Dia 134 - Friday April 22, 2011: Rio Sightseeing

Rio de Janeiro is divided in half by a mountain range. The waterfront southern side has the beaches, lakes and a lot of the nice areas, but some favellas running up the hillside. The northern half is more industrial and has working neighborhoods. The city setting is gorgeous! See the pictures.

Stefan, our driver-guide, took us on a spirited and knowledgeable tour of the major sites. As today is the Good Friday holiday here, the crowds were too big to take the tramways to Christ the Redeemer or Sugarloaf. Stefan took us to vista-point park. We had a lot of pictures taken of us with various beautiful backgrounds. Ipanema and Cococabana beaches were next. They were full of umbrellas and even more people than at Santa Monica beach on a summer holiday. Everyone was enjoying the beautiful day at the beach. We had coco frios at Ipanema and it turns out that was our lunch too. We visited several other beaches.

Stefan was sophisticated, worldly, and very good about explaining the history and society of Brazil. For example he explained that after slavery was abolished in 1888, there was a strong drive to bring Europeans, mostly Italians and Germans, and Japanese to balance out the racial mix of the population. The most recent census weighted by DNA shows 1/3 indigenous, 1/3 African and 1/3 Caucasians & Asians. The southern states of Brazil are overweight on the Caucasian. We will next go to the more African side and then the indigenous around the Amazon basin. He took us through a number of affluent neighborhoods and ours, which is historical. We loved Selaron’s personal statement – he is an artist who uses tile remnants to make an ordinary stairway into a work of folk art. Stefan took us for a spin around the Santa Teresa area, including by his home a couple of blocks from the hotel. He is restoring a mid 19th century house.

Back at the hotel, we were happy that Carol seems to have been restored. We had an excellent meal just a 5-minute walk from the hotel. The salads were fresh mango, pineapple, heart of palm, chayote and fresh lettuce leaves. We had Conger eel with broccoli rice and a delicious fresh water fish -- “Wreck fish” in translation. We ate and ate.