2007-03-05T14:54:00.000-08:00

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And yes, after my carnaval, we are back to regular life in Rio.. Finally, I can see some rio. It will take some time for me to adapt to my jetlag (I had been sleeping around 8:00 am after the breakfast duringn whole carnaval, and I need to get back to normal travel mood).. But still rio has much to offer, and I dont want to miss them when I am in Brazil...

First of all, this is what happens when you dont have your camera with you... In the first picture we can see a brazilian trash truck which just came to the exact spot where there was a large bloque ( street party of crazy cariocas (people from rio are called that way) passing with a band in front and dancing people in the back ) 3 minutes ago... I just ran upstairs in my hostel to take my camera for the pictures, yet unfortunately I was not fast enough for it... The other pictures are from Páo de Azucar (sugarloaf mountain), where has the best views of rio de janeiro city with corcovado (mountain of Christ redeemer, will see later).

Rio is a really beautiful city, with mountains, forests and a hell of beaches surrounding all the city. In my own words, the only way it could have been better and more efficient is if it was a spiral!!!!

And this is the view of Sugarloaf mountain with me distrupting the view...
Of course I will again try to be photographic, but as usual my pictures are "not terrible" at its best...
But still I like the picture of the rio sun =)

And of course I will not be missing the sunset of rio de janeiro =)... The bad thing about rio and good thing about nature:

1. it is very dangerous to be walking at night especially around those areas as it is more tranquilo (less people)

2. After the sun sets, you still have some time before the dark settles in =)
In the last two pictures you can see also corcovado mountain, which hosts "christ redeemer".

Next, I go for the favela tour, which is sort of a "city of god" tour. For those who didnt watch the movie, it is always on the top 5 of IMDB best 250 movies, it is a movie about the violence very close to the rio from the poor areas of the city called favelas, where people dont live to see their age 21 in general at all, the little kids have guns and everybody kills everybody so fast without thinking for small gains..

OK, now the real favelas... Our guide explains that though favelas can be hell when there is a war between the police and the drug lords (those drug lords are on the average aged between 16-18, they own a money of around 2.5 million dollars, and never really get to spend any of them at all, simply just pass the money to the guys that kill them!!!), normally favelas are more of a poor area without that much of violence, and brazilians actually live there without that much of trouble. What he told me was that anywhere people with drug business have all those kinds of violence, and what we have seen in favelas were simply small cities that dont even lack that much of infrastructure (nearly all the houses have tvs etc.). The touristic favela is Rocinha, where all the tours go through..

An interesting fact, in the second and third pictures, you can see that favelas are actually adjacent to the most expensive neighborhoods in rio, so the rich people live just near the poor people with huge security precautions and protection, and enjoy the beauty of life in their jacuzzis while 100 meters away people live in much worse conditions...

Some more interesting information, the rent is more or less the same in favelas with the rest of the citys regular residential areas... But favelas generally steal electricity and dont pay about the other infrastructure and they dont pay tax, so actually it becomes cheaper to live there. In the second picture you can see that the guy has been using 1 watt of electricity since last usage =).

Honestly for me, they are even better than the gecekondus (poor areas of the istanbul in Turkey) in terms of the infrastructure, and gecekondus in Turkey have less violence than favelas here.. I am simply unimpressed with the favelas at the very best... I have seen much poorer parts in Peru iquitos, the belen area (check my blog peru part) and compared to that this one is just nothing... In the third picture, you can see the angry guy in the favelas, whatever you want to imagine what he wants to do with me =P

Some more pictures of the favelas... And by the way, in rio you can actually see buses that go to city of god.. I was tempted to take one, yet I still wasnt sure, and I remembered my promise to my mom that I will return in one piece... I think it would not be that dangerous, but who knows, didnt want to risk it =).. Always better to be precautious.. In the second picture you can see some high end luxury favelas =)

After the unimpressive favela tour, I go ahead with ultra modern cathedral metropolitana of rio, which is simply amazing at the very least!!! It is a huge cathedral with a space age architecture huge painted windows (what was the damn english word for it!!), and axtreme creativity with light!! I simply loved it and it is one of the top 3 cathedrals in my life (with la sagrada familia in Barcelona and cathedral metropolitana in Mexico city (I personally was not amazed that much with saint peters in Vatican))..

Some more views from the beautiful architecture of the cathedral with me silently fitting in the background with my shirt =) . This is Umut, I am in Brazil, my fiesta country..

And then we go ahead with Arcos de Lapa, where is the place I stayed during the carnaval... Actually apparently this place is one of the more dangerous parts of rio, which I didnt know at all, but it was close to the carnaval, and it was where our japanese guy really wanted to go.. I am really happy with the choice, and I was really lucky I didnt have any problems at all.. But it wasnt true for some of my friends, one guy in our hostel was mugged twice, another guy was actually mugged at 7:30 am in the morning while he was in the middle of a crowd with beers socializing and he was talking to another english speaking guy, 5 m. away from our hostel!!!! He was actually mugged by two guys, one holding him breathless from the back stabilizing him, and the other checking his pockets and his cock!!! (Yes people here are not stupid, and they know that you have that damn belt in which you hide your passport and all other valuables).. And a turkish girl, Yegane, the second turkish I met in all my trips, was staying in the same hostel, and she was robbed too when she was waiting for the tram on top of arcos de lapa (yes there is a tram passing through that area used for transport and I was stupid enough to miss it just simply because I was so close and I forgot!!).

But still she was walking alone there and waiting at the stop with her camera, when there was a little kid with eyes wide open holding a stone from the street shouting her "camera!!"... And the guy that was robbed in the morning was way too drunk in a dangerous area of rio when the cops left (they leave around 5 pm) in carnaval, being totally drunk and staying in the same position for a long time (easy prey for muggers).. I dont know about the other guy, though I doubt he may have also missed some precautions.. I personally suggest my hostel as I was totally satisfied with everything from that hostel and the stuff were one of the best in my all trip in terms of guiding and helping us (hostel sambavilla in arcos de lapa just near the arc)... Especially perfect for the carnaval when you want to stay close to the action (and dont want to sleep before 5 am =)...

Close to the arcos, there are the famous escalators "Escadaria da Lapa", which are artistical with mosaics around. And then I start with the city tour, starting from the cinelandia station from the plaza, which has theatro municipal and Museu Nacional de Belas Artes very close by...

After cathedral I pass for the second area, largo da carioca and from there I continue on Praca tiradentes, where the centro cultural de rio is very close by and they apparently have some salsa at that exact moment. As I am already short of clean clothes and need laundry really badly, I dont do salsa there to not to stay without clothes, but I should admit that brazilians know how to dance, I have seen some of the best salsa in my trip over here... After that I go east through rua de teatro and from there on north for "Sahara" one of the main marketplaces in rio, which is a large stream of small open air local stores where you can find any kind of stuff you are looking for and actually you can see a pretty good mixture of different stores there ranging from brazilero to arabic to israeli etc. For me it is interesting to see, but it is honestly not the best after mexico city and turkish bazaar kapali carsi in Istanbul, but I still strongly recommend anyone in rio to see this bazaar too..

I end up the first part of my rio (yes it continues because of downloading problems from my digital camera) with pictures of flowers and the famous petrobras building in rio.

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My rio