So Brazil. I went from planning to skip it entirely in the months leading up to my trip (it’s so big, I think I was intimidated by its size & while I hadn’t yet read about it, I was really excited about other countries) to deciding a month before leaving that I might as well get a Brazilian visa just in case bc I’m going to be so close to about halfway into my trip, deciding I not only had to go, but I was really excited to go, to ultimately spending the last 6 weeks here. So my excitement level was real high going into Rio, my first stop in Brazil.
But I’m not really sure where to start with Rio. I think Rio gets a bad rap primarily bc of safety stuff & IMHO, it’s total crap. Be smart, be safe, don’t put yourself in bad situations & all will turn out wonderfully most of the time. I freakin loved the city. LOVED. I had planned on 6 nights & ended up staying 8 & didn’t want to leave then. I think it’s my fave big city I’ve visited on this trip. It’s just such a unique combination of massive city laid out on rolling green hills that meet the island-dotted ocean at these insanely long stretches of white sandy beach. Then you toss in the vibe, culture, music, nightlife & the nice beautiful people. There’s interesting & must-see tourist to-do’s but it’s also another city made up of different unique hoods & I had a blast exploring a lot of them. My faves, both with a lot of culture, were Lapa, which had great samba & fun parties in its central square, & Santa Teresa, an artist haven in the hills. I of course spent a lot of time in the Zona Sul which is the south zone home to 16km of sandy beaches including the famous Copacabana & Ipanema. I did a foodie tour, went to a couple local samba fests, visited some not so famous but IMHO much better beaches further south & didn’t even make it to the historical center, which is supposedly a bit dodgy outside of normal weekly business hours but includes some famous murals painted for the Olympics. I documented a lot of this but it’s also the city where both my iphone charger & one of the heroes of my trip, my backup phone battery charger, both died within a day of each other so a couple days of my adventures are not photo documented.
The people? They really are as beautiful as people say. Annoyingly in shape & stunningly beautiful. Although the guys really should stop shaving or waxing or whatever they’re doing do to their chests. The women should be parading around in their thong bikinis bc they look ridiculously amazing. And it’s no wonder. You go to the beach & people aren’t lying around. They’re lifting weights, doing pullups on children’s playground equipment, running, biking, surfing, playing football, volleyball or my fave & seemingly the most popular… footvolley which is just freaking incredible. Oh & they’re super nice too.
The food was great. All of it. I ate Thai twice & sushi once. What can I say? I’ve been traveling for nearly 6 months & I’m in need of a little variety & you get that in a big city. The food tour for me differed from my SE Asian food tours in that it was more about the experience of visiting different hoods & interacting with locals than necessarily the food. You know, experiences like bonding w the local guide (+ grad student + film critic) over drinks & finding out his fave movie is Magnolia which blows your mind bc that’s one of your fave movies of all time & then after more drinks, you two start quoting the movie & discussing plot lines before breaking into Aimee Mann songs (“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do…”), much to the dismay of everyone else at the table. You know, those experiences?
But I really did love Rio. All but the traffic. The traffic is atrocious. It prompted me to figure out early on how to transition from taxis to the metro system. And I’m a walker so I put some miles in. I left thinking I could probably be happy hanging in Rio for another 2 weeks or quite possibly, the rest of my trip. But like I said, Brazil is big & I needed to do a bit more exploring. However, I will definitely squeeze it into another future trip to Brazil. And I’m fairly certain there will be plenty of those to come.