Did you say Favela?? …Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro, the seaside city in Brazil, famous for its surrounding Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, Sugar Loaf mountain, Cristo Redentor (Christ Redeemer), Carnival festivals, flamboyant costumes, samba and of course the bustling Favela’s.

After a fun day on a boat exploring the islands of Ilhe Grande we caught a shuttle service into Rio – it was after dark as we wanted to make the most of our day on the island. We drove through the centre of Rio which is busy, noisy and full of traffic to say the least – even on a random Monday night at 8pm. I watched the first two guests get dropped off at their hostel and quietly thanked the Lord our hostel was not in that area. Shame, maybe they can’t afford better accommodation, was my smug thought.  About 4km’s down the road the driver shouts “NEEEK” ……Scuse me? Do you mean “The Allens”?? ….Are you serious? This is where you are leaving us? A dark, quiet road that does not look like it has any accommodation besides bars, drug dealers and gangs in sight? He throws us our backpacks and screeches off. Nick not looking as shocked as I am but more excited for this little adventure forward slash challenge ( ), has a quick squizz on his google map and leads the way. We walk up, and up, and further up a winding, long and very steep hill. We pass some peculiar looking people and dodge the motorbikes and taxi’s flying around the corners. On my third “Are you sure this is right?” irritable toned plea to Nick he tells me, “Just 100 more metres.” I have learn’t to accept Nicks “100 more metres” could mean anything from 1km to about 3km’s…. IF I’m lucky! We arrive at the meeting point – a bar which is apparently not far from the air bnb we had booked the night before with a decent sounding chap named Joao. I’m not sure why and bless his soul but Nick seems to think these people that run these air bnb’s have GPS tracking systems on all their upcoming guests. A handful of occasions he just assumes they will know we have arrived, even though he has not told them when to expect us or that we are close by. But who am I to complain when when he is doing all the work booking and finding us such reasonable yet decent  accommodation………!! We stand in the dark outside this small bar and Nick decides it may be possible our internal GPS tracking systems have lost signal and our host cannot see we have reached our destination. So he phoned Joao (who would have thought this could be done?) 5 minutes later Joao is taking us up to our abode.

Only another 200 odd more stairs to go

We thought our last 20 minute walk was interesting – we were baptised with smells I have never smelt and never want to smell again, sounds of crying babies or cats (still can’t work out what that high pitched squealing was), people drinking, nappies, dog poop, ya know the usual shanty town vibes. 216 stairs later we arrived in our room. Not bad… I suppose if you’re happy to get the odd bed bug bite….Thank goodness I brought our own sheets for times like these. 

What is a Favela you may ask… Strictly speaking a favela is a heavy populated, informal settlement characterised by substandard housing. Non strictly speaking, a favela is a slum, shanty town or a “township” in South African terms. There are just under 500 favela’s in Rio. To be fair many of the favela’s we visited including the one we stayed in, Chapeu-Mangueira were not as rough as I make it out to sound, it was a shock at first, but we still felt “reasonably” safe walking to the and from our accommodation – okay maybe it was the 5 geared policemen with AK 47’s hanging around, but still as long as there were semi-normal looking people around we didn’t feel too anxious. Although favela’s have received bad names because of their druglords and gang warfare, not everyone who calls this home is a criminal. Many make an honest living, going to work everyday, supporting their families. Many of the people choose to live in favela’s for various reasons, ranging from having roots there or to have a shorter commute to work. 

See a link Nick shared on favela’s here: http://catcomm.org/call-them-favelas/

The terrace at the top of the 4 story apartment was the selling point for booking the accommodation. It over looked Leme and Copacabana Beach as well as the rest of the 5000 odd houses stacked into our favela. The view and vibe was awesome, hammocks to chill, music, beer, good company… it was fun.

View from the terrace

We spent our time enjoying the beautiful beaches, Nick did lots of running up and down the promenade. We caught the cable car to Sugar Loaf mountain and watched the beautiful sunset over the city. We explored Santa Teresa, a quaint little town on a hill which we walked the whole length of and had a delicious, traditional meal in one of the cafe’s. We got completely ripped off by a cheeky taxi driver who took us up to Christ the Redeemer. But it was worth it as the view at night was breath taking. Christ the Redeemer is a symbol of Brazilian Christianity and an icon for Rio de Janeiro and Brazil.

View of the city and Sugar Loaf mountain in the distance.

All in all Rio was great – busy and expensive, but well worth the visit. We survived our favela stay and got to experience some pretty interesting moments, but we feel wiser and much more experienced for our next favela visit, or who knows maybe we will be booking an air bnb in Kwamashu one day 😉

L