it contained. It is a really good museum. The items they had were so unique and interesting and a lot of the art was legitimately creepy, which I really enjoyed. There was no admission fee (or I accidentally walked in without paying anything) and very few other visitors when I was there. It was a bit of an Uber or bus ride from the centre, but once in that neighbourhood there were more modern malls, hotels, and restaurants and I ended up on a rooftop of a hotel having lunch and a cigar.

Of course, I was very curious to check out the local cigar scene in Asunción. As best as I could tell, there was only one cigar lounge, which was a La Casa Del Habano in the fanciest neighbourhood of town, called Villa Morra. I decided to walk there but got halfway and realized it was much farther than I thought and so I called an Uber. Yes, there were lots of buses, but I didn’t feel like at that point like waiting around in the heat for one. I just wanted air conditioning and speedy transportation.

It’s hard to believe the Villa Mora is even in the same city as central Asunción. It feels like South Florida or Los Angeles. It’s very fancy and everything is new and well-manicured and there is a lot of security. It’s not particularly appealing, especially as a pedestrian, but if you want to sit down and have a fancy meal or a cigar this is the place to go. Upon arriving, I was surprised because there is no La Casa Del Habano anymore; it is now simply called “Cigar Shop.” I went there on both of my days in Asunción. They had a decent selection of cigars, mostly non-Cuban and reasonable prices and then they had a couple of lounge areas; one for regular people like me and then one for VIPs in the back. It was busy both times I went in. It had excellent air conditioning cold water and strong coffee. I was quite content. The first time I went everybody in there was speaking Spanish and I sat there trying to understand their conversations with my limited knowledge of the language. The next time I went in I ended up chatting with an American guy who lives there. He was astonished that I had come there voluntarily. He told me his story, which was that he was from Los Angeles but met a girl from Paraguay and fell in love, so he came down to spend time with her and then the pandemic hit and he couldn’t leave. And then she got pregnant and they got married and now he lives there. He hates it. I mean he loves his family, but he really hates living there and leaves as much as he can. His disdain for the city was amusing to me. There was also a group of American guys that were there going on a fishing expedition, and I talked with them a bit as well. So, I wasn’t the only tourist in the city. As usual, cigar lounges saving the day and giving me a bit of respite and camaraderie.

I left Asunción after two and a half days and was satisfied with the time that I spent there. I have no doubt that if I spent more time I would have explored deeper and found more interesting and hidden places, but I was happy to carry on. It was time to return home via a long flight through Sao Paulo and Montreal to Vancouver. Every time I go to South America I am astonished by how far away it is.

And so ended my trip to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Asunción. My next trip would keep me a little closer to home. 10 days in Belize.

Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay trip 2025 South America Uruguay

The Quiet Charm of Montevideo

I had arrived in Montevideo by boat from Buenos Aires. I covered that journey in the previous post. From the boat I walked just a few minutes and found myself in the heart of the city. Montevideo was a place that I was visiting because it was there, not so much because I had a particular interest in visiting it. Montevideo is one of those places that one probably doesn’t know very much about and isn’t likely to end up unless you’re either collecting countries or just fancy a boat ride from Buenos Aires. I’ve always had good luck with trips to places that I didn’t have a burning desire to visit. Maybe it’s because I entered those places with low expectations. How can I possibly be disappointed when there is nothing in particular that I want to accomplish? Montevideo was one of those places. I really enjoyed it and I enjoyed two perfectly pleasant days there.

Like its capital, Uruguay is a place that I didn’t know a whole lot about, aside from the fact that it was the first country in the world to legalize cannabis. (I’m not a cannabis user but I did spend years working on cannabis legalization files as lawyer in Canada and so this is just one of the facts that seeped into my consciousness.) Aside from that, Uruguay is pretty progressive. It was one of the first countries in the world to legalize homosexuality, it has one of the most stable democratic governments in South America, it relies completely on renewable energy and has institutionalized secularism, which in South America is kind of a big deal. It is also the second smallest country in South America so it’s easily overlooked.

So what does the capital city if such am unusually progressive country look like? It is pleasant and chill. It doesn’t feel like a rich city, but it’s quite pretty. Lots of well-maintained colonial buildings and some newer buildings as well. Big squares with statues and palm trees, small pedestrian streets, and parks with cafés and markets. The whole place has kind of a relaxed vibe that I enjoyed.

It is also fairly touristy, as cruise ships dock there as they are making their way down the East Coast of South America. There were certain streets that during the day were simply flooded with cruise ship visitors, but they all seemed to disappear at night.

As far as attractions, Montevideo didn’t have much that I was interested in, so I simply wandered the city. There were lots of pleasant murals and I visited the National Museum of Visual Arts. I made the decision to walk to the art gallery from the centre of the city, which turned out to be a little bit far, but it was nice to walk through both the commercial districts and residential ones before arriving in a park. And if I hadn’t walked, I wouldn’t have seen this spectacular mural of four film directors: Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel, and Lucrecia Martel.

The art gallery itself was pretty nice, but they were doing work on the floors so I could was only able to visit a very small part of it. Fortunately, there was a nice café outside where I took refuge from the heat. I wanted to avoid the walk back I took the bus which turned out to be relatively simple provided you have the cash to pay for it.

I was staying at the Hotel Palacio, which wasn’t anything special except that the price was right and it was centrally located. It was a nice hotel with friendly staff but it didn’t have any particular charm.

As a lover of hanging out in charming cafés, I was delighted to find that Montevideo has (at least) two wonderful historical ones. Café Brasilero is the oldest café in Montevideo, having been open since 1877 and has a history of being popular with artists and intellectuals, like all the best cafés. There is also La Farmacia Café was a former pharmacy from 1980 in a historical art nouveau building. It is so charming, maintaining a lot of its historic features and pharmacological items. Also, they take their coffee seriously and it is excellent.

Probably the one thing that I was most excited to visit in Montevideo was the museum dedicated to the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. Probably well known to most, this plane crashed in the Andes in 1972. On board were 45 people including twelve members of the Uruguay and rugby team and their friends and families. Many people died on impact but not all. Some survived the crash but succumbed to their injuries not long after. The rest of the survivors remained in the snowy Andes waiting for help or trying to find it for over two months. Famously, they succumbed to cannibalism of the dead bodies of some of the passengers before being rescued – They were not found per se, rather, they went looking for help and found help. The museum is a small one that tells the story of the crash the aftermath and their survival and includes artifacts from the event. Nothing is said of the cannibalism in the museum. It’s not meant to be sensationalistic. I, being a bit of a ghoul, wanted to hear about the cannibalism, but I didn’t really care that it wasn’t included because the museum was so inspiring. One of the stories they told in the museum was that the survivors had a radio that worked for a while and at some point, they heard on the radio that efforts to rescue them had been called off. At that point, one of the survivors said to his son that it was great news because now they got to rescue themselves. That’s a kind of positivity that I aspire to. And they did rescue themselves. That’s too long talking about a museum, but it is really worth going into.

Apart from the museum and the gallery and cafés and generally walking around the city. I didn’t do much in my two days in Montevideo. I enjoyed a few cigars. (there were no cigar stores or lounges in Montevideo. Previously there had been a La Casa del Habano and I found it but it was boarded up and closed.) I drank coffee and chatted with anyone who would talk to me.

I marveled it the ubiquity of yerba mate in Montevideo. It’s like the national drink or something. It is a tea that I had never had before going to Montevideo and having already gone there I can tell you it’s still a tea that I haven’t tried. I couldn’t find it for sale in any of the cafés that I went to. It seems that it’s something that people largely make it home for themselves and then drink throughout the day. And they don’t just drink it throughout the day; they transport it with them in specially designed bags. Everywhere I saw men and women walking around with these leather bags specifically designed to hold both a thermos of the tea and a specific little gourd with a metal straw that they drink it out of. I saw people in the city selling these bags and devices, but nowhere did I find anyone selling the drink itself. I probably could have tried harder. I have a feeling that it is not something that I would have enjoyed but I am still curious to try it.

Just as I had met up with someone from Vancouver when I was in Buenos Aires, I also met up with someone from Vancouver while I was in Montevideo. A casual friend from a travel group that I belong to in Vancouver happened to be in the city at the same time as I. He was doing a driving trip down the length of Argentina to the bottom to scatter the ashes of a friend who had died. We met up for dinner and drinks. It was a terrific evening of swapping travel stories and also a bit of a moving one, hearing about his deceased friend, and their history together, and the tale of a trip that they never completed. It was a good reminder of the importance of friendship and the fact that all of this will end, which for me means it better make the most of it. Between that and the visit to the plan crash museum, Montevideo left me inspired and full of self-reflection. Not bad for a country I didn’t know much about.

In the spirit of making the most of things, the next morning, after my two days in Montevideo, which was exactly the right amount of time, I caught a flight to a new city in a new-to me country: Asunción, Paraguay.

Argentina Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay trip 2025 South America Uruguay

From Buenos Aires to Montevideo

From Buenos Aires, Argentina, I was heading to Montevideo, Uruguay. Flying was an option, but I decided to go by ferry. The two capital cities are separated by a large estuary called the Río de la Plata. Flights are only about 50 minutes but factoring in the hassle of going to and from airports against the relative pleasure of riding a boat, it was an easy decision.

There are lots of ferry options between the two cities, many of them were slow ferries, stopping along the way, taking up to 7 hours. The express ferry takes 2.5 hours and is direct. That was the one that I decided to take, operated by Buquebus. I booked in advance, which based on the crowds on the ferry, I think was a good idea.

I booked the earliest ferry I could find online (departing at 7:15am and arriving 9:45am), and on the morning of my departure I walked from my hostel in Buenos Aires to the ferry terminal. Part of the reason I had picked the hostel I did was because it was walking distance to the ferry terminal. I arrived early and there was a large crowd waiting to pick up their tickets. Even though I had booked online and had no luggage to check, I still had to pick up a paper ticket. The ferry terminal is new and modern and has a cafe and Wi-Fi, so it wasn’t a bad place to pass the time.

I picked up my ticket and boarded the ferry.

There are four classes of ticket for walk on passengers and they range from about $80 to $150 US. Normally I would get the cheapest, but in this case, I decided to get the first-class ticket. In hindsight that was a good decision. I think at the time it was the only class that offered free Wi-Fi, which was part of the reason that I selected it. It allows priority check in and boarding, but it also meant that I got to exit the boat first which was a huge time saver or given how busy the ship was and how slow it appeared people were disembarking. I had access to a lounge with free drinks and snacks prior to departure.

On board, there the first-class seating was comfortable and on the top of the ship. It had kind of a weird 60s décor, but the seats were very comfortable and there was free Wi-Fi and charging ports and some complimentary beverages. Most importantly it was very calm. The other cabins when I walked through them as I was leaving were absolutely packed and full of lots of noisy families and they just didn’t seem as appealing. I found the journey incredibly tranquil.

The business class seating looked pretty nice too, but they didn’t offer the free Wi-Fi.

As they had checked my passport when I was boarding the ship, when I exited, I just walked into Montevideo and was steps away from the city centre. There was none of the hassle of airports and taxis. It was maybe 1 of the easiest non-European border crossings I’ve ever had.

And just like that, I was in a new country and ready to explore Montevideo, Uruguay.

Argentina Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay trip 2025 South America

What’s New, Buenos Aires?

The first international trip of 2025 (not counting my trip to Miami the month prior). Buenos Aires, Argentina. I had decided it was time to return to South America, or rather world events decided it was time for me to return to South America. I had another trip booked entirely but due to some political violence and flight cancellations I decided to change my plans and fly to Buenos Aires. More specifically I decided to fly to Buenos Aires and then also visit Montevideo and Asuncion at the same time. But my trip would start in Argentina.

Buenos Aires is a city that I’ve heard nothing but good things about and yet, somehow, I managed to not feel particularly excited about going. I had no doubt that it would be nice, but I just wasn’t enthusiastic. And maybe that reflected itself on my experience of the trip, because while I had a very good time in Buenos Aires I didn’t love it.

And here is where I am going to describe all the great things in Buenos Aires that I enjoyed, while still not loving it.

Arrival and Blunders

I spent three days in Buenos Aires, which for me was enough time in the city. I booked myself a little hostel (V&S Hostel Boutique), which was more like a shared Airbnb and was walking distance to many things that I wanted to see. It was nice and welcoming after such a long flight.

The trip got off to a bit of a weird start when on my first morning I walked out of my room barefoot in my pyjamas to make a cup of coffee in the shared kitchen and didn’t realize that my door was self-locking. I locked myself out of my room. There is no reception and I didn’t see any other guests. I didn’t even have my cell phone with me, so while I had coffee, I had no other way to contact anyone. Fortunately, I knew that the woman was coming to collect my money in about two hours, so I just had to bide my time and wait for her to come rescue me, though I hoped that someone would notice me on the security cameras doing weird things like dancing or doing bicep curls with the end table and send someone more immediately. Lesson learned, never leave your room without your key and cell phone in hand.

Setting Out

Dressed and organized, I set out exploring the city. Buenos Aires is beautiful. It has beautiful buildings and lovely tree-lined streets. There are oodles of bookstores and cute little vintage shops and wonderful cafes. If you like meat and wine, which I don’t really, there is an endless array of restaurants to seduce you. It feels like a city that I could happily live in, but as I visited it, while I was enjoying myself, I wasn’t falling in love with it. And, yet, I enjoyed many things.

There is an extraordinary bookstore in an old theatre: El Ateneo Grand Splendid, which was opened in about 1919 as a theatre and turned into a bookstore (with a café) in the 2000s. It was dubbed the most beautiful bookstore in the world by National Geographic. In my mind it was doing battle with the incredible bookstore that I had just seen a couple months earlier in Bucharest. They’re both equally grand and I have not decided who the victor is, but it’s certainly worth visiting both of them.

Smoking Cigars in Buenos Aires

I was also delighted by the cigar culture in Buenos Aires. There are so many cigar lounges, including two La Casa del Habano stores/lounges where I enjoyed talking with the staff. I visited the Oak Bar at the Palacio Duhau – Park Hyatt. It struck the right balance between fancy and cozy, and I sat there with a cigar, a cocktail, and a book and it was perfect. Right by the Oak Bar was a little cigar store/lounge called Prado y Neptuno that was full of local guys and had a friendly vibe. The prices were OK and the lounges were great, but even better than the lounges was the fact that every patio that I sat at had no issue with me smoking, and most of them brought me a proper a cigar ashtray. No one gave me a dirty look and there were other people smoking cigars, so I felt like I was in good company. How civilized.

Art

I also visited some art galleries and museums: the MACBA – Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, and the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), each of which was excellent.

Death and Showtunes

I went to La Recoleta Cemetery, which was high on my list of places to visit because that is where Eva Peron is buried, but also it is just a beautiful cemetery with very ornate and imposing markers and mausoleums. Tourists pay a fee to get in but it is worth it. I opted not to take a tour and just wander on my own. I always love walking cemeteries. It was interesting seeing Eva Peron’s family crypt. It’s not that I am a scholar in Argentinian history, but I am a musical theatre fan and I have seen the musical Evita more than 25 times. I don’t even really like the musical Evita all that much but I had a special friend in the cast so saw it see it repeatedly, so I have this sort of superficial interest in Eva Peron. And so not only did I go to see her grave site, but I walked the streets of Buenos Aires listening to the cast recording Evita on repeat and I found that to be exhilarating. Even at times on desolate streets singing along to “High Flying Adored” or, obviously, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”.

I also really enjoyed the public transportation, which when the distances were too long to walk, the subway was convenient, as was Uber. Generally, though, it was a good city for walking, the one downside being that it was just blisteringly hot when I was there. On the day that I went to the cemetery it was 38°C and without any tree cover it was rather unpleasant.

La Boca

I took the bus down to La Boca; the area of Buenos Aires where there are all of the colourful buildings. You’ll see them a lot in social media posts about the city. La Boca is filled with colourful buildings and street art and cute restaurants and it is very photogenic, however it is also extremely touristy and has some kind of soccer/football connection so there are lots of stores selling football memorabilia and people taking pictures with these very tacky mannequins dressed in sports jerseys. I really hated that part of it, but overall, I liked exploring the neighbourhood. I wandered around and I sat and I had an incredibly expensive and bland vegetarian burger and watch the people mill about. It’s definitely worth it to go to the neighbourhood to look around, but it is touristy and tacky, and I wish it wasn’t.

A Friend from Home

Maybe the best thing that happened to me in Buenos Aires was that coincidentally a friend and actress from Vancouver was there filming a commercial. Our days overlapped by one and so we met up and went out for dinner and drinks. She had been there for a couple of weeks at that point and really knew her way around and found a restaurant with delicious vegan pasta dishes. That was really fun. I enjoyed having someone to chat with for an evening and it was neat seeing someone from home in a completely different environment. I think I especially appreciated it given that the entire time that I was staying my accommodations I didn’t see another living soul except when they collected my money, so I was maybe desiring a bit of human contact. But it was great.

Final Thoughts

I know it sounds a bit contradictory to say that I had a great time in Buenos Aires but also that I was underwhelmed, but that’s kind of how I felt. I have nothing bad to say about Buenos Aires and I enjoyed everything that I did but nothing about it excited me. It would be weird, I think, if I loved everywhere I visited. Perhaps not every trip has to be exciting; maybe some can just be interesting or pleasant.

I am very glad to have finally visited Buenos Aires. Clearly, I need to visit somewhere in southern Argentina or even outside of the city, but this was not the trip for that. The morning after my final day in Buenos Aires I was taking a ferry to Uruguay.

Brazil South America

Museums and Murals in São Paulo

I woke up on my second day in São Paulo with a plan. (The first day’s post is here.) The thing that I most wanted to see in São Paulo was Batman Alley (Beco de Batman) and I wanted to get there early. I was staying in the centre, so I got on the subway at Luz station, and I took the train to Santuario Nossa Senhora de Fatima station. From there, it was a fairly short walk to the area I wanted to see. I used maps.me to navigate my way. Once one I was just a block or two away from Batman Alley there were some signs that pointed me in the right direction. It was early and there was almost no one else around.

Batman Alley is a long street (or now really a collection of streets) in one area that is famous for being covered in murals. Apparently in the ‘80s there was a mural painted of Batman which is how the street got its name. Now it covered in murals, like a winding outdoor art gallery and the area seems to be spreading. Murals of all different styles are painted and then painted over. It’s constantly changing. You could go and come back a few months later and the whole landscape of murals will be completely different. There are still paintings of Batman, however.

It was delightful, and going first thing in the morning was the best because there was really no one else around. By the time I left, there were some vendors setting up to sell jewelry and whatnot and a few other tourists had appeared, taking elaborately posed pictures in front of the murals, so I was glad that I went when I did. I love street art, so this was fantastic for me.

From there I meandered over to Coffee Lab, which is known for being one of the best coffee shops in São Paulo. I didn’t have much to compare it to having only been in São Paulo for less than 24 hours, but it did have excellent coffee and a nice atmosphere.

I hopped back on the nearest subway station and went to the Museum of São Paulo. An art museum. An excellent art museum. It wasn’t even really on my list of things that I had to do, but I’m so glad that I decided to go. The museum is in an interesting building, and it has a collection of regular exhibits and special exhibitions. The thing that was amazing about it was that one floor which seemed to be their permanent collection, was that the art wasn’t displayed on the walls. Art was displayed with each painting free standing above a heavy cement base and the paintings just sort of floating in midair. The thing that made it more interesting was that the title of the painting and the artist’s name and any description of the painting were on the back of the canvas; so you would walk around looking at these paintings unsure of who or what they were until you walked around to the backside of it. This is maybe the most creative and interesting way of looking at art, because you are not influenced by knowing what you’re looking at. You are looking at a painting and you have to judge it on its merits and how you really feel about it without being influenced by the fact that you know that it’s a Picasso or Modigliani. I also like that they displayed the art without segregating it into era or type of painting (so there might be a very modern South American painting hung right next to a classical European painting).

It was fascinating. They also had an excellent exhibit of Gauguin’s Tahitian work, which I enjoyed.

The museum is on Paulista Ave, which is supposed to be a very important major street in São Paulo, so I walked down it until I reached the next subway station, which was quite a ways, I was not impressed with the street; it was big and it had a lot of buildings but I thought most of them were quite unattractive and there wasn’t really much on the street that interested me, but I’m still glad that I saw it.

At the next subway station I again got on a train and hopped over to Ibirapuera Park, in the middle of which is the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art. The museum is really in the middle of the park and it was quite a walk to find it, but it was pleasant walking through the park, which has a body of water in the middle and everyone was out riding bikes and running, playing ball and having picnics. It was a nice atmosphere.

The museum was fine. I enjoyed the art, but it was relatively small given the effort it took to get there.

On the way out I found myself utterly lost trying to get out of the park I was trying to go back the way I came but I got turned around and every time I tried to exit the park, I found myself faced by a fence. I eventually found a gate out and then realized I was nowhere near a subway station. I got on a bus only to discover that they only take exact change and I only had paper money, which they would not accept and there was no way to pay by a card, so, frustratingly, I had to get off the bus and walk quite a distance to the next subway station. That was a bit annoying.

But I did make my way to the subway eventually and went back to the centre and visited the Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady Assumption and Saint Paul; a large cathedral from the 1950s which was which is pleasant to visit. (And even had its own cathedral traffic lights on the surrounding streets.)

Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lady Assumption and Saint Paul

From there I walked around the central area. It was Sunday and the streets were filled with people. There was a market going on with vendors selling mostly clothes, trinkets, toys, and electronics. It was very lively. People were flying kites and selling food. It all felt a little bit rough around the edges but was lively and it was nice for a wander.

At this point it was late in the afternoon and I had to start thinking about getting back to the hotel because I had a flight heading out of Brazil, but I still made one more visit to the Mercado Municipal Paulistano, where I had been the day before for lunch. I had a quick meal and then went back to my hotel to pack up and take the train to the airport.

Mercado Municipal Paulistano

I really liked São Paulo. I wasn’t supposed to be there; I was supposed to be in Paraguay (you can read about that debacle here), and I don’t know if I would have had a better time in Paraguay, but São Paulo was good. I liked it better than Rio, and it was entirely different from Salvador. It made a nice end my trip to Brazil, despite all the hassles of getting there in the first place. Brazil was a place that I had never really been excited to see but now that I’ve been, I’m glad that I’ve gone, and I would go back to see more of the country. A country that big and diverse deserves more than one visit.

Brazil South America

São Paulo Surprise

My plan was to leave Salvador and fly to Asunción, Paraguay; the flight and it took me through Sao Paulo, where I would have a short layover. I was interested in visiting São Paulo but I have to make choices and I had decided that I would use an extra couple of days to visit the capital city Paraguay rather than visiting a third city in Brazil. Things did not go as planned.

The problems started when my flight out of Salvador was delayed, and it became quickly apparent that I was not going to make my connecting flight out of São Paulo. The airline Azul) was remarkable; they told me, before I even had the chance to complain, that they had put me on a new flight (on a different airline) out of São Paulo to Asunción and that I would now have a 12 hour layover in São Paulo and for that reason they gave me meal vouchers and snack box, they put me into a hotel for the day, and gave me taxi vouchers to get me to and from the hotel. I was a little disappointed that my short trip to Paraguay would be delayed, but it gave me the opportunity to see São Paulo. I think the best way to enjoy travel without getting frustrated over the little things is to be flexible.

I arrived in São Paulo and I had to go to a desk to get my vouchers and hotel confirmation. Since I was at the airport, I thought well I may as well pick up my boarding pass for my flight later that evening to Asunción so I went over to the other airline to pick it up. My flight from Salvador to São Paulo was on Azul airlines but my flight from São Paulo to Asunción would be on LATAM Air. When I went to pick up the boarding pass, the man asked to see my yellow fever vaccination card. It was the first time I had been asked for the card on this trip and I had kind of forgotten about it. Let me say right now: I should have had it with me. Canadians do not need their yellow fever cards to visit Paraguay – unless they are entering from certain airport in Brazil. Oops. I think that with the repeal of the COVID travel regulations, I became a little bit lax about having my vaccination papers with me, however, no problem, I had a digital version of it. So I pulled up my phone and I showed him the digital version and he said I had to have the original. I said “I have the original but it’s at home in Canada.” And what followed was a short and polite negotiation on my part to try to see if there was any way that he would let me board. I asked him if he would accept a legally notarized digital copy of the original, which I could have gotten in short order, or if there was some way that I could get a new vaccination card in São Paulo, but he said that none of that would be sufficient and the only way that he was going to let me board the flight was with my original yellow fever vaccination card. At that point I realized I was not going to Asunción.

(The only alternative he suggested was that I fly to Lima and then to Asunción because the no proof of vaccination would be required, but I was only going for 2.5 days, so that seemed like too much extra hassle and expense.)

I was pleased with myself for not being a jerk to the guy at the counter, because obviously it’s not his fault (it’s my fault…and maybe the fault of the government of Paraguay), but as I walked away I felt upset that I wasn’t going to go to Paraguay. I’d lost out on my flight cost, my hotel cost, and now I didn’t know what to do. I went and sat down and moped for a minute or two and I thought, “OK I was supposed to be flying home in about two and a half days anyway, I guess now I’ll spend that time in São Paulo.” The thing was, I didn’t know anything about São Paulo. To the Internet!

I quickly pulled up some blog posts about Sao Paulo. It’s a city of about 20 million people. Massive. I didn’t really know what there was to see, so relying on other people’s blog posts (Thank you bloggers!) I figured out an area of the city to stay in (central), did a quick read about the subway system, and decided on some things that I might like to see. I booked myself into a hotel and I got into a taxi and went into the city, I at a budget hotel, which was a good price and in a good location very close to the subway and walking distance to many things that I wanted to see, the hotel lacked any charm and character but it was brand new and it suited my needs in a pinch.

I went up to my room, unpacked a little bit, called the airline to change my flights back home (I was supposed to fly back to Vancouver from Asunción to Rio to New York to Vancouver, but since I was not in Asunción, I couldn’t catch my flight to Rio, which meant I missed out on my final day in Rio, but I got it all rebooked from São Paulo and it only cost me $14. Canadian.

I went out into the city. São Paulo is known for being dangerous and I didn’t really have enough time to research whether that reputation was deserved, so I felt a little bit on guard as I walked around the city centre. São Paulo feels kind of rough. My take on it after having visited Rio is that Rio reminds me of Miami and São Paulo reminds me a bit of New York, but New York from a Charles Bronson movie. It feels a little gritty and a little rough around the edges. Fortunately, I like cities that are a little bit rough around the edges and I love Charles Bronson movies, so São Paulo suited me just fine.

Leaving my hotel, I walked a short distance to the Mercado Municipal Paulistano, the biggest indoor market in the city. It is in a pretty, butter yellow building from 1933 with stained glass windows and inside is a vast array of food items and places to eat.

I think this is a ‘must do’ in São Paulo – Especially if you eat meat. There was meat of varying types everywhere. I think it’s a carnivore’s dream. I am not a carnivore and I found it a little bit challenging to find a sit-down place to eat at.

Market Memories

Finally, I went up to one of the restaurants and explained that I was a vegetarian and they brought me some delicious appetizer and then some sort of pastry filled with cheese, The pastry filled with cheese was amazing, but the super spicy pickle sauce that they brought me on the side was delicious and made my face sweat it was so spicy. I washed it down with fresh watermelon juice. Delicious.

Lunch

It was already late afternoon, and I didn’t really want to be out much after dark, so I walked around the city centre, took in some murals in that area and some views over the city, and visited a church.

Mosterio São Bento

I then hopped on the subway at Luz station and went to Oscar Freire station, which was in a different area, in order to visit a cigar lounge/bar (Café Esch). The subway was very easy to navigate and was inexpensive though it was very crowded. From the subway I walked to the cigar lounge through an affluent neighbourhood.

I settled into the lounge and bought a couple of cigars and had a cocktail. It was such a heavenly environment after the day I had of delays and disappointments and changed plans. It was nice just to sit back and relax, even if while I sat there, I ended up doing a bunch of work remotely.

I’ll have to save Paraguay for a future trip, but I was loving my spontaneous visit to São Paulo. The next day would be a full one with museums and murals. (Next post here.)

Brazil South America

Salvador’s Lower City

I went on and on in my first post about Salvador about how pretty, interesting, and historic it is. What I carved out of that post was anything about the lower part of the city. My first post was all about Pelourinho, the UNESCO heritage treasure of the upper city, but the lower part of Salvador is also worth visiting for a few reasons.

To get to the lower city there are some excellent options: one is an outdoor elevator (the Lacerda Elevator). Perhaps not surprisingly, given Brazil’s Portuguese connection, the only other place I have seen an outdoor elevation is in Lisbon. Why is an outdoor elevator so cool? I don’t know. They just are. Even better, this one, (built between 1869 and 1873) has an interesting design and costs pennies (the equivalent of about 4c CDN).

The other way to reach to lower city is by funicular: the Gonçalves funicular, built in 1889). I love funiculars. Again, I don’t know why. Like the elevator, it is so inexpensive it is practically free.

Funicular Fun

I took the elevator down, which put me just across the street from the sea, and just across from the crafts market: Mercado Modelo. The market is worth visiting even if, like me, you don’t really have any plans to buy anything. There are lots of things to look at and lots of things I liked but I just don’t have the need to buy souvenirs. There are also some good places to have a bite to eat.

I wanted to see the market, but I was on a mission. I wanted to try some local cigars. Bahia is a tobacco growing region of Brazil and makes cigars and I had only tried two brands in the past, so I want to do some smoking. I had found a cigar store in Pelourinho, but the selection was dismal, and the cigars were in poor condition. I got a tip from a very helpful concierge at a fancy hotel in city that there was a good cigar store (Charutos Bahia) in the lower city. (I may stay at hostels, but they seldom have the intel on cigars, so sometimes I’ll seek the advice of a concierge at a hotel I would never pay to stay at.)

Buying cigars. Look how happy I am.

I found my way to the cigar store. It didn’t have a great selection, but almost everything that it had was local. The man in the store didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Portuguese, but we managed to have a robust conversation about cigars, and he helped me select six different locally grown and made cigars for me to try. And over the next 24 hours I did my best to smoke all of them so that I could go back the next day and buy more of the ones that I liked.

I walked more around the lower city and smoked my cigar and eventually stopped and found something uninteresting but vegetarian to eat.

Statues in the Square

The next day I returned to the lower city with the goal of purchasing the cigars that I liked the most. I bought one box and one bundle and then carried on my way wandering around. The thing about the lower city that is remarkable is that many buildings are in bad shape; they are mossy, some of them are look like they’re falling down, and some of them seem to be just hollow facades, but they’re all quite beautiful in their own way. They have a lot of character and a lot of colour. And some of the streets, especially those near the bottom of the funicular are lively, with small fruit and vegetable markets and coffee shops. I enjoyed wandering around down there. There were some nice murals and churches, and it was beautiful without being precious.

Lower City views

I really enjoyed my time in Salvador, and I felt very satisfied with how long I spent there. The next day in the morning I had a flight to go to Paraguay via Sao Paulo. That trip didn’t really go as planned but I’ll write about that in the next post.

Brazil South America

Stunning Salvador

Salvador was the place that I most wanted to visit in Brazil. More than Rio, more than São Paulo, more than Iguazu Falls, Salvador was the thing that appealed to me. My interest started when I would see blog posts of beautiful buildings and cobblestone streets, but I decided I would go when I was in Benin in West Africa. I was at the Museum of history in Ouidah, Benin, and they had many posts about the slave trade out of West Africa and to the “new world”. And there was a display about slaves going to Salvador. And how the African culture in Salvador became part of the culture of Brazil. And this interested me. I was loving the West African cultures I was moved by and horrified by the stories of the slave trade and I thought I wanted to see where the people ended up and what that city looks like today.

That sounds very thoughtful and that is why I decided to go, however, my time in Salvador was not spent doing some sort of deep research into the lives of people who were trafficked there, it was simply to see the city and experience it. And I was not disappointed.

Salvador is the capital of Bahia, state of Brazil, which is roughly in the northeast of the country, on a peninsula. The old city part of Salvador, Pelourinho, is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Salvador was the First Capital city of Brazil, it was, sadly, the first slave market in the “new world”. Pelourinho, contains buildings from the renaissance time of the city, and the colonial era.

In short Salvador is amazing. It’s so beautiful. It reminds me a little bit of old Havana except that it is much bigger and there’s many more beautiful buildings and it feels less touristy than old Havana. It has stunning squares, and hilly cobble-stoned streets. The buildings are brightly painted and the churches are beautiful. There are inviting cafés and art studios and markets selling food (not very vegetarian friendly) and handmade items.

Salvador has an upper town and a lower town connected by both an outdoor elevator and a funicular. All the pictures in those post are in the upper town, where I stayed. Pictures of the lower town I will put in a separate post.

Part of the reason that I’ve broken up my Salvador blogs into a couple of different posts isn’t because I have that much to say, but it is simply that I took so many photos.

Churches

I stayed in Pelourinho at the Laranjeiras Hostel, which could not have been in a better location. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I had a lovely private room with a shared bathroom. I had French doors that opened and looked out onto the cobblestone streets and colourful buildings. And if I tried to take a nap in my room during the day there were little green birds that would sit and chirp outside the window. It was just stunning. (It didn’t have much of a fun hostel atmosphere, but the premises and location were perfect.) An added bonus was from the women’s washroom you had a direct view into the practice space at the Olodum Creative School and you could see and hear the infection samba drumming. (Olodum is the famous samba-reggae drumming group in Salvador that famously plays in Carnival, but also does regular concerts and champions social causes in the region.)

*Laranjeiras Hostel my room and views from it*

In terms of what there is to do in Salvador there is a million museums, a lot of bars, a lot of opportunities to take in music, and visit historical sites. But for me it was a place to wander around and look at these incredibly beautiful buildings and take in some of the history.

I happily spent a few days there doing just that; walking around gawking at the buildings and the streets reading about the history and visiting a few of the museums.

The Afro-Brazilian Museum and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology are both certainly worth a visit.

What was the surprised was the excellent carnival museum: Carnival House. The history of Carnival and the social changes in Brazil was surprisingly interesting. Had I been there for a shorter time I wouldn’t have bothered to go, but I had a lot of time in Salvador, and it was raining so I decided to go in. It was a very interesting and interactive and well-done museum. There’s even a place where you can put on some Carnival costumes and dance around to samba music which I did and, yes, I felt stupid, but it was fun.

I also visited an excellent modern Art Museum: Museu Abelardo Rodrigues. Small and free, but really well curated. The private collection of some philanthropic lawyer. Always nice to see.

I visited a number of charming little cafes. I walked around the market enjoyed more street drumming, drank from a coconut, and tried to sneak pictures of the women in their giant dresses. Number of the women selling things at the markets food or crafts or whatever we’re wearing traditional Bahinan costumes called Baiana de Acarajé. Brightly wrapped headscarves, a white or patterned blouse and an enormous skirt over layers of petticoats. Many of them were selling Acarajé, a fried ball made of beans and stuffed with meat or shrimps, coconuts and other things. I was too shy to ask for a photo, so I just snuck a couple.

*Square with women in traditional dresses*

Smoking cigars in Salvador was a bit of a challenge. There are no official smoking lounges and although there doesn’t seem to be any law against smoking on patios, some of the busier restaurants just didn’t make me feel comfortable about smoking because almost no one on those patios was. But I certainly found places that were tucked away or where I felt like I could smoke without annoying anyone. One night when it was pouring rain, I went into a little pizza joint. I was the only one there aside from the owner and he let me smoke a cigar while eating my pizza inside. It was amazing. Also, drink cheap Caipirinhas, while having a cigar. That was perfect.

I try not to drink much (or at all) on my travels, but I had to make an exception for Brazil simply because the Caipirinhas were so delicious and I had never had them before. Also, in Salvador they had a local alcohol called Cravinho. There’s an unmissable bar, O Cravinho, on one of the main squares. It has barrels outside and inside it is tiny and seemingly crowded at all times of the day. They sell Cravinho which is a cloves and cinnamon and maybe honey flavoured alcohol that they dispense from spigots in the barrels. It comes with different flavors and is served in little thimble sized glasses. I stood outside sipping from the thimble and smoking cigarillos. Nobody else really spoke English, but I certainly had a lot of pleasant smiles and cheers. It was a nice spot.

I didn’t have too many conversations with people because in Brazil most people didn’t seem to speak English and I’m utterly useless at Portuguese, but one night while eating a plate of vegetables and smoking a cigar in a side street while watching drummers, I had a long conversation with a man named Falcon, who had super long dreadlocks and giant combat boots and was definitely a bit of a character. The conversation carried on a bit longer than I wish it had but we had we had a fun chat about Salvador and life. It finally ended only when I promised him that I would return someday to see Carnival. Without seeing it, he said, I have not lived.

shops and studios

buildings in Salvador

That’s kind of what I did in Salvador for the most part, although I am saving some comments about my visits to lower town for a second post. There are more activities that one can do in Salvador – there’s capoeira classes and cooking classes and guided tours and visits to the beach, but I was content just to sort of chill out and walk around and take it all in. I definitely recommend it as a destination, and I liked it far more than Rio.

Next up: meandering the mossy and colourful streets and searching for cigars in Salvador’s lower town (next post here).

Brazil South America

Visiting Rocinha: A favela in Rio

I hadn’t planned to go on a favela tour in Rio, but I found myself with a free afternoon on my second day, so I decided to do it. I was a bit conflicted: the idea of taking a tour to visit an impoverished area didn’t entirely sit well with me. Yet, I wanted to go. I’ve visited so many impoverished areas, I wouldn’t even know now to count them, but I had never taken a tour to visit any. On one day, city tour in Kigali, we did walk through a very poor neighbourhood and it felt a little weird because we didn’t interact with any of the people, so it felt a little like we were intruding. I took a tour from an individual who was from the favela that he was taking us on a tour of and that also provided money into the local economy.

We were picked up in a van there were about ten of us. And we drove to Rocinha, the favela right on the edge of Leblon, the richest part of Rio. Rocinha is not as dangerous to some of the other favelas which is why it’s commonly used for tours. It is, however, a poor area and there are guns and there are drugs (I suppose there are guns and drugs everywhere, but they’re a bit more visible here) but when we drove into Rocinha and parked and started our walk, it felt not at all dangerous and like the sort of place I would have felt very comfortable walking on my own.

Rocinha streets

I think the idea of a “slum” or a “favela” conjures images in our minds of abject poverty, people shooting guns into the street, giant piles of garbage – just human suffering and lawlessness. And maybe sometimes that’s true, but I’ve never seen anything that bad (even in the worst situation, there seems to be some order), however, I have seen things that are far worse than what I saw in Rocinha. Rocinha is a community; it’s a poor community, but a community nonetheless. As many as 300,000 people live there. It has an infrastructure, roads, banks, buses, and most homes have plumbing and electricity. (Other favelas are not necessarily as developed.)

Rocinha is controlled by a gang called Amigos dos Amigos, which sounds bad, but many residents find it stable and trust the gang more than the police.

The streets were paved and lined with businesses and apartment buildings people just were going about their lives. That said, there were people carrying guns, but nobody was behaving violently. (And, really, lots of places have lots of guns.) That said, there is violence there and sometimes it flares up with deadly results.

While I would have been comfortable walking on the main streets of the favela by myself, I wouldn’t have gotten the information that I got from the tour guide. He explained to us about how the unofficial government of Rocinha works, how they get their electricity, what people do for a living, what the incomes are like – and it was interesting to receive it from someone who grew up there in the neighborhood that he was talking about. He also gave us useful tips like don’t take pictures of the people with the machine guns. (Noted.)

We visited a capoeira studio where the students put on a show, which was excellent. The drumming was infectious and the performance was wonderful. They tried to teach us some capoeira moves. I participated initially and then quickly bowed out as I realized that I looked like an idiot and was bound to break something.

We carried on our way off the main streets and into the narrow, hidden alleys. This is a part that I would never have seen on my own because I don’t even know if I would have realized that there were tiny alleys there, and even if I did, I don’t think I would have felt comfortable walking down them without someone local. Not because it’s dangerous, but just because it would seem sort of weird and rude.

Behind the facades of the main buildings are these tiny alleyways with stairs that go down and reveal other buildings behind the main buildings. They allow in some sunshine and some fresh air to the people who have the more modest housing. Some of the areas were nice; people had painted them or hung art pieces and everything was quite clean, however the further down you go, the dirtier and the darker and dingier it got. Still, it felt like a community, even in the bowels of the favela where it was kind of dark and unwelcoming, there were still little shops, bar, and restaurants.

One of the interesting things that we learned about on our trip was how people get the mail in Rocinha. There are no addresses; just sort of a tangle of buildings once you get off the main street, so the mail is delivered to blocks on the main street in a little wooden box set on the side of the street. When it arrives, someone who has a WhatsApp group for the neighbourhood on that block lets them know their mail is there and people come and collect it from the box.

Back on the main street, we visited a woman who had an apartment with a window on the side of a tall building. There was nothing below her window and no way to stand there, but about 8 feet across from the window was a walkway, so she devised a way to sell items from her apartment. She displays items in her window and constructed a small ramp that runs from the window to the walkway. On the ramp is a box with a string. The purchaser approaches the window to tell her what they want. She puts it in the box and slides it down the ramp to the purchaser, and the purchaser puts the money in the box, and she pulls it back up the ramp with a rope. Simple. At that point we really needed some water, so it was very convenient.

There were some areas of Rocinha in which we weren’t allowed to take pictures, presumably because people would have objected, maybe strenuously. I couldn’t really tell the difference between the ‘no photo’ areas from the ‘photo ok’ areas; it’s not like one seemed more dangerous than the other, but we respected the wishes of our guide. In one of the ‘no photo’ areas we stopped in at a local bar and had caipirinhas and smoked and chatted with people. It wasn’t part of the ordinary tour; some of us just wanted to spend a little more time there interacting. It was fun.

Overall, I’m glad that I did the favela tour. It was interesting to see it. It was not nearly as bad as I had imagined, and I say that without diminishing the fact that the people there are living in poverty and that there are problems, but just noting that it’s not the post-apocalyptic war zone that some people have painted it as. I think if I hadn’t taken the tour I wouldn’t have learned as much about Rocinha and I certainly wouldn’t have experienced it. I think if I were to go back, I would go I would go on my own; I would eat the restaurants, buy some things at the shops, and experience a little bit more of it now that I have a comfort level.

Certainly, all “slum tours” (as they are often called, negatively) are not created equal. I think some are plainly exploitative. Some are run by companies from outside of the country and aren’t giving back enough. And I think that any time that you are driven through, as opposed to walking through, a poor area on a tour and not interacting with the locals, that does feel wrong, like you’re visiting a human zoo. I would avoid that. Of course, sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to experience until you go on the tour. In this case, I was pleasantly surprised. I realize that there is still an argument that even the tour I took is unethical and I am open to that, but I feel ok about it.

It was the most interesting thing that I did in Rio.

I finished the day, having a cigar and reflecting on what I had seen.

The next day I would leave Rio and fly north to Salvador.

Brazil South America

Lapa Land: Rio Day 2

I awakened my second full day in Rio with a bit of a plan: I wanted to get up early enough to go to see the Lapa Stairs. It’s not that the stairs disappear after morning, but I had heard that they very quickly get overrun with tourists and tour groups later in the day, so I thought I needed to get early to have them to myself. I had breakfast at the hotel (Hotel OK). True to brand, the breakfast was ok. It was packed with people – mostly Portuguese speaking people. I didn’t find any other English-speaking people that I could chat with (I am useless with any Portuguese phrases), but I kept myself busy eating all the delicious fruits. From my hotel I walked towards the Lapa Stairs. I was staying right in between the Centro and Lapa districts, so it wasn’t very far to walk to the stairs, and I loved the journey.

Walking in Lapa

From what I’ve seen of Rio, Lapa is my favourite district. It’s gritty; covered in graffiti with beautiful old buildings, lots of restaurants, cafes, and music venues. It’s definitely the bohemian, arty part of the city. Unfortunately, it’s dangerous at night. As I said in my previous post, I’m not generally concerned about violence, but people who are like me and locals to the area have told me pretty awful stories about going out in Lapa after dark and it even told me that Uber drivers won’t drive there. I question whether that’s true, or if it is as bad as I was told, but that’s what I hear. So, all my experiences in Lapa were during the day, but I definitely enjoyed it. (Before I get corrected; the Santa Teresa neighbourhood is also excellent; I’m just not clear where the dividing line is between Lapa and Santa Teresa, so I am referencing only Lapa because that is where i mostly seemed to be.)

pretty buildings

Lapa has two famous sites one of which is the stairs, will get to in a moment, and the other are Arcos de Lapa is which was an aqueduct system built in 1723. It’s hard to miss them; this gleaming white wall of double arches that diagonally cuts through the neighbourhood. Quite picturesque. The area around the arches had a lot of people sleeping in the street and clearly down on their luck. It didn’t feel unsafe, but it was something to be aware of. On to the stairs.

The Escadaria Selarón

I wasn’t actually that excited about seeing the Escadaria Selarón (aka the Lapa Stairs, aka the Escadaria da Lapa), I just heard that it was a thing that you’re supposed to see and I thought it would give me an excuse to walk through the neighbourhood and see what else there is, and I was already enjoying my walk, so had the stairs been disappointing it wouldn’t have been a problem for me, but when I arrived at the stairs, I found them delightful.

Colourful and artistic. Definitely photogenic. But the thing that I liked about them is just that it was such a whimsical, unnecessary thing. The story behind it is there was a Chilean artist, Jorge Selarón, who lived there, one day was repairing the few stairs leading up to his home and he decided to use a bunch of brightly coloured tiles to repair them. But he didn’t stop. His obsession grew and grew and he started covering all of the stairs with the tiles and mirrors and bits of pottery until it covered the entire staircase and it sort of crept like a beautiful fungus onto the apartment buildings that line the stairs and beyond. It’s just delightful. The fact that lots of people want to go there and take their pictures… well, you can’t even be upset about it, because it’s great. And of course, I couldn’t resist some selfies myself.

A triptych of selfies

A not so fun fact that I discovered was that the artist appears to have committed suicide in 2013 by pouring paint thinner on his head and setting himself on fire on the very stairs where we now take cute selfies and film music videos. A sad end, but his legacy is undeniably positive and popular. (I say “appears to have” because there is a small chance that he was murdered, but that theory seems to have less weight. There is a detailed account of his demise here.)

near the stairs

Cigar Time

After visiting the stairs, I walked to the Centro district to the Velha Habana, an excellent and brand new café / cigar store / cigar lounge. I saw it on my first day of wandering, but it was closed on Sunday. It was so new that they were still hanging art on the walls. It is really nice. I had a coffee and tried one of the locally grown and rolled cigars.

Wrapping up in Rio

It was at this point that I decided that I had pretty much seen many of the things that I wanted to do in Rio. I had plans to go to see the Christ the Redeemer statue and the Sugarloaf Mountain, but I was saving that for the day that I would fly back through Rio at the end of my trip, so I found myself needing something to do. So I decided that I would go on a favela tour. I’ve written about that in a separate post (here) because I took a lot of photos and I think it sort of deserves its own commentary, but that’s what I did with my afternoon.

After the favela tour, I ended up back in Leblon and i went for a cigar again at the excellent Esch Café and had a wonderful dinner at a middle eastern restaurant. As a vegetarian, the food in Brazil was kind of awful. Obviously, Rio is a major city and international food is available, but in terms of Brazilian food, it’s not super vegetarian friendly and certainly not vegan friendly, so I was happy to have a meal that was to my liking. After dinner I took the subway back to my hotel and had a good night sleep.

I liked my second day in Rio a lot more. The beach neighbourhoods I visited on day one just were not my thing, I found the Centro area a little bit boring, but I really liked Lapa (and Santa Teresa? I’m not sue where one area becomes the next) and I did enjoy the favela tour. The next day I would fly north to Salvador, which was the the place I most wanted to see in Brazil.