Brazil South America

Way Down Among Brazilians – Rio Day 1

Brazil, Finally

I don’t know why, but I had been resisting going to Brazil. Every year for about the past four years I’ve made myself a Brazil itinerary. Not every itinerary was the same but all of them involved me flying to Rio and visiting Salvador, which were the two places that I most wanted to visit. But I just couldn’t get excited about it; probably because most of the things that I know about Brazil involve beaches and parties and I just couldn’t care less about either of those things. But then again, I do like Bossa Nova music, cigars, and coffee, and Frank Sinatra sang two songs about Brazil, so I knew there must be something to it. The real reason that I finally booked the trip to Brazil, honestly, is that I think I really wanted to fill in a big hole in my South American map. I hadn’t been to South America since I went to Peru in 2014 and it just seemed like it was time.

So I made an itinerary that involved me flying to Rio, spending a couple of days there, flying to Salvador for a couple of days, then flying to Asunción, Paraguay for a couple of days, before returning to Brazil for a day. You can’t see all of Brazil in a week, but I thought I would pick some highlights and decide that if I wanted to go back to see more at a later date.

And so I flew to Rio.

Bom Dia, Rio!

The flight to Rio was long. Flying to Rio from Vancouver is not like flying to Europe or flying to Asia where the flight might be long, but you sort of make up the time when you fly back due to the time zone changes. Flying to South America is just really far and there’s not much of a time zone change, so it took me roughly a day and a half to get there and a day and a half to go back. I was determined to make the most of it.

I landed in Rio without any issue (Canadians don’t need visas) and went to my I accommodations: The OK Hotel. The OK Hotel was…OK. It was in the Centro District, right on the edge of the Lapa area, which is where I wanted to stay; very close to the subway and trolleys, it was walkable so many places that I wanted to see, and it was cheap. Beach people would probably want to stay closer to Copacabana or Ipanema, but I liked this neighbourhood better.

Rio Centro

*buildings and quiet streets in Centro Rio*

I hit the ground running in Rio. I started out by visiting Centro (the historic district). it was a Sunday, which was maybe not the best day to start out, as most things were closed.

The streets were pretty empty and it just seemed kind of dull. However, the architecture was beautiful and I did go to the excellent Museo de Arte do Rio (gallery of modern art) and popped in into some churches. But I wasn’t excited. It just didn’t feel lively.

*excellent pieces* *at the Museo de Arte do Rio*

*more great art* *at the Museo de Arte do Rio*

more sights of Centro

I did visit the excellent Cathedral of Rio, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian. It was designed by Edgar de Oliveira da Fonseca to resemble a Mayan pyramid and was built in the 1960s/70s. It is excellent. Very unique and modern, but also beautiful inside and out. I loved the stained glass and airy interior.

Catedral Metropolitana de São Sebastião

I hopped on the train and decided to go check out some of Rio’s beach areas.

At the Copa. Copacabana.

Let me be clear: I am not a beach person. I like swimming well enough, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to swim at the beach when I’m traveling by myself. (Just leave my wallet and my phone and all my personal items unguarded on the beach while I swim in the ocean? That doesn’t make sense.) So I tend not to swim when I travel, and the idea of laying in the sun on the beach just sounds like a nightmare. I don’t want to sit in the sun, I get bored sitting around, I don’t care for sand or children, or any of the things that come along with a day at the beach. But in this case, I was in Rio; of course I was going to go to see Copacabana and Ipanema just to get the vibe.

I started in Copacabana. I took the train from Centro. The metro is not super expansive in Rio, but it’s extremely convenient for covering long distances it’s very cheap and easy to navigate.

Metro Scenes and Machines

I walked a few blocks from the subway station to the beach. On the way there was a pretty good food market and I stopped off and had some sort of fried bread cheese thing with hot sauce which was pretty decent, and I continued walking to the beach. This area was quite a bit different from Centro. It was packed. All the shops and restaurants were open and people were out; there was music; it was actually a pretty good scene.

Copacabana street scenes

The wide road that separated the apartment buildings from the beach was great. It was mostly shut down to cars and was filled with pedestrians and rollerbladers and bicyclists. Along the sand was a row of outdoor restaurants and food and beverage vendors, almost every one playing music. That was pretty nice too. The beach itself wasn’t packed, it was winter in Brazil, but there were people out swimming and playing volleyball and hanging out. I took a look. I still had no idea no desire to participate in the beach activities, but it was nice to see them. I walked around that area for a while before hopping back on the subway to go to Ipanema.

Copacabana streets

This Girl in Ipanema

Ipanema was similar to Copacabana. It was busy with appealing accommodations and eateries and the beach was also nice. I guess the more interesting thing about Ipanema was that it had a really great view of the mountains in the favela in the distance which was an interesting site. I walked around there for a little while but was already kind of done with the beach concept so I walked back to the subway.

Ipanena Scenes

Leblon

I got off the subway in Leblon, which is the most affluent neighbourhood in Rio. That’s a pretty nice neighbourhood. I wouldn’t want to stay there; it’s too fancy and a little bit too expensive and it feels a little more generic than other parts of the city that I was in, but it was very nice. My reason for going there was to go and check out a cigar lounge. There is a place called Café Esch, which has inside of it a La Casa Del Habano. You can have coffee, you can have cocktails, you can have a steak dinner if you want too, and you can purchase all the best Cuban cigars in the humidor. The cigars aren’t cheap, but there was a great selection and anytime I can smoke inside I’m delighted. So I bought a couple of cigars, ordered myself a coffee and a couple of cocktails (I had my first Caipirinha – wow is that great and potentially problematic; it is so easy to drink) and sat inside watching football (soccer) with a bunch of cigar smoking men inside. Nobody really talked to me, but it was a really nice place to hang out.

Cigars at Café Esch, Leblon

When twilight dims the sky above

I wanted to make it back to my hotel before it got dark, so I walked back to the subway. In Leblon it felt absolutely fine to walk around at night. But by the time I got back to my hotel, that was not the case.

I’m not generally worried about violence, but Rio did give me pause. Even many of the savviest travelers that I know have had issues with street violence in Rio after dark. So I had decided that I really would limit my nighttime activities. This was fine, because I was already tired from walking around all day so I went back to my hotel and just decided to just read a book, but then I got hungry… and curious, so I went out. I walked around the streets around my hotel. Some of them were empty and didn’t feel particularly safe; the areas that were closer to the train and subway stations at least had people out and about, so they felt a little safer. Most things were closed, but there was a little corner pizza and hamburger spot, nothing fancy, plastic chairs, basically a fast-food joint. I sat there at one of the outdoor tables and I had a pizza. (As an aside, this was the worst pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life. The bread was soft and all it had on it was gross cheese and some sort of sickly sweet tomato sauce and it was served with ketchup and mustard. Really awful.) I sat outside and I had this pizza and a bottle of water and was just kind of watching the activity on the sidewalk. There lot of homeless and drug addicted people walking around. They approached me constantly asking for money and standing and staring at me and getting a little bit too close. I didn’t feel threatened, but it certainly didn’t feel comfortable. At one point, one of the guys picked up a bottle a beer bottle from a table next to me and broke it over the side of a chair and sort of looked at me, holding onto the neck of the bottle. He didn’t really brandish it and I didn’t think he was going to hurt me, but it certainly didn’t make for a pleasant eating experience. A bit later I did give him the rest of my pizza, so I feel like we kind of had a moment.

Anyway, that was my first day in Rio. I had a good day and I was happy to be there, I wasn’t loving it. Some places you vibe with and some you don’t. That’s ok. But I but I was excited to see more of the city the next day, which I did.

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.

Wandering North

Way Down Among Brazilians – Rio Day 1

Brazil, Finally

Bom Dia, Rio!

Rio Centro

At the Copa. Copacabana.

This Girl in Ipanema

Leblon

When twilight dims the sky above

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Brazil, Finally

Bom Dia, Rio!

Rio Centro

At the Copa. Copacabana.

This Girl in Ipanema

Leblon

When twilight dims the sky above

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