Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

There is one question that we've been asked a lot: When visiting Rio de Janeiro, the marvellous city - why choose to spend a couple of months inside one of its favelas? We have several answers. One is the answer you can give when asked about climbing a mountain. Because it's there! Because you want to find out if it's climbable and more important: If YOU can climb it. To find out if it's at all possible for two senior Scandinavian gringos (with hardly any knowledge of Portuguese and with no prior experience of travelling in Latin America) to live in a Brazilian favela. But a more important answer: The favelas of Rio have for many years been notorious as sites of drug wars and disenfranchisement, but they are also known as the vibrant cradles of much of the Brazilian culture and in the last few years several of the favelas have undergone an immense transformation. They have blossomed into vibrant communities and a few are eve...

For many years Vidigal was a closed community - ruled by drug gangs and dangerous for  visitors. In 2012 the heavily armed UPP (the Pacifying Police Units) seized control of the favela, and in the last few years 'The Asphalts' (the common expression for the people living in the more formal parts of Rio) have been venturing into the favela on some Friday and Saturday nights. On these nights party goers are lining up outside the few clubs that are arranging midnight raves on their rooftop terraces. We (perhaps now almost considered as fellow favelians - or perhaps just considered so strange, we're thought of as a kind of local mascots!), were invited to one of these parties, and we were even offered free VIP tickets to be picked up at the entrance. Yeah! What's not to like about THAT! When we arrived, we jumped the lines of the waiting cariocan playboys and their scantily clad girlfriends and climbed up the stair...

This weekend we went far outside Rio - and we even had the feeling of visiting a place far back in time. The small island of Paquetá, situated in the north eastern part of Guanabara bay,  has for centuries been a summer refuge for Brazilian royalty and wealthy cariocas. There is still a ferry running between Rio  and Paquetá, but while old timers described the Guanabara bay as a vast surface of clear water, broken by jumping pods of dolphins, the bay today is a polluted mess of raw sewage coming from the millions, living in the  Rio suburbs. The black spots on the surface of the bay are certainly  not dolphins but rather floating tires or other trash - and the beautiful beaches, which in the last century were filled with sunbathers during the weekends, are now empty, as the risk of getting infected with viruses is high, if you swallow just a few teaspoons of bay water. With this in mind, a weekend outing on the ...

  Todays outing led us to one of the buildings at the very top of our architectural bucket list - the fabled Flying Saucer made by Niemeyer. The saucer, also known as Museu de Arte Contemporânea  or for short: MAC,  landed twenty years ago just outside the city of Niterói,  and to get to it,  we had to cross the Guanabara bay by ferry. The hundreds of busy commuters on board probably sail the bay twice daily and they seemed lost in their newspapers, laptops or mobiles, while we sat marvelling at the splendors of the Rio skyline, the mountains and the skyscrapers, diminishing across the water. Arriving at Niterói, we weren't that impressed. The town is supposed to be the wealthiest city in all of Brazil, but - as far as we could see -  it has not that much to brag about, beside its vast condominium complexes with fabulous views of Rio across the bay. We walked along the coast, passing a few fish...

The Arpoador rock, jutting up at the border between the Copacabana and the Ipanema beaches, is a favorite place to be in Rio, when the sun sets. We sat there tonight, together with hundreds of cariocans, watching the sun setting down in all its splendor behind the mountain ridges west of Rio. Guys climbed around the rock, selling long drinks to the spectators, and when the sun finally vanished in blushing red and orange, like everybody around us, we applauded the fantastic spectacle. A few times during the summer you can actually from Pedra do Arpoador see the sun set directly into the sea - a rare sight in  the Rio area.  Normally you see the sun setting behind the mountains and you have to arrive in good time, as nighfall is a least half an hour before the official sunset time of Rio.