The first was a favela tour. A favela is a term used to describe the shanty-towns of Brazil. The favela we visited was the Rocinha favela - the largest favela in Rio with about 150,000 - 300,000 people living there. It is absolutely massive!
Our tour started in a bus which took us to the bottom of the favela, and then we were each put onto a mototaxi to take us to the top. What an incredible was to get to the top - thrown onto the back of a motorbike and then zipping up the winding road dodging cars and trucks and buses and other motorbikes, with the driver beeping his horn the entire way up... Wow!!! The skill of these drivers to duck and weave and dodge other traffic just blows me away!
They took us to the top of the favela and then walked us down through what looked like a very narrow laneway (only 1-2 people wide in most places) which was called street number 1. I was uncertain what to expect of this tour... not sure how safe I would feel, nor what it would be like to be in a tour group "gawking" at people's homes... What was amazing is that I didn't feel either of those things. It didn't have that unsafe feeling (although I don't think I'd go there alone - but I could say that about many places, including Melbourne) and people were happy to let us take photos of their homes and of them.
Throughout the tour we were shown into an art gallery where I bought a painting from a local artist and a bakery where the baker explained what each item was and we could purchase from him (it was great to finally have names - or an understanding of what was in them - for some of the items that we'd seen in local shops).
We were also taken into a daycare centre which is sponsored by the group that runs the tours - they put some of the maoney that they make from the tours back into the community by supporting the day care centre. It also had another great view of the favela...
When we got to the bottom, we looked back to see where we had walked... The v in the mountain at the top of the pic below is where we started walking. I had no idea that we had walked that far via the same narrow road! And in the that entire favela (my picture doesn't capture it all) there are only 4 streets (3 as narrow as the one we were on - 1 that is an actual road for cars).
The remainder of the day was spent on a city tour where we had a glimpse of some of the major sights of the city.
We got a brief glimpse of Santa Theresa before the street party took over and we had to move on or we'd miss out on seeing some of the other sights....
The Christ Redeemer on the top of the Corcovado mountain....
The Escardaria Selaron steps...
Sugar Loaf - we went up on 2 cable cars to get magnificent views of the city...
Stay tuned... street parties and Carnaval posts are yet to come!!
1 comment:
What an amazing time you're having! It sounds awesome with so much more to come, from the sounds of it. Enjoy!
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