Rio

I did a fairly standard bus-based excursion into Rio today and will do another one tomorrow -- today's involved riding the cable car to the top of Sugarloaf, tomorrow's will be to the Christ the Redeemer statue -- but what is on my mind is all the warnings we've gotten about the streets. "Don't look like a tourist -- wear nothing, carry nothing with logos, they will pick your pockets, they will grab jewelry off you. Never go out by yourself!" And the warnings come from official and unofficial sources, and they are consistent and intense.

This afternoon at the end of the excursion, we went to a fabulous restaurant across from Copacabana beach, which definitely deserves its own post. But at the end of the meal, one woman wanted to do a little shopping, so she walked out of the restaurant while the rest of us sat in satiated stupor trying to decide whether we would ever be able to move again. A few minutes later she was back. A clerk in the first shop she went to told her not to continue. "She said the poor people come down from the favelas and they will grab anything off you that looks like it might be worth something. I wouldn't be safe."

I can look out at the beautiful dramatic hills around the city, and if the overcast mist clears, I can see the hovels where people live who are so desperately poor that I would not be safe beside them on the public street. I'm finding that hard to grok. It's like when my mother died and I had to understand that I will die too. It's something you can know in a cool, distant, contained corner of your intellect, but it still comes as a shock when you have to confront it 3D technicolor standing stone-faced in front of you making the world you thought you were living in go all wobbly.