HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Rio Baby
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Saying good-bye to Rosita for 5 weeks
WORD OF THE DAY: Carnival
We had a travel day to get us from Paraty to Rio. It isn’t a big drive, approximately 5-6 hours and this is dependent on what traffic we hit as we skirt around Sao Paulo and reach Rio.
The drive was just a drive today. Nothing of note to mention with just the one toilet break to get us into Rio just after 2pm. My last instructions to Beth was to get the tickets issued for my trip to Ethiopia, today being Friday and with my flights for Tuesday, they just had to be issued otherwise they would just keep going up in price. It was cheaper for me in the end to purchase a separate ticket from Rio to Sao Paulo and then pick up my international flight from Sao Paulo, Frankfurt, Addis Ababa, Frankfurt, Sao Paulo and finally to Manaus. As there were 2 separate tickets I will have to see my bags in Sao Paulo and then recheck them on the Lufthansa legs, but I have 3 hours to do this and I come in and out of terminal 2 so I am hoping for a smooth process and if not I have enough ‘fluff’ time if needed. So another BIG thanks to my personal travel agent Beth for all your work and getting back to me all the time. At least you know I am a booker and not a time waster!
As we drove on the express way to get us into the city, we were passing large warehouses where we could see the massive floats that they will be using for Carnival on the weekend. It was awesome to see them and it just made me so excited to see the actual parade on Sunday night. It is a pretty awesome thing to say we are in Rio for Carnival and it is really one of a lifetime experiences that are up there with Macchu Picchu and the Great Wall of China. We are in Rio baby!!!!!!!
Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th largest in the Americas, and 26th in the world. The city was the capital of Brazil for nearly two centuries, from 1763 to 1815 during the Portuguese colonial era,
Rio de Janeiro is the most visited city in the southern hemisphere and is known for its natural settings, carnival celebrations, samba, Bossa Nova, balneario beaches such as Barra da Tijuca, Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon. Some of the most famous landmarks in addition to the beaches include the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer atop Corcovado mountain, named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World; Sugarloaf Mountain with its cable car; the Sambódromo, a permanent grandstand-lined parade avenue which is used during Carnival; and Maracanã Stadium, one of the world's largest football stadiums. The 2016 Summer Olympics will take place in Rio de Janeiro, which will mark the first time a South American city hosts the event. Rio's Maracanã Stadium will also host the final match for 2014 FIFA World Cup. Rio de Janeiro will also host World Youth Day in 2013.
We are staying in the Lapa section of the city and a lot of the Carnival Street Parties will be held each night in our area, so it will be good that we won’t have to look at travelling far to be part of the celebrations. The hotel itself is currently undergoing refurbishment and we were lucky enough to get one of the new rooms on the 8th floor. We were missing a few fittings, but the aircon worked, the bathroom was all new and shiny and we had Wi-Fi access in the room. What is a few missing fittings and construction materials in the hallway with all those pluses!!! After we had checked in we got half an hour to enjoy the air conditioning our hotel rooms before meeting Mark in reception and then showing us a few things around the area like ATM machine, supermarket and the Laundromat.
About a 10 minute walk from the hotel is a famous set of steps. So Mark took those interested to the steps and I have to say they were pretty cool. The official name of them is Escadaria Selarón. They are the work of Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón who claims it as "my tribute to the Brazilian people".
In 1990, Selarón began renovating dilapidated steps that ran along the front of his house. At first, neighbors mocked him for his choice of colours as he covered the steps in fragments of blue, green and yellow tiles – the colours of the Brazilian flag. It started out as a side-project to his main passion, painting but soon became an obsession. He found he was constantly out of money so sold paintings to fund his work. It was long and exhaustive work but he continued on and eventually covered the entire set of steps in tiles, ceramics and mirrors.
Running from Rua Joaquim Silva and Rua Pinto Martins, officially known as Rua Manuel Carneiro, the steps straddle both the Lapa and Santa Teresa neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro. There are 250 steps measuring 125 meters long which are covered in over 2000 tiles collected from over 60 countries around the world. No sooner than one section of the steps are 'finished', Selarón starts work on another section, constantly changing it so that it is an ever evolving piece of art. Selarón considers the work as "never complete" and claims that "This crazy and unique dream will only end on the day of my death".
Originally, tiles for the work were scavenged from various construction sites and piles of urban waste found on the Rio streets. Today however, most of the tiles are donated by visitors from all around the world. Of the 2000+ tiles, 300-odd are hand painted by Selarón depicting a pregnant African woman. Selarón doesn't comment on this except to say that it is a "Personal problem from my past".
Jorge Selarón was born in Chile in 1947. He traveled, lived and worked as a painter and sculptor in over 50 countries around the world before arriving and deciding to settle in Rio de Janeiro in 1983. He began renovating the steps on a whim in 1990. Many times, his phone was cut off and he was threatened to be evicted from his house due to being unable to afford the living costs. He sold many paintings and accepted donations from locals and travelers to continue his work. Since 1977, Selarón has claimed to have sold over 25,000 portraits, all featuring the same pregnant woman which mostly funded his work. It has been a labor of love for the artist who still resides in the same house by the steps he lived in when he started the work. He is mostly unfazed by the attention given to him by curious onlookers and tourists alike. He is constantly spotted at the steps working by day and treating drunken revelers to fascinating anecdotes by night.
We were lucky enough to have beaten the tourist busses and Selaron was actually sitting on the steps signing his postcards that you could buy from the small artist shop he has on site and getting his photo taken with tourists. Kate got her photo taken with him and he does look and act a little strange.
From here we went back to the hotel and rested up for dinner which we were going to spend together as a group. Mark took us to a ‘pay by the kilo’ restaurant and as the name suggests it is a buffet style set up and you put as much or as little on your plate and then you go to the teller, where they weight your plate and give you a receipt with the cost of the meal. You then just keep going back and forth taking your receipt with you and the bill would keep tallying up. The food was a great quality and by the end of the night I had eaten 740g of food which mainly compromised of meat fresh off the Brazilian BBQ. It was a great feed.
So welcome to Rio and Carnival. Our posse has decided to stay in tonight and save ourselves for the onslaught if the carnival festivities that officially start in full force tomorrow. We have a city tour booked for lunch time tomorrow, so we will also get to see the ‘musts’ if Rio while we are here.
Nice art work on the stairs.
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