Roaming in Rio

Rohit Mahajan 

The certitude of getting mugged came back to me when, on a stormy night, I found myself alone at the Copacabana beach with the shadowy figure of a man running towards me.

“You’d be mugged in Rio de Janeiro if you don’t go around in a group,” I had been warned. Alas, it seemed too beautiful a night to get mugged! A furious, shrieking wind blew the famous grains of Copacabana sand like a hundred rivulets inches off the ground. Raindrops and stray grains of sand lightly stung one’s face and hands. A terrific storm and rain had forced the small beachside cafes and bars shut. The vendors of flip-flops and hats and bikinis and souvenirs had been sent scurrying for cover. Not a soul at the Copacabana — the only time I saw it that way — except for that man. But he simply ran past me — just a jogger, possibly the least dangerous of the Homo sapiens! But locals told me later that one must never roam around alone at Copacabana, or anywhere else in Rio, at night.

Copacabana, all four kilometres of it, is attractive under sun too, though a bit overwhelming, teeming with thousands of tourists and cariocas, as Rio’s residents are called. You see a reflection of different Rios as you walk along the four kilometres of Copacabana — football and futevolei (a mix of football and volleyball) players from different favelas (tenements/slums), quieter sections with older, retired people, the fishermen’s colony, the cross-dressers and so on. People lie down on sand for hours, getting up once in a while for a cool dip in the sea, to grab a bite or a drink, before coming back to lie down. 

A leisurely walk of half-an-hour — longer if you hop into one of the bars for a sip of cachaca or the good old coconut water — brings you to Ipanema. Depending on your perspective, Ipanema is the more ‘classy’ or ‘snobbish’ of the two beaches. Ipanema’s neighbour is the exclusive Leblon region, where the super-rich live in breathtaking luxury, as glimpsed during a visit to a yoga guru’s beautiful house, but that’s another story.

Brazil combines deep religious reverence with fun-loving, hedonistic lifestyle. When the Pope visited Rio five years ago, guess where the mass was held? That’s right, it was Copacabana, Brazil’s party place. An estimated 30 lakh people packed the four kilometres of the beach.

If you peer over and between the tall hotels lining Copacabana, you’d spot the figure of a man at the top of a hill — it’s none other than Christ the Redeemer, bending his loving, kindly gaze on the revellers on the beach and the city of Rio.

When we visited the Redeemer on top of the Corcovado (hunchback) hill, we found that He was besieged by thousands of people, but not one of them was on a religious mission. Most of them were noisy tourists shouting and shrieking, posing in front of the statue with arms outstretched, in the manner of the Christ. The top of the Corcovado hill provides breathtaking views of Rio — the famous Maracana Stadium, Sugarloaf Mountain, the beaches, the housing of the rich near the beaches, the favelas of the poor creeping up the hills. It doesn’t, however, provide a breathtaking spiritual experience if you visit it in peak tourist season.

A more secular site for an aerial look at Rio is the Sugarloaf Mountain, accessed by cable car. Walking part of the way is an option which we didn’t exercise because we didn’t have the time; once on top, you get some amazing views of the city — the sea, the city, the beaches below, and Redeemer up there! Near-spiritual experiences aided by liquor can be had in abundance in several touristy parts of Rio, especially if you like cachaca, the strong brew favoured by the locals. Cachaca is made from fermented sugarcane juice and is the main ingredient in Caipirinha, the country’s national cocktail. After a climb up the famous Selaron Steps in the Lapa region, we did a bit of bar-hopping. Among the bars we visited was Casa da Cachaca, a-hole-in-the-wall bar whose patrons must be accommodated on the sidewalk. Its appearance is extremely modest, its collection of drinks legendary, thousands of bottles of cachaca lining the walls. The wonderful man behind the bar is dangerously creative with his Caipirinha flavours — he showed us one cachaca bottle with small immobile (dead?) snakes in it. He assured us that people do drink it. We preferred non-reptile flavours such as cinnamon and jambu and chillies. 

We went back to the sea a few times, mostly in the day. Once a young urchin looked at my camera, made his eyes covetous and said in a tone of warning: “Oh, you have camera! You are rich!”  Did he want some of my ‘riches’? Not really, he was only joking — and that was the closest I got to getting mugged in Rio.