‘But don’t all Brazilians love football?’
‘My family is crazy about football,’ he said. ‘And for years they tried to get me into it. On my eleventh birthday, my parents hired a full-size football pitch and gave me a World Cup Football Party. After playing a match we watched the Brazil–France quarter-final on TV while we ate a Brazilian flag birthday cake with “WINNER” on it. When Brazil lost, everyone went home and the party was over. On my fifteenth birthday, which was during the next World Cup, Brazil lost to Argentina and since then if Brazil play on my birthday, no one in my family says a word to me or even says happy birthday just in case I bring bad luck.’
We started with a traditional Brazilian entrée, but thankfully not Pedro’s favourite traditional Brazilian entrée of boiled chicken hearts. Our pastel de siri e camarão were delicious little pockets of shrimp and crab with a spicy chilli dipping sauce. Over our superb main course of bobó de camarão (prawns with manioc cream) and crunchy farofa de dendê (manioc flour and dried shrimps cooked in palm oil), Pedro told me that I could thank the rain for him having the day off. Because it had rained over the past few days, there had been no film shoots, which meant that there was no new film coming in for him to grade. Pedro was one of only a handful of film graders in Rio (most of Brazil’s film work comes out of São Paulo), so he was in such high demand he could determine his own hours. ‘I usually go in around lunch time,’ he said. ‘And work till eight or nine.’
After lunch there was more frenetic (at times verging on maniacal) driving further up towards the looming Christ statue. Without warning we swerved off the main road down a dirt track through a forest that ended suddenly, breathtakingly, at a helipad hanging out over the edge of a sheer cliff. Pedro had been in a frantic hurry so we wouldn’t miss sunset. Although the helipad afforded one of the most spectacular vistas I have ever seen, it obviously wasn’t on the tourist route. We were the only ones there.
I had an almost eerie sense of familiarity as I gazed down on the city, transfixed. It was the same feeling of déjà vu I had when I first went to London or New York or Paris. I’d seen so many photos and movies of Rio de Janeiro that it felt like I’d stood on this very spot before. I stood on the helipad in awed silence taking in the whole sweeping magical view, which spread out in all its double-edged beauty. On one side was the glamorous white sand of Copacabana and Ipanema beach and the expanse of white apartment blocks and lush rainforest that spikes up in the form of fairytale mountains and then tumbles into the water with specks of islands adding the exclamation points. Then, below us, the virtual deluge of slums, or favelas, tumbled down the mountains like a hellish scene from a Breughel painting. The First and Third Worlds come together here, and the clash is spectacular and compelling.
‘They scar the city,’ Pedro said, waving his arm towards the favelas. ‘The government is not interested in fixing them and more and more people from around the country are moving in. The land is owned by the government and the church, so people can build wherever they like.’
‘BOOOMMM!’
‘What the hell was that?’ I gasped. It sounded like a bomb had gone off.
‘That comes from the favelas,’ Pedro explained. ‘It’s to announce that drugs have arrived. Because of the drugs, the favelas are not as poor as they used to be. There is electricity and they even have cable TV.’
After seeing the film City of God, it was one place I was happy to keep away from. That film is about the spiral of violence and terror in Rio’s favelas, with drug runners blowing up cars and murdering scores of people. I also remember reading that the murder rate in Brazil is close to one hundred a week and that the thousands of violent deaths every year fall within the parameters of the United Nations’ definition of a low-intensity civil war.
‘We can go for a look if you like,’ offered Pedro.
Although a good mugging, kidnapping or even a not-too-serious shooting would make a great story for my book, I declined Pedro’s kind offer.
By the time we left the helipad, lights began to flicker on around the city at the same time as early-evening stars appeared in the deep-blue sky.
As soon as we walked through the door back at Pedro’s, he was making us large caipirinhas. In Pedro’s profile he said that he made the ‘best caipirinhas in Rio’. He forgot to add ‘the strongest’. Then again, he did say that he liked drunks.
Pedro played me the demo CD from his band Surfista Pratedo, which he had recorded in my soon-to-be-bedroom. It was a catchy guitar-rock sound with a female vocalist singing in Portuguese. ‘I like doing the film work,’ Pedro said. ‘But music is my passion.’ While we sipped our drinks, Pedro was ‘editing’ a new song he’d written. I say editing, but he spent the entire time pulling plugs in and out and cursing a lot. I watched as he tried one plug in the same hole eight times. I had a shower (and managed to scrub off most of the dead skin, so I looked almost human again) and when I came back Pedro was still plugging and unplugging leads and scratching his head.
Pedro was also quite a computer boffin. I commented on the pile of old Mac computers shoved under a desk and he said that his uncle was one of the first people in Rio to own a computer. He also explained that he learnt his English from US computer magazines—which would explain why, when I got out of the shower, he said ‘So, did you successfully re-boot your operating system?’
Pedro’s girlfriend Nathalia turned up at ten o’clock and we headed to Ipanema for dinner. Even though it was after eleven when we got to the open-fronted restaurant, which was two blocks back from the beach, we had to queue to get in. The restaurant/bar was full of young, beautiful, groovy people. Waiters carrying trays filled with plates of delectable little goodies brought the food around yum-cha style. We had Lebanese meat balls, freshwater crab chowder and prawn pies. When I say we, I mean Pedro and I—the very slim and petite Nathalia made do with a large serving of rich chocolate cake and profiteroles.
‘I don’t like football or the beach or Carnaval,’ Nathalia said with a shrug. ‘I don’t like football because if I’m at home when Brazil plays, my dad makes me stay in the bathroom.’ A few years back Nathalia was watching a World Cup game with her family and when she went to the toilet, Brazil scored. While she was in the toilet during the next match, Brazil scored again. ‘So now they keep pestering me to come around during a match and sit in the toilet,’ she explained.
Pedro said that for a while he was turned off Carnaval and would leave the city when it was on. ‘It became too formal,’ he said. ‘But in the last few years it has come back to the people and the parade now winds all the way up to Santa Theresa like it used to.’
‘I hate it,’ Nathalia sniffed. ‘There’s too many people and it takes twenty minutes just to walk across the street. Everyone is too happy and everyone wants to touch you and kiss you.’ Nathalia did have a funny story from the last time she went to Carnaval, though. Nathalia studied for a year in Sydney as part of her architecture course and three years ago Nathalia had a girlfriend from Australia staying with her at Carnaval time. After the parade they ended up at a party on the beach. Her girlfriend, who was a bit drunk, picked up a nice-looking fellow and danced with him until the early hours. She really liked him and wanted to go back to his place, so she asked, ‘Where do you live?’
‘Here!’ he said.
‘Yeah, I know you live in Rio, but where?’
‘Here!’ he said pointing to the sand. ‘I sleep on the beach.’
Maybe he’s now one of the beach bums on CouchSurfing.
I woke up late and with a bit of a fright. Not only was the studio-cum-bedroom pitch black, but the soundproofing also made it perfectly silent. The only sound I heard all night was a purring cat trying to get through the narrow gap under the heavy studio door so it could sleep on my head. Having no cats sleeping on my head, though, did help lift the couch rating:
Couch rating: 7/10
Pro: So dark and quiet that I slept well
Con: So dark and quiet that I s
lept through most of the day.
When I got upstairs Pedro was on the computer. ‘I have to work today, so I’ve printed you a map of the city and the Events Page for September from the Rio Tourist Guide website,’ he said. That was very nice of Pedro but, besides the Rio Film Festival, most of the events listed didn’t sound very enticing and, to be frank, one just sounded like shit. The ‘tourist website’ list included: The 55th Brazilian Congress on Colon Proctology; the Brazilian Congress on Concrete (sadly, I would just miss that one as it started the day I left Rio); The 9th International Conference of the Stability of Ships and Ocean Vessels; and The International Symposium on Improving The Mammary Health of Brazil’s Population. Actually, the last one could be interesting.
Pedro had already planned my itinerary, though. He was going to drop me off at Copacabana beach and his mapped-out walking tour led me to Copacabana Fort, Ipanema beach and then on a particularly long walk around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas (the large lagoon that separates the beach from the mountains) back to his house. Pedro had a haircut appointment in Copacabana. ‘Nathalia set it up,’ he grunted. ‘My whole life I have gone to a barber, not a hairdresser. She made an appointment! Who makes an appointment for a haircut?’
On the fifteen-minute drive from Pedro’s to Copacabana we passed lines of people standing on the side of the road holding up election placards and posters, including massive billboards that needed two or three people to hold them up. ‘The presidential election is this Sunday,’ Pedro said. ‘It is illegal to advertise political parties on billboards or to stick up posters, so the candidates pay people from the favelas about a dollar to stand all day holding signs.’ By the time we got to Copacabana we would have passed close to five hundred people holding up signs.
I have always wanted to go to Copacabana. I’ve always wanted to go so I could experience the area’s rich cultural melting pot through its diverse and historical neighbourhoods, its grand colonial churches and splendid neo-classical buildings.
Okay, I’m lying.
I’ve always wanted to go to Copacabana so I could hit the beach and look at Brazilian girls’ bottoms.
Sadly—just from a research point of view, of course— Brazilian girls’ bottoms were a bit light on. Pedro told me that Copacabana was the place to be from the 1940s to the 1960s, but the beachfront buildings are now mostly full of little old ladies in large old apartments. To my surprise the beach was quite empty. Not only was it a gorgeously warm day, but I’d seen lots of photos of Copacabana and the beach was always chock-full of people. Maybe eleven o’clock was too early. I didn’t fancy hanging around waiting for the old ladies to come out in their G-string bikinis, though, so I decided to head straight to the fort.
Copacabana doesn’t get good press. I’d read and heard many stories of people getting held up at knifepoint and everything you read warns you not to take anything valuable with you when you walk around. As I stepped out of the car, I asked Pedro if I would get knifed. ‘Just don’t walk down a dark alley and ask a thief for a light,’ Pedro said with a grin.
I felt very safe in the fort. As soon as I stepped through the gates I was surrounded by a hundred soldiers dressed in full camouflage. I had a lovely if rather expensive breakfast (or brunch or possibly even lunch) at the imaginatively named Café do Forte and sat at a table under the shade of an enormous tree right next to the sea wall, overlooking an army of surfers riding the crashing waves directly below. I ordered my food in Portuguese, and was pleasantly surprised to get exactly what I’d ordered. It is such a difficult language to get your tongue around that I couldn’t even pronounce the name of the country’s currency, the reais. ‘It’s easy,’ Pedro had said to me earlier. ‘Like this . . . hayweeeshayiys.’ I tried it a few times before Pedro suggested that I should just call it ‘Brazilian money’.
Weighed down with omelette and cake, I wandered past the whitewashed army barracks then ducked into a small park that ran along the rocky shoreline before stopping dead in my tracks and exclaiming ‘Wow!’ But it probably should have been ‘Ahhh!’ Directly in front of me was a sea of tall and tanned and young and lovely girls from Ipanema spread out on the beach or strolling along wiggling their bare bottoms. Most were wearing the bikini that shows everything without quite showing everything: a sliver of a thong downstairs and a spaghetti strap upstairs—vermicelli, really—anchored by a pair of nipple badges. I’m no expert, but I didn’t think there was too much need to improve the mammary health of Brazil’s population.
The only downside to my arrival at Ipanema beach was that I couldn’t get that bloody song out of my head. I did manage to eventually stop singing it, but then I began whistling it between my teeth as I climbed a narrow dirt path that wound its way up to a bluff and a stunning vista over Ipanema beach. I was sitting on a bench soaking in the view—while still dementedly whistling away—when a young lady in a long white cotton dress sat next to me and began stripping off. When she’d got down to her tiny white bikini, I noticed a small tattoo on her lower back just above her bottom (well, where else was I supposed to look?). It looked like a rubber stamp and written inside was: ‘Made in Brazil’.
I spent most of my time strolling along the beach dodging balls. It seemed that the straight guys, who favoured board shorts, were kicking soccer balls to each other, while the gay guys, who preferred their shorts tight and tiny, were playing dainty games of paddleball. The busiest part of the beach was the area surrounding the lifesaving tower Posto 9. There were lithe, fit, bronzed bodies everywhere playing volleyball, kicking footballs or languidly reposed on the beach, while the smell of old socks (marijuana) and music filled the air. Compared to the locals I felt (and looked a bit like) Mr Bean on holiday, so after tramping along almost the entire stretch of beach I headed to the busy back streets of Ipanema.
I spent the next few hours sauntering back to Pedro’s house, pausing to gaze in shop windows or at some church or a lovely square or lively cafes full of groovy young people. Most of my return journey, however, was spent circumnavigating Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas as I strolled lazily along the narrow park on the water’s edge past joggers and lovers. I stopped for a beer in a waterside cafe and, as the sun dipped behind the mountains, I decided that after only 24 hours I had fallen in love with this marvellous and stunning city. And no, it wasn’t just the bare bottoms and healthy mammaries that swayed me.
Pedro had told me that he would be home at eight o’clock, but by 9.30 he hadn’t shown and I was getting very hungry. Although I was very tempted, the ‘How to be a good guest’ section on the couch-surfing website recommends that you ‘Do not raid your host’s fridge’. Other ways to be a good guest include: Do not ignore your hosts; Do not whisper; Don’t be derogatory, impatient or dismissive about your host’s children; Do not insult your host’s cooking; and Do not party without your host except if he tells you to party.
I was eyeing off the tasty-looking biscuits in the cat bowl when Pedro finally turned up at 10.30. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Cobal market, which was only a short walk from Pedro’s house. In the evening the entire market is turned into a huge restaurant precinct and the passageways are filled with tables and noisy diners.
While we were eating our fajitas, I asked Pedro what it meant to be Brazilian. ‘Brazil is . . . surrealistic,’ he said. ‘It has the most amazing mix of natural resources, biodiversity and a history like no other country, because races have mixed together from the very beginning. This cauldron of cultures gave birth to a new sort of place with very few preconceptions and many crossed influences that make the whole bigger than the sum of the parts, and that shows. I am really, really proud of being Brazilian, and not just because of our natural resources, but because we have real freedom—and not the American-way-of-life twisted concept of freedom by money—and a cultural kaleidoscope that truly exists only here.’
I was very impressed. Not only with Pedro’s obvious love for his country, but that after a couple of beers his English was better than mine whe
n I’m sober.
‘Would you like to go to a nightclub?’ Pedro asked after we’d finished dinner.
‘Um, yeah,’ I said rather unconvincingly. It was already after midnight and way past my bedtime.
‘You did say that you want to experience Brazilian life,’ Pedro said. ‘And that’s what we Brazilians do. We go clubbing.’
‘I won’t get in,’ I said, looking down at my cargo shorts and thongs.
‘No, you’re okay. That’s what everyone wears.’
What a wonderful country. Brazil is very proud to be the home of Havaianas, the world’s largest and best-known brand of thongs (the ones also known as flip-flops, rather that the ones also known as bum floss), so they consider their humble thongs suitable footwear for any occasion.
We queued for 40 minutes to get into Casa da Matriz nightclub, which was down one of those dark alleys that Pedro told me to keep away from, and when we finally got to the doorman he grunted at me. ‘He wants to see your ID,’ Pedro translated.
I scoffed, ‘He’s kidding, right? Tell him that although I often think and act like I’m a teenager, I’m actually close to retirement age.’
Mr Neanderthal refused to budge, though, so we had to drive back to Pedro’s to get my passport. When we returned to the nightclub, there was no queue and Mr Neanderthal didn’t even bother looking at my ID. The nightclub, which was chock-full of heaving bodies, was in a large old house and the former lounge room was a dance floor while the former kitchen was a bar and the former master bedroom upstairs was another dance floor. I liked it, but I did have to wait ten minutes for a piss; they still only had the three former toilets. Being the old bugger that I am, I preferred the music downstairs where they were playing, as a radio DJ would say, ‘the best music from the 60s, 70s, 80, 90s and today’.
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