Soak up the energy of Rio
When you stand atop Corcovado, the hunchbacked peak that offers a bird’s-eye view over Rio de Janeiro, a blanket of sea mist parts to reveal green hills, sugar-coloured beaches, an emerald lagoon and an urban checkerboard of buildings. Behind you, the Art Deco sculpture of Christ the Redeemer looms with outstretched arms. Some people joke that he’s actually shrugging, because down in the City of Carnival, anything goes.
Like the statue, Brazil’s most iconic city has welcomed all who’ve found their way here throughout history. Once a bountiful habitat that the native Tamoio people called Guanabara, the city was introduced to the world when a Portuguese navigator named Gaspar de Lemos stumbled onto its bay on the first day of 1502; mistaking it to be the mouth of a river, he christened the lush region Rio de Janeiro, or River of January.
Fortune seekers soon followed, and in the ensuing centuries, Rio has been the site of a planned French utopia, the stomping grounds of pirates and privateers, a trading post for newly mined gold, the capital of a far-reaching European empire, a playground of the original Hollywood jet set, the fantasy land of Carnival ¬– and, for sports fans, the host city of the World Cup and the Olympics.
When Napoleon’s army charged toward Portugal in 1808, Dom João IV packed up his court and sailed to his South American colony. He was so enamoured with his new home that, even when Napoleon was defeated seven years later, he refused to return to Lisbon and minted a brand-new title of “The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves,” with Rio as the imperial capital. By then, flush with gold from the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais, Rio had become a place worthy of the royal throne.
Today, the imperial vestiges remain in the city’s cobblestoned centre, punctuated by 21st century skyscrapers. The Igreja da Ordem Terceira de São Francisco da Penitencia (Church of St. Francis of Penance), decorated with 880 pounds of pure gold, is an exercise in Baroque lavishness, while Teatro Municipal, modelled after Paris’ Opera Garnier, remains the crown jewel of the Centro district. Biblioteca Nacional, the largest library in Latin America, competes with the neoclassical Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts) as the city’s cultural hubs.
Downtown is nevertheless more than an open-air museum of past glories. The dense commercial district known as Saara surrounding Rua Alfândega is a cornucopia of tiny mom-and-pop shops owned by Arab and Asian immigrants; here, you can find everything from skimpy bikinis to indigenous Brazilian spices, carnival outfits to kanga, the sarong ubiquitous on Brazilian beaches. And when all the bustle wears you down, seek refuge at the Royal Portuguese Reading Room (Real Gabinete Portugues de Leitura), a staggering 75-foot-high sanctuary lovingly filled with stained-glass skylights, marble columns and shelves after shelves of antique volumes. You don’t have to read Portuguese to appreciate the serenity inside.
Even now, the ‘Marvellous City’ continues to reinvent itself. For a real-life counterpart of the tourist-heavy Corcovado, head to the collection of favelas known as Complexo do Alemão. The name favela, Portuguese for slum, conjures images of menace; some of them are desolate places that live up to their dangerous reputation. But things have recently improved in many neighbourhoods like Alemão, where a new aerial tramway soars into the skies and beckon visitors.
The metal pods look more appropriate for alpine ski slopes than a tropical city as they soar above a dense quilt of residential blocks. These homes are architectural marvels, ingeniously stacked on steep hills to maximise space. When you disembark at Palmeira, the final stop of the aerial lift, you’ll see a small sandy soccer field where children horse around. Around the corner, a small handicraft market has popped up. Patricia Hubner, who used to travel for hours to sell her hand-sewn wallets and bowls made out of recycled LP records, now takes the cable car from her home and sells them to visitors here. Beside her, Cleber Araujo makes collages out of Heineken and Radeberger beer labels. Thanks to the new lifts and increasing safety, there are now visitors from all over the world, slowly infusing the communities with tourism income – something that was unthinkable just a few years ago.
What sets Rio apart from other metropolises around the world is its irrepressible joy of life, which is ever present on its beaches. 'The Girl from Ipanema', according to the signature bossa nova tune, may be tall and young and lovely, but people of just about every age and body type flock to the city’s 25-mile coastline. You can lie on the reddish sand of the secluded cove of Praia Vermelha while watching the cable cars slide up to the 1,300-foot-tall Sugarloaf Mountain, or try paddle-boarding and kite surfing at the popular Barra de Tijuca beach. The first of a string of white beaches that face the Atlantic, Copacabana may have lost its exclusive lustre but it still sparkles with unpretentious charm.
For the inimitable Rio experience, Ipanema trumps all. Volleyball, soccer and rollerblading enthusiasts may mislead you into thinking otherwise, but the truly local experience seems to involve wearing as little as possible, lying on a towel and flagging down a vendor for ice-cold maté tea and crispy Globo crackers. The powerful waves and the musical lilt of Brazilian Portuguese make the most seductive beach soundtrack. When you tire of the endless parade of bronzed bodies, peel yourself off the sand and explore the upscale neighbourhood that bears the same name as the beach, with some of the most exclusive boutiques in the city.
When the night air descends and cools the asphalt, head to the stately quarter of Urca. At the dockside Bar Urca, hundreds of people, from teenagers to seniors, spill from the tiny shop-front and line the waterfront, laughing, drinking and eating. This is one of Rio’s many little bodegas known as pé sujo, literally “dirty foot” in Portuguese, where cheap snacks and cool drinks bring people of all social strata together. Like the other cariocas, or Rio locals, straddle the cement embankment and eat deep-fried pasteis filled with meat, cheese or shrimp. Downtown’s skyline glimmers across the bay.
That’s when you’ll notice Christ the Redeemer anew, glowing in white, hovering over the hill that the night has erased. It may make sense why some people joke that he’s shrugging at Rio’s live-and-let-live vibe. But when you let your hair down and revel with friends and strangers, the statue will remind you that this city welcomes you, over and over.
