Grand Rio
From a chic beach to boho back alleys and a jungle reclaiming the streets, Mark Eveleigh explores remarkable Rio
PHOTOGRAPHY TATIANA CARDEAL/THE WIDE ANGLE
"Just take your time and find your ginga," Wagner Rocha Gonçalves is telling me. Ginga translates as ‘rhythm’ in Portuguese, and is vital to the Brazilian martial art of capoeira.
Performed well, capoeira is a graceful but potentially lethal Brazilian backstreet ballet… but I’m not famed for my grace nor my ginga. The traditional single-stringed berimbau is beating out a hypnotic beat, but there seems to be a terrible breakdown in communications somewhere between my eardrums and my erratically scuffing feet.
The tropical pace of life in Rio de Janeiro has a way of putting a swagger in your step, but it seems that I am still ill-equipped for a battle of rhythm with even the clumsiest Carioca, or native of Rio.
"Capoeira was conceived in Angola," Wagner had explained earlier, at the start of training on the beach, "but it grew up on the slave plantations of Brazil, and is now one of the most widely exported parts of our culture."
Wagner himself grew up in the favelas that sprawl up the hills just a couple of miles west of chic Ipanema. His friendly chatter and ready smile seem at odds with his fame as an ultimate fighting champion. He works as a physiotherapist, but his first love is the capoeira that he teaches to his neighbours and, at times, to clumsy tourists.
"Historically, capoeira was developed as a way for an escaped slave to protect himself without weapons," he explained. "It was outlawed and the slaves tried to camouflage it as a dance. Capoeiristas who were arrested were tortured to get the names of others."
The fighters were forced to be cunning, and malícia (malice or trickery) is still one of the central tenets of the martial art.
I keep my centre of gravity low – still trying to find that elusive rhythm – and, as instructed, try to swing a kick over Wagner’s head. But my balance is offand all I manage is a solid thunk with my heel onto the back of his bowed skull.
Although it wasn’t done with deliberate malícia, I am aware that this is almost certainly the only time I will ever kick a cage-fighting champ in the head.
I decide to quit while I am ahead. Despite his words of praise as we part, I suspect that Wagner doesn’t see much of a future for me as a capoeirista.
At a beachside gym on the great scimitar of white sand that is Ipanema, I meet another capoeirista called Tião. The beach is divided into sections that are known by their coastguard posts and this is Posto 10. Farther up is Posto 9, where the beautiful people hang out. It was just one block back from here that the song Girl from Ipanema was written. Beyond that is the gay section near Posto 8, and next to Copacabana Beach, you find Posto 7, the surfing area. "Posto 10 is probably the most laid back area," Tião laughs. "This is the lazy section."
Down on the sand, four quick-fire volleyball games are underway, and a group of men are playing beach football. The cycle track behind me is thick with cyclists, skaters, skateboarders, joggers and speed-walkers. Tião smiles as he reads my thoughts. "Well, they do say that Ipanema’s the healthiest beach in the world…" he says.
From sunrise to sunset, Ipanema is a permanent procession of sporty-looking bodies. At times, the promenade here could almost be a conveyor belt out of some utopian factory dedicated to the creation of the perfect body.
Apart from people-watching, one of the most spectacular sports on Ipanema is futevolei (or foot-volley). It was created as a reaction to a law against soccer on the beach in the early 1960s; the players would use the ‘camouflage’ of a volleyball court to avoid the police.
Players compete in pairs, and the ball is kept in play using any part of the body apart from the hands and arms. On Ipanema, you can see both men and women exhibiting a level of skill that is rarely seen even across town in Rio’s historic Maracanã stadium.
Of course, there are many who prefer simply to relax. They rent parasols and buy provisions from barraqueiros, the (often elderly) ‘beach-boys’ who sell traditional Globo biscuits and refreshing maté tea. Men dressed in Arabic costumes shuffle through the sand selling little triangles of meat-stuffed esfiha, similar to somosas. Fifty-three year old Januário sells other triangles: "Bikinis of all sizes," he says, "right from mini-mangoes up to triple-handful."
His friend Antonio has spent half his life patrolling Ipanema’s iconic black-and-white pavements selling his cangas (sarongs).
"So many people come here running and cycling…" he says, "but I have probably covered more miles of Ipanema than anyone alive."
There is very little that happens on the beach that Antonio and Januário don’t know about. The waitresses in the beachside kiosks, serving caipirinha cocktails round-the-clock, call them the unofficial mayors of Ipanema.
This picture-perfect patch is only eight blocks long, and is bordered on three sides by water: the sea, the lake and the adjoining river. On the fourth are the rocks that separate it from Copacabana. Ipanema might be part of a city that is seven million strong, but it’s also one of the most privileged villages in the world.
On the northern corner of Praça General Osório is Amazônia Soul, a tiny restaurant that specialises in the culinary delights of the jungle. There is the tangy tacacá soup, floating with globs of ‘tapioca glue,’ and vatapá (fish with coconut milk, prawns and flour), served with boiled jambo. This plant is famous in Brazil for the bizarre way in which it renders the mouth numb.
After dinner, Gustavo, Amazônia Soul’s enthusiastic young manager, might offer a small glass of jambo liqueur. "It’s only mildly alcoholic," he says, "but the effect is like an orgasm for your tongue."
The description seems like hyperbole, but when you can finally talk again – eyes glazed and tongue quivering – it becomes clear there is no better way to describe the experience.
The speciality of the house though is açaí, the Amazonian ‘super-fruit’ sought after by athletes and bodybuilders that is usually served as a sweet, chilled puree. It is hard to believe that something so delicious can be so healthy.
If Rio de Janeiro were a person, then Ipanema would be a pair of strong, tanned legs and the hilltop quarter of Santa Teresa, with its lush gardens, would take in the vital organs all the way from the lungs to the brain.
This neighbourhood rises out of the hot-blooded Lapa quarter (which, with its permanently swaying samba soundtrack, might well be Rio’s hips).
Santa Teresa is the city’s bohemian and artistic centre and is the best place to take in Rio’s art scene, whether in formal galleries or through vibrant street-graffiti.
On Saturdays, Cariocas from all over the city come here to eat the delicious feijoada stew – a delicious explosion of pork and beans. Others come simply to sip caipirinhas made with cachaça (sugarcane spirit) mixed with limes and guava, mango or pineapple.
Sobrenatural is a Santa Teresa institution, famed for its seafood: you might not be tempted by the bizarrely named punheta de bacalhau (roughly ‘masturbation of cod’), but grilled surubim fish with coconut milk is unforgettable served with ‘Brazilian banana, Brazilian potato and Brazil nuts’.
Rio remains a jungle city, and nowhere is this more evident than in Santa Teresa, where decadent old colonial mansions stand as the first barricades in a never-ending battle against encroaching nature.
Parrots squawk in the treetops, ferns force their shoots through the cracked walls, and bromeliads send down aerial roots from the overhead tram cables.
In the garden of the lovely Cafecito Café, you can almost hear the lush tropical vegetation growing. It’s like the jungle is waiting to reclaim the cobbled alleys.
And immediately beyond Santa Teresa, the jungle does take over. Rio is home to the world’s two biggest urban rainforests, and the phrase ‘concrete jungle’ takes on a new meaning.
Tijuca National Park was once coffee plantations, but was replanted by slaves in 19th century and is now the world’s biggest man-made forest. Nature was quick to reclaim these forests, which are now home to a wonderful variety of birdlife, monkeys (including the rare white tufted-ear marmoset), ocelot, sloth, anteater, iguana and the raccoon-like coati.
The climb to Pico da Tijuca takes just half a day, but offers views across the skyline that will haunt you for a lifetime. Below and to one side are the terraced flanks of Santa Teresa and seaward, the sparkling Rodrigo de Freitas lake and Ipanema. Draped across the hilltops and lining the shaded valleys are the still extensive forests of Rio.
"There’s no big city in the world that offers such wonderful jungle-trekking," says guide Raf Kiss. "From up here, you can get a good idea of just how ‘wild’ Rio de Janeiro is even today."
Saudade is one of the most purely Brazilian words you will ever hear. It is the soul of the Brazilian instinct for romance, and is often described as a painful, heartfelt longing or homesickness. It is a word that is notoriously hard to translate. Just stay in Rio long enough to fall completely in love with it… after you leave, you will understand.
Rio’s highpoints
Portuguese explorer Gaspar de Lemos was the first European to feast his eyes on what has been called the world’s most beautiful bay. With complete lack of imagination however, he named it simply ‘January River’ (later discovering that it wasn’t even a river). Few of the hundreds of thousands of tourists who ride the cable car up to Pão de Açúcar or take a ‘pilgrimage’ up to visit Christ the Redeemer on his Corcovado mountain crow’s-nest, would be so devoid of inspiration. The skyline of Rio is a sight you will never forget. The original inhabitants knew the bay as Guanabara, which is often translated as ‘the bosom of the sea’. They knew what they were talking about.
Rio fact file
GETTING THERE
KLM operates three direct weekly flights to Rio Internacional from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
WHERE TO STAY
In Ipanema, Mango Tree Hostel (www.mangotreehostel.com) offers comfortable suites and a welcoming atmosphere just a block from Ipanema’s Posto 9 epicentre. The gardens are pleasant communal areas for breakfast and evening drinks. In Santa Teresa, the immense master suite in the sprawling old hillside townhouse that is Rio Hostel (www.riohostel.com) has views of Santa Teresa, Lapa and the towers of the business centre. The poolside bar on the roof is the place to find what might well be the best tropical fruit caipirinhas in all Rio.
WHAT TO DO
Capoeira master Wagner Rocha Gonçalves teaches either on the beach or in his centre in Rocinha favela. He can be contacted through the Mango Tree (www.mangotreehostel.com). For trekking, Raf Kiss (www.mirantes-mototravel.com) specialises in motorcycle tours but, for those who want to take in the sights at an infinitely slower pace, he is a knowledgeable and amusing guide for treks through all the great parks of Rio.
