Rio...Rio de Janeiroooooooo

Thursday, Mar. 3

The air today reminds me of a nice day in May in Denmark. The sunshine is warm, almost too warm, while the air is cool and dry like it is blowing from an air conditioner. In the shade, it is a little too cool to be comfortable.

When I checked out of the hotel this morning, the charge wouldn´t go through on my VISA card. When it was processed, a request came for me to enter my PIN. I have never had to do that for a charge before. Even with that it was rejected. I had to pay in cash. I went to a cyber cafe and wrote an e-mail complaining to my bank. I always tell them where I am traveling. There should be no problem processing my card.

I have spent two hours at a public park. It has a mini-zoo within it and is free. There is a small aquarium, a small terrarium, a cage of monkeys, and lots of cages of birds. It is really a rather nice collection representing the exotic birds of South America. While here, I have also been reading. It is just a nice day to be outdoors. I still have 3 hours before I will need to pick up my luggage at the hotel and head to the bus terminal.
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I tried to visit a museum a littler later, but it was closed and looked abandoned. I just continued to relax and read at the park until 4:00 p.m. Then I went to a neighborhood restaurant. I had a sandwich (small chunks of beef, bacon, cheese, egg, tomato, lettuce, mayonnaise, and some type of pickled root cut into small cubes). It came with fries, and I drank mineral water. I have been tasting the root over and over, since it is causing me to burp.
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I picked up my luggat at 5:15. It took 30 minutes to walk to the station. That gives me 2 hours before we will board the bus. I will continue reading my book. It is a captivating story.

Walking: 16,722 steps (10,868 aerobic steps), 714 calories, 11.37 km (6.8 miles)

Friday, Mar. 4

The bus pulled into the station in Rio at 9:10 a.m. I had been lucky, because I had no seatmate. I was able to curl up into two adjacent seats and sleep better than normal. With rough roads, and lots of twists and turns through mountains, it still was not a restful trip, however.

Rio is such a contrast to everywhere else I have been. Of course, the generally setting is magnificent. But it is so much more of a city of poor people than elsewhere. That is obvious from the large favelas (slums built haphazardly with available materials) located everywhere. Except right along the waterfronts of Botofuco, Copacabana, Leme, Leblon, Ipanema, and Barra de Tijuca and certain other neighborhoods such as Lagoa, this is a dirty, ugly city of slums. Everywhere else I have visited on this trip has been more like cities elsewhere--a mixture of poor, middle class, and rich with the poor neighborhoods limited in size and not being so bad. They just tend to be older neighborhoods of normal buildings that have deteriorated over the years and that blend into the rest of the city fairly well to give an overall impression of a decent city. These shacks that make up a large portion of Rio are like the townships in South Africa and the colonias along the Mexican border to the U.S.--neighborhoods originally built to be slums rather than ones that deteriorated into them.

Maria Helena and her flatmate Linese were here when I arrived at 10:30. It took that long to get here, because I had trouble catching a bus. I waited and waited for a white Real airport bus coming this direction. Finally, I gave up and took a normal city bus. That is a hassle, because luggage must be carried onboard and because they have high turnstiles that require lifting the luggage to chest height to get it over and into the bus.

I am glad I know the city from previous visits, or I would have been completely lost. The bus took back roads and tunnels to avoid downtown. Then it went down a back street once it arrived in Copacabana. I wouldn´t have even known when I was in Copacabana if I had been a first-time visitor. Fortunately, I knew local landmarks (Metro stations, supermarkets, street names, etc.) to judge that we were here and when to get off the bus.

Maria Helena is her usual self--cheerful, high on life, clender as can be, etc. I was surprised to find her at home. In the past, she has left home about 7:30 a.m. and not returned until 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. But she is now a student again working on a Ph.D. in information science (a mixture of computer science and library sciene). She works only part time with a research fellowship. She has been on summer break from school (which begins again Monday) and has had only the responsibility of her part-time job. Therefore, she has been a lady of leisure during the summer months with more time to be home than usual.

Linese seems sweet, too. She speaks English well. She has had an American boyfriend, but she says that is over now. She has a law degree, but says her true love is design. She has returned to architecture school, therefore, to get another degree in design. She was very solicitous of me when I arrived, trying to get me to eat breakfast and making sure I was comfortable.

The doorbell rang about 45 minutes after my arrival, and it was Ib, my friend from Denmark who married a Brazilian woman and lives here. He had a break between his classes with his language students. We visited together for an hour or so and then went out at 12:45 to eat clunch at a por kilo (by the weight) place. Then he had to rush off for another appointment with a student at 2:00.

Ib looks good. He has gained a little weight since the last time I was here. He was quite skinny then due to some intestinal problems. How, he looks his normal size. He says things are the same. He loves living here but struggles constantly with the costs. He has about 18 students which is the maxiumum he can work into a schedule. He sees the first one at 7:30 or 8:00 each morning and ends with the last one at 9:00 or 10:00 each night. He has breaks in the schedule, but he spends most of that time planning and traveling from one student´s location to that of the next. The only way he can have time off is by giving up income.

I get the impression that many people live on the financial edge like that here. Maria Helena is having to decide what she should do. A scholarship will not cover her expenses but would restrict her from working. Our friend Adelmo lost his full-time job a few years ago and has a job now that involves carrying tourists to the airport--a job that varies in amount of work and income from day to day and does not provide nearly as much work or income as he would like. Full-time jobs are hard to get here, because companies do not want to pay benefits which here include coupons for free lunches at restaurants. So people find themselves working 2-3 part-time jobs with no benefits and barely capable of meeting their expenses on a very limited budget.

I came back to the apartment after stopping at a supermarket to buy supplies for caipirinhas. The brand of cachaça (sugar cane liquor) that costs $16-17 in the U.S. sells for $1.50 here! I am not sure what will happen tonight, but I wanted to be able to contribute. Ib said he would stop by again in the evening.
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I took a nap and then bathed. I read for a while and watched the news on TV at 6:00. Ib came about 6:45, and we went walking in the neighborhood. We stopped at a cafe for coffee. Then we checked to see if Adelmo was at either of his local hangouts, but he wasn´t.

Back at the apartment, I mixed the caipirinhas. Maria Helena and Linese arrived, and they made snacks--luncheon meat cut up with a squeeze of lime juice over it and olives. We all visited while the women kept one eye on the soap opera they watch nightly. I was easily able to guess who were the criminals, who was the guy the women liked because of his sensitivity, etc. Then Maria Helena warmed up some stew and we each ate some. The women got rather giddy from their caipirinhas.

Maria Helena got dressed. She was meeting her new boy friend of only 10 days, a college professor about my age, for a date at 11:00. Going out is a late-night activity here. Ib left to go home. And I was still tired form the bus trip and went to bed. I had been a nice day seeing old friends. Tomorrow, there will be a luncheon party in the afternoon at 3:00 p.m. followed by going out in the evening.