Rio de Janeiro: It's more than a trip to the beach

In the area of "must-sees" for a tourist, the famous "Christ the Redeemer" statue is the city’s Eiffel Tower and it would be difficult to justify missing it. There is a train that takes visitors through the Tijuca preserve, a rain forest that surrounds the statue and is filled with tropical flora and fauna.

As breathtaking as the views of Rio de Janeiro are from Corcovada, the views from Sugar Loaf are even better-- perhaps owing to the fact that instead of looking outward to the Atlantic, Sugar Loaf places you looking inward toward the city from the seaside. A system of cable cars takes visitors up in stages and there are well-developed amenities at each level.

If you will be in Rio for the weekend, don't miss Sunday's "Hippie Fair" downtown, where you will find an excellent selection of leather goods, art, curious and good things to eat in a large, street market format that consumes a large city square. Your hotel staff can provide directions and every cab driver knows the way.

Quick Tips:

U.S. passport holders should note the requirement to obtain a visa. This must be done in advance and the cost at this writing (2002) is (reciprocal fee). You will need to deal with the Brazilian Consulate serving your region of the U.S. and not all of them will do this by mail, so you may need to use a service if it is a long distance. Note that your visa must be used within 90 days of issue to be valid; after that, it is good for five years.

For information on visas, go to: http://www.brasilemb.org/consular1.shtml. Do not let this go until the last minute, since you will not be able to board the plane without a valid visa stamped in your passport and there is no provision for obtaining one as you enter Brazil, etc. (There is also information about visas and a link to a Visa Service contained on the IgoUgo website in the Travel Store under Travel Merchandise.)

Among Rio's dining specialties is a tradition of "all you can eat" beef that is grilled and served to you continuously until you can consume no more. Seafood is outstanding and tropical fruits are wonderfully fresh.

Best Way To Get Around:

While there is public transportation available, we don't recommend it. Use cabs, tour services or probably best of all, a private driver that is registered with your hotel.

It may be Rio's finest lodging property and a true, full-service resort hotel. Located just across from comparatively laid-back and well-maintained Sao Conrado Beach, the Inter-Continental boasts four restaurants, a lounge, several swimming pools and an outstanding staff. While it requires transportation to get to some of the city's main tourist sites, taxis are not all that expensive and another reasonable alternative for mobility, security and convenience is the "car service", which is available through the hotel. Thanks to weakness of the Brazilian currency, this is a very affordable luxury and the drivers are registered with the hotel for added assurance.

Check out the "Club Floors" (15-17), where you can enjoy excellent rooms as well as dedicated staff, complimentary afternoon tea, evening cocktails in the club room, fresh-cut flowers and fresh fruit.

There are several shops on the main floor of the hotel. (We offer the price advisedly, as we were able to book our room for far less during a summer promotion and thanks to the comparative value of U.S. dollars. Check the rate through the Inter-Continental website.)

Open from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Sundays only, Rio's Hippie Fair is a lively street market set up on a large city square. Items for sale often tend to be of a higher quality on average than one might find at typical street markets in other locations. Clothing, leather goods, art, jewelry and curious are all available in abundance. If you are looking for a place to find your quintessential souvenir of your visit to Brazil, this is an excellent place to try. The market is popular and it is NOT just for tourists; you'll find plenty of local people taking it in. It's an active and wonderful place to spend a few hours. If you want to leave the bustle, just head to the interior of the block and grab a bench near the monument to rest and people-watch from the sidelines for awhile.

Sugar Loaf provides an outstanding summit from which to take photographs of Rio de Janeiro and its impressive Atlantic shoreline. Cable cars take riders to the summit in stages and the very best pictures (in our opinion) were available from the lower summit (Urca Hill), prior to the second stage that takes you to Sugar Loaf itself.

It's very easy to find Sugar Loaf, for like the famous Christ the Redeemer statue, it is visible from miles away from the beaches to many parts of the city.

The cable car system is solid and not as scary as it looks. It first began service in 1912 and it was renovated in 1972. The best bet is probably to arrive in the morning early enough to get ahead of the crowds, lines and higher temperatures. It is probably a "must see" in Rio.

In the area of “must-sees” for a tourist, the famous “Christ the Redeemer” statue is the city’s Eiffel Tower and it would be difficult to justify missing it. There is a train that takes visitors through the Tijuca preserve, a rain forest that surrounds the statue and is filled with tropical flora and fauna. We saw a few monkeys at the top as we waited for the return ride down. The statue itself is impressive, but it quickly becomes apparent that the great pictures of that famous work are not taken from the viewing area at the base. The best shots are likely achieved from helicopters, since the massive size makes it difficult to gather everything in a nicely composed shot. Located on the summit of Corcovada, the statue is visible to millions as they go about their daily business and the panoramic views from the site are fabulous.

A tram takes visitors to the summit and while the parking lot near the base can have its share of souvenir peddlers, you will quickly escape them by simply heading up to the ticket window. Tickets are sold with a departure time imprinted on them so it's a fairly organized system. A small museum is there to help you kill some time if you have much of a wait and there are refreshments and restrooms available.

The ride up through the Tujica rain forest preserve will give you a good look at some tropical plants and you might catch a glimpse of the occasional monkey. It's a steep grade and in at least one point in the ride up, your train will have to pull onto a siding to allow a descending train to pass by. The trains run every 20 minutes.

While tours are certainly available for Corcovado and the statue, it is definitely more efficient and perhaps even more cost-effective to take a cab. We found ourselves waiting for three trains to return (an hour), as members of our bus group trickled down from the summit -- not a very exciting way to spend time. You can check out the official website for the monument online at www.corcovado.com.br.

Rio de Janeiro is not the kind of place to be standing around with a funny hat, a camera hanging around your neck and your nose stuck in a map, looking naïve. Just as there are things you want to see, there are places you definitely don’t want to be. It is a place to have a plan and walk with purpose.

Our first choice was private car service, which could be arranged through the hotel or directly with the driver. (Our driver is part of a group with a website: http://www.carlimoservice.kit.net/). He was outstanding and provided not only transportation, but a lot of insight into the business, political and natural environment. This is not all that expensive and we believe it provides the best in terms of service, convenience and security.

Our second choice would be a taxi. For touring, we used: Best Tour in Rio. (You will see their buses all over Rio and your hotel can put you in touch).

The city is an interesting place with lots to see and there is no need to be unduly worried, but it IS a place to be aware of your surroundings and belongings at all times.

We found our hotel (Inter-Continental) to be a decent place to exchange the relatively small amounts of local currency we needed, rather than using ATMs. For purchases, we suggest confining credit card use to only the most credible venues, even though they are widely accepted.

“Tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking, And when she passes each one she passes goes “a-a-ah!””

Mention Rio de Janeiro to a lot of people and the images can often revolve around samba dancing, its wild carnaval season preceding Ash Wednesday and that famous bossa nova tune about a beautiful woman who “looks straight ahead, not at me”.

Pulsating music, colorful celebrations and beautiful beaches are certainly part of the Rio scene, but it would diminish one of the world’s great cities to reduce into terms which could adequately describe many tropical vacation destinations that couldn’t possibly compare to the sheer mass and importance of South America’s largest city. It is a tremendous value for those who are willing to do a little research, jump through a diplomatic tit-for-tat visa hoop and take a long trip to what is a truly unique place.

Our journey began with a longing for an affordable summer vacation that would fulfill one of our most important objectives: a drastic change of environment. South American destinations are generally pricey in terms of airfare, but in thumbing through availabilities for frequent flier award seats, we found that Rio had plenty of opportunities. “It’s winter down there,” people would proclaim, sharing their knowledge of the difference in seasons north and south of the equator. But in the case of a city that is situated on the Tropic of Capricorn, that is an advantage. In mid-August, we left the sweltering, humid, bug-filled dog days of summer in Wisconsin for blissful, sunny, sea breezes with temperatures in the low 80s.

Rather than the famous Copacabana Beach or the more currently trendy Ipanema, we latched onto a special at the Inter-Continental at Sao Conrado Beach in the southern reaches of Rio de Janeiro. A special over the summer had rooms at this very high-end resort hotel going for an attractive $99 per night. The service and accommodations are impeccable, particularly if you spring for a few extra dollars to reside on the club floor. Beyond the fruit baskets and fresh flowers, there are complimentary cocktails and hors d’ouvres each evening.

In the area of “must-sees” for a tourist, the famous “Christ the Redeemer” statue is the city’s Eiffel Tower and it would be difficult to justify missing it. There is a train that takes visitors through the Tijuca preserve, a rain forest that surrounds the statue and is filled with tropical flora and fauna. We saw a few monkeys at the top as we waited for the return ride down. The statue itself is impressive, but it quickly becomes apparent that the most impressive shots are likely achieved from helicopters, since the massive size makes it difficult to gather everything in a nicely composed shot.

As breathtaking as the views of Rio de Janeiro are from Corcovada, the views from Sugar Loaf are even better; perhaps owing to the fact that instead of looking outward to the Atlantic, Sugar Loaf places you looking inward toward the city from the seaside. A system of cable cars takes visitors up in stages and there are well-developed amenities at each level.

And then there are the beaches. The miles of sand surf are well appointed by stone seawalks with Rio’s trademark wave design incorporated. Concession stands and distinctive lifeguard stations are strategically spaced. Crews keep the sand and associated facilities immaculate, for in this city, the beach is literally a way of life and an entire culture. Machismo is alive and well among the young men, some of whom will occasionally punctuate their struts with a few push-ups or a game of soccer, while they eye the young women in bikinis that would certainly make a yard of fabric go a very long way, indeed. That said, there is a certain counter-balancing modesty in this Catholic-influenced, Portuguese-speaking culture that keeps the whole scene from becoming too steamy-feeling.

Rio de Janeiro has a well-developed restaurant, shopping and club scene as a long-standing playground of the world’s bon viveurs. It is surely possible to enjoy much of it with little help but we found professional assistance in the form of guiding to be a good investment in view of some cultural conditions that lend themselves to legitimate concerns about personal security. For example, much is made about the gap between rich and poor in the United States. Multiply it by a factor of eight and you have a picture of conditions in Brazil.

We tried one organized tour, but we dislike the group mode and tour buses tend to attract street hawkers, so we switched to hiring a private driver. At a cost of $50 Real per hour (less than $15, currently), we had the speed and savvy of a street-smart narrator and it may actually be a cheaper way to go when the efficiency of it all is factored in.

The uneasy proximity between wealth and poverty was exemplified by the fact that we could walk a few blocks from our luxurious digs to the base of the city’s largest favela, which is home to more than 50,000 people. We visited the area cautiously at mid-day to get an up-close impression. Winding our way through a make-shift street market selling poor quality knock-offs, stolen watches and cheap trinkets was quite an experience as we dodged the occasional passed-out body and extracted ourselves from the attention of aggressive peddlers. Campaign season was in full swing and a handbill for a couple of candidates of the leftist Workers Party was thrust into my hand. Popular among Brazil’s poor, the party’s presidential candidate, Luiz Incaio Lua da Silva “Lula” was elected in a landslide in October 2002.

It is not possible to blend in for very long in such an environment. Even in casual clothes, there are subtleties that quickly give away even a silent walker in a foreign environment, no matter how inconspicuous that person may try to be. We were quickly “made” by the locals as people who weren’t wearing the nearly uniform footwear: rubber shower sandals. As we crossed a street that formed a line of demarcation between the favela and a more gentrified neighborhood, a couple of policemen came to point us in an alternative direction. Police do not patrol in favelas. Drug gangs administer the unwritten laws in these jungles. We heard gunfire one evening and watched from our balcony as 10 squad cars spent 25 minutes working the situation before speeding away. We were in no danger, but it is important to understand the larger environment that you are operating in when you visit a place. There is a reason that the law allows drivers to treat stoplights as stop signs after 10 p.m. instead of idling vulnerably waiting for lights to change.

The government is well aware of the damage that is done when a place is widely regarded as unsafe by travelers and tourism has long been an important part of the economy for Rio de Janeiro. Areas frequented by tourists are well patrolled, but it is not a place to walk the beaches late at night or act oblivious to your surroundings. Would we return? Indeed we would; it was difficult enough to leave! Rio de Janeiro is an exciting and beautiful city with a rich culture. It is well deserving of its reputation as one of the very best beach destinations on the planet.