Christi and I wake to find heavy rain pelting our hostel. Unfortunately, the rain seeps quite profusely into our room as well. Rio de Janeiro in the rain is dismal. Rio in the rain while enduring cheap, damp, squalid accommodation at the Wave hostel almost reduces Christi and I to tears. Ever hopeful, we join our city tour which promises spectacular panoramic views of Rio from Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain and the reverse view from Sugar Loaf Mountain in downtown Rio. We begin at Rio’s enigmatic Metropolitan Cathedral, however. From the outside the cathedral is a truly ugly concrete pyramid, but the inside is breathtaking: four beautiful stained glass windows that rise over 200 feet to a cruciform ceiling of light – absolutely stunning.
We continue through the rain to the nearby samba museum. According to our guide, Myriam, there are 14 samba schools, each affiliated with a favela (shantytown) and each with thousands of members. Despite their poverty, these schools make the elaborate floats and costumes that dazzle the world during Carnaval. And some of the costumes are on display in the samba museum.
No city tour of Rio is complete without a visit to the Maracana football stadium – a temple of worship for the soccer-crazed Brazilians. However, the day of disappointments continues as the cost of our tour (a whopping US$50pp) does not include entrance into the stadium. And we have no time to look around anyway. Wait…What?
The tour continues on its southerly trajectory as the iconic views of Rio from Corcovado Mountain and Sugar Loaf Mountain are lost beneath torrential rain, dark clouds, and fog (the tears are real this time). Unwilling to return to our fetid hostel room, Christi and I beg our tour guide, Myriam, to find us alternative accommodation – and now we’re willing to throw any amount of money at the problem (well Christi’s card anyway). For the remainder of the tour, therefore, poor Myriam has her head glued to the phone, very occasionally looking up to describe a point of interest, while receiving rejection after rejection from every hotel in Copacabana and Ipanema until at the eleventh hour the hotel Apa has a cancellation and we’re in. It’s at the dodgy end of Copacabana to be sure, near a favela, but on offer is the holy trinity of accommodation: air-con, cable TV, and hot water! We’re now dry and warm, which offsets the disappointment of Rio in the rain a little.
By the way, hotel rooms in Rio de Janeiro are at such a premium currently not only because of the rapidly approaching Holiday season, but because of a major soccer event. Arguably the most popular team in Brazil, Flamengo of Copacabana, have a chance to win its first national title in decades by beating Grêmio at the Maracana stadium in the last game of the season in a couple of days. Fanatical supporters are flooding into Rio from all over the country snapping up accommodation and sending ticket prices into the stratosphere. Passion has reached fever pitch and I’m repeatedly advised to watch the game on TV from the (relative) safety of a bar. This is hugely disappointing. Boca Juniors were out of town the weekend I was in Buenos Aires and now the biggest game in Rio in years is pretty much off-limits.
Blog post by Roderick Phillips, author of Weary Heart – a gut-wrenching, heart-wrenching, laugh-wrenching ride.
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