Rio really

I don't want to leave the impression that Rio De Janeiro is a grim place with starving bandidos lurking behind every corner. So here are some random impressions not based on my inability to wander the streets unaccompanied.

Copacabana beach goes on for three miles, bordered by the bay and a strip of what look like fairly pricey hotels. The sidewalk along the hotel side is tiled in black and white in curves that look like they are dancing samba. The sands apparently get so hot you can burn the soles of your feet, so the hotels pay to string piping from the street to the water to moisten pathways that are cooler. There were lots of people on the beaches, though I didn't see anyone in the "dental floss" bikinis our tour guide said might be there. I also didn't see any of what we gently term full-figured women there. Some full-figured men, of course -- men don't seem to know when they really need to get a bigger size swimming suit.

The best of the graffiti is exuberant, bright colored, and creative, more so than a lot of the more conventional public art, which tends to be somewhat pompous. The plant life is so energetic that plants even root themselves on other plants. It's very common to see an orchid blooming on the branch of a street-side tree, and a form of cactus that hangs from trees is currently "in bloom" with little pearl-like spheres on its stringy dangling shoots. The tour guide assured us that the cactus wasn't parasitic on the trees, it just liked to grow with some altitude.

This morning, as we rode the train up the side of Corcovado Mountain (in order to ride the elevators in order to ride the escalators in order to wander below the feet of the Christ the Redeemer statue) a band of samba musicians boarded to serenade us on the 20-minute ride. What amazing enlivening joyful music! It really makes me sorry we are a month too early for Carnival. They have three tiers of samba schools  that compete during Carnival, each one proceeding down a half-mile course between rows of bleachers packed with onlookers, the dancers dressed in school colors in fantastic costumes complete with elaborate creations of feathers and sequins on beautiful lithe bodies. The last place finishers in each tier get relegated to the next lower tier, and the winner in each lower tier gets promoted, just like in soccer in England. Rio is Samba Central, so much so that the winning performers get to dance again the next weekend, even if it is, technically, during Lent.

This sort of attitude seems characteristic of Rio. Our guide told us how jealous Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city, is of how much fun people in Rio have. "We just tell them, 'You go ahead and make all the money, and we'll have a good time spending it. '"

Rio is set among a whole collection of mountains that are essentially big chunks of granite. Sugarloaf Mountain is 1300 feet high and rises virtually out of the sea. It's one solid mass of granite, though one tour guide said there was uranium inside that was probably worth less than the mountain's value as a tourist attraction. Corcovado Mountain, on which the statue of Christ the Redeemer stands, is almost twice as tall, and even that is not the tallest granite monolith in the greater Rio De Janeiro area. I'm really curious about the geological history of this dramatic landscape, but whatever it is can't detract from the delight and wonder it inspires.

Have you ever heard of jack fruit? I have, but I had no idea what it was. Turns out this is jack fruit season and you see it in all the forest/jungle areas around Rio, of which there are many. In shape and color, it resembles a pear, but it's the size of a football, and the way it hangs from the trees, it looks like some sort of cancerous tumor. The guides say it's very tasty, but smells awful. "Don't take one back to the ship or your cabin will stink for a week, " one warned.

And apparently my take on poverty in the favelas was overly simplistic. Today's excursion took us within sight of a couple of the more accessible favelas. The guide explained that people come to Rio from the really poor areas in the back country -- living in Rio's slums is a step up for them. It used to be that if someone built a house on a plot of empty land, if the land's owner didn't say anything for five years, the home owner got title to the land. Not so now that land values have gone up so dramatically, but people are still streaming into Rio, and to make room, they add stories to existing structures, resulting in four- and five-story buildings based on structures that were hovels to start with.

Oh, and one more correction: it's not just the poor whose homes get washed away in heavy rain, today's guide said. Of course, the non-poor are more likely to have insurance and other resources to rebuild with. And I still didn't get to stroll along Copacabana beach, people-watching and taking Dmitri's picture on the black and white tiled curves of the sidewalk.

Dang! Will I be forced to come back here some time?