After one month of traveling around Paranà, Gabriela and I realized that we only saw a fraction of what Brazil is: yes, we saw enormous soy plantations, we saw waterfalls, we saw infinite roads full of old trucks, but there was still something that was missing. Without the pretense of telling “we saw all Brazil” when we will go back to Italy, we wanted to see other faces of Brazil, so we took a weekend to go to Rio de Janeiro. After several hours of bus, plane, and taxi, we arrived in one of the most characteristic cities of South America. The first impact we had once we left the airport was shocking: as Rio grows between the coast and the mountains, from the highway we could see most of the neighborhoods of the city, from the poorest favelas in the mountains to the unbelievably rich coast with its hotels (including the Copacabana Palace that inspired the homonymous song by Barry Manilow).
FROM THE TOP OF THE CORCOVADO MOUNTAIN, YOU CAN SEE THE WHOLE RIO DE JANEIRO.
This was totally different from what we saw in Guarapuava, where the gap between rich and poor people is not so evident. We started our visit from the Botafogo beach: definitely smaller and less crowded than Copacabana, but with a beautiful view of the Pão de Açúcar (Sugarloaf Mountain). We then moved to Lapa to see the historical Carioca aqueduct and then we walked up the Selarón Staris, a once anonymous stairway that became a piece of art when the Chilean artist Jorge Selarón started decorating it with beautiful ceramic tiles, making it one of the symbols of Rio de Janeiro. Lapa is also the perfect neighborhood if you, like us, are looking for nightlife: as we weren’t tired enough from the travel, we decided to spend the night at the Leviano Bar, a very good place for dancing and hearing live music, albeit quite expensive. There we could see all we expected from the nightlife in Brazil: samba, people of all skin colors partying and dancing together, and unfortunately also drugs consumption.
The next day we went on a guided tour in the city center, and we discovered a totally different face of the city: the center is where the chicest locales of Rio can be found, like the magnificent Municipal Theater or the luxurious Confetaria Colombo. The center is also where the most powerful Brazilian companies have their headquarters. This was the rich, safe, European-styled face of Rio, so our next goal was to see one more face of the city, the one that is most frequently depicted in movies: the favelas. We booked a guided tour to Rocinha, a pacified favela where Carlos, a reputable guide, was available for a tour. Visiting Rocinha we went through narrow alleys and steep stairs, trying to imagine how it is to live there for the whole life: Carlos, our guide, said that for most of the people who live in a favela, it’s impossible to get out because of the lack of instruction and therefore money.
Still, while Rocinha is definitely not the best place in the world to live, we expected it to be way worse: there were shops, bars, like in any normal neighborhood. As Carlos wanted to clarify, each favela is inhabited by its own community, so not all of them are ruled by gangsters as they are portrayed in movies: actually, visiting Rocinha with a guide made me feel safer than visiting the rest of Rio de Janeiro without one. Of course, we couldn’t leave Rio without seeing its most beautiful and fascinating face, so we headed to Christ the Redeemer. From the top of the Corcovado mountain, this 30m tall statue makes Rio look smaller than it actually is, giving the visitor the chance to see the whole of Rio de Janeiro from a single point.
When we came back to Guarapuava, we started thinking about how Rio de Janeiro and Guarapuava were different from each other and from the stereotypes we had about Brazil: in Guarapuava, most of the people has European origins, while in Rio the mixture skin tones corresponds more to what we expected to see in Brazil. Also, before visiting Brazil, both Gabriela and I thought that the country was dangerous everywhere: she expected to see more criminality in Guarapuava, while I expected the same from Rio, but we were both surprised about the fact that, with some common sense and precautions, both cities can be safely visited. As we are staying in Brazil for one month more, and we are going to produce more articles and videos, we will try to transmit to you our view of the country, helping to dismantle the false stereotypes or confirming the ones that are true.