UpCity

The marvellous city, the destination of all roads, the first city that comes to mind when thinking of Brazil: Rio de Janeiro. Needless to say, I was intimidated.

Will the favelas eat us alive? Will the Copacabana sun melt us away? Surely our pockets will take a hit and Cristo only knows how many times we would be kidnapped. These are just some of the things going through my mind as we landed in Rio de Janeiro, halfway through our month long trip in Brazil.

Nothing happened. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way disappointed in the brutality of Rio. The omnipresent piss smell is strong enough to make you think twice about taking a detour or a side alley and you can’t turn a street corner in Copacabana without being stared down by the shanty houses of the favelas, hanging by a thread and leaning on each other.

That said, I think we gave Rio too little time, 4 days is not enough to know a whole beach, not to mention a whole city. After 4 uneventful days, including Easter weekend which we foolishly disregarded as a possible obstacle, we hired a door-to-island transfer and reached Ilha Grande by noon.

The Big Island is where all my worries went away and where I finally got into the Brazilian Alegria.

Imagine a paradise island, dotted by more than 100 beaches and lagoons, no cars, one village and only boats or your bare feet to take you from A to B. We fell in love with Ilha Grande as we spent our days lazily getting from one beach to the next with an occasional stop for lunch, snorkel and snooze.

We left the island on the 5th day with a late afternoon boat back to the mainland, in Angra Dos Reis and took a local bus down to Paraty.

Soon enough we were carrying our backpacks on the cobbled streets of Paraty and knocking on every pousada door we found till we reached what would reluctantly be our room for the next 5 nights.

Paraty, although a colonial timecapsule, is not a place worth so many days and we felt a bit stuck there. The island boat tours were unimpressive after Ilha Grande, the jeep tours to the jungle waterfalls were child’s play compared to Bonito, the only highlights were the relaxed prices for souvenirs and food and the fact that we were close to Trindade, a surfer/hippie/backpacker retreat 45 minutes away by local bus.

We spent our last days in Brazil relaxing on the beach, drinking beer, stirring ice cream, and exchanging notes on the experience while bossa nova was playing live in the background. By now we knew not to slurp down a caipirinha and expect to not get wasted and we had even gotten used to the mosquitoes and spider bites constantly itching.

We left Paraty with a feeling of content, sunburned shoulders and backpacks full of cachaça, sugarcane candy, dirty clothes and colorful kangas. 

It is hard to sum up southern Brazil in a couple of words and to even try would be foolish. As you stare over the red dirt, the bright sunlight bouncing of the lush green jungle leafs, you start to think you understand the way of life and the happiness for existing that all Brazilians seem to share.

Sure, they don’t speak English and getting directions is a roller-coaster but nothing can surpass the warm and sincere way they say De Nada when you say thanks in their language.

You do need to be careful but don’t let all the warnings get you down and make you grumpy, don’t let fear misguide your steps and don’t let it ruin your vacation. We went to Brazil expecting the worse, were told constantly about the bad things that might happen and it got to us, it wore us down and made us uncomfortable. We misinterpreted smiles, skipped parties and avoided crowds of happy people out of fear.

As Romanians, we were considered rather exotic, coming from a far away land of former communism and with a rich medieval history. It’s no surprise we quickly found Brazilians friends all over who saw the lost looks on our faces, took pity on us and translated the stories, the food and the impromptu wisdom of the myriad of cultures blended into a single nation.

Don’t fight Brazil, don’t go marching into its ocean because the first wave will hit you full frontal and take you down. Instead, submerge, sink into Brazil and let it float you away to its secluded, sugar coated beaches and maybe, hopefully, Brazil will open up to you and win you over with it’s wild beauty.