Day 12 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sept 9th

Site Seeing
After a 8:45AM wake up call from Fernando, Allison and I headed to breakfast to taste delicious coconut pastries with jam and ‘suco do peach’. (Brazil has phenomenal juices!) After breakfast, we embarked on a breathtaking cable car ascent to the top of Rio’s Pao de Acucar (Sugar Loaf Mountain). While boarding, Amber bounced to the front of the car to get the best view, but ended up getting pooped on through an open window by a pigeon that was flying by. It was the most bizarre and hilarious thing I have seen happen to anyone. Once at the top, we took pictures, shopped in little stores they erected on the mountains and ventured through a jungle path that they carved into the side of the highest peak.

Best Restaurant in the World
Afterwards, we headed to an all-you-can-eat churrascarias called Marius in the Leme district. First you serve yourself a buffet of seafood, salads, vegetables and sushi. (There was sushi in almost all restaurants because Brazil has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan.) Then, servers come along with treys or skewers of meat and you can eat as much as you want. Some places even give you green and red cards to signal the waiters whether you want more or not. We tried every meat and dish they brought out. Including ram, sirloin, sausage and oyster. Each piece of meat had a salty, crunchy crust with the juiciest inside. Besides the food, the restaurant was incredible in itself. Everywhere there was something architectural and interesting. There were antique plates and cups sticking off walls. Shoes hanging off ceilings. One of a kind sculptures and sea objects everywhere. It was like being in a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean. The bathroom was the best part. They literally just dumped beautiful colored pebbles on the floor, so you had to march through them. You could even scoop them up in your hands.

How the other half lives…
After eating as much as we possible could, we visited a place where children can’t afford to eat as much as they deserve. Funded by private and religious donors, Mangueira is a community action school that takes children from favelas (slums) and isolates them on a compound to study and play sports. This way they are kept off the streets and away from drug cartels and street violence. While 4500 families apply for the program, only about 3000 actually get spots at the school, which takes children in pre-school to adults in professional programs. Older students (in their early twenties) are given a small pay stipend to stay in school as well as a month’s worth of groceries to help feed their families. The children at the compound were adorable and playful. Unfortunately, we only got a tour of the facilities and limited interaction with the students. I would have loved to join in on their soccer game. Our last destination for the day was a satellite building of the school. We entered this enormous warehouse-like building with the school colors (pink and green) painted everywhere. This was the samba school where students prepare a choreographed dance for Carnival every February. Some women were making miniature Carnival masks and insisted on giving all the girls in the group one. It was so sweet and is the best souvenir I could take home from Brazil. It was a really moving day.

New Discoveries
After cleaning up, Corey and I went on a mission to buy new cameras, since both of ours had broken that morning. (Unfortunately, I mashed my lens when it fell at the Mangueira school.) We walked into a few electronic stores, panda-mimed and used broken Spanish to show the clerks what we wanted until we found the perfect one. While comparing the megapixels, zoom and quality of cameras, we noticed something odd about the prices. The far superior quality camera was only 100 reais, while other average ones ranged between 300-500 reais. I was delighted to get such a good price, but couldn’t figure it out. Eventually, it dawned on us that the “08 x” before the price meant it was 8 payments of 100 reais. After conferring with Fernando, we discovered that Brazil has a tremendous consumer debt problem because so many individuals buy small (and especially large) items, like cameras, TVs or radios, on installments.

Rio at Night
To meet up with everyone else, we headed to the local market that set up every night along the beach. There was beautiful jewelry, hammocks, instruments and general artistry. Afterwards we excitedly choose Big Bob’s for dinner. It is the Brazilian equivalent to McDonald’s. Alex and Isaac got massive four layer cheeseburgers and finished all of it. These things were even bigger then anything I had seen at a fast food place before. Once we all gathered back at the hotel, we headed out to a local bar and samba dance club called ‘House’ for the night. All in all it was a great night of dancing the churrascarias’ calories away. The night ended with Marisa and I almost getting in a fight with the 350 pound bouncer, who didn’t speak English and couldn’t explain while he wouldn’t let us leave. Both of us being a measly 5’2’’ finally escaped after discovering we had to pay an exit fee of 20 reais. In the cab ride back, I discovered shards of glass sticking out of my feet from someone who had dropped a beer bottle near me. At least I didn’t feel the pain and made it home safe. Oo, what a night in Rio…

Highs and Lows
My “high” was watching Amber get pooped on. My “low” was dropping my camera at Manguiera and completely destroying the lense.