“Music was like a placenta, conveying emotional and intellectual information.” From Marina de la Riva, a Cuban Brazilian singer
Rio de Janeiro. I was there only five days, but enjoyed every minute of it.
I had no idea how clean the place would be — granted, I was mainly in a 10 to 20-square mile tourism part of the city. But, I have to say, even the many favelas (the so-called slums), which I saw from the airplane and close up from taxi windows looked like old toy boxes ingeniously piled up, decorated with that universal icon of poor ‘hoods everywhere: garlands of fresh laundry (much likened to Tibetan prayer flags). (How curious, the favelas get the hill real estate.) I know this is a poor country, and poverty is not to be taken lightly. (I’m told literacy is about 70 percent.) But I felt such a sense of upbeatness everywhere—in the air, in the smells, the sounds, especially the sounds. Oh that music, that luscious tongue they speak, so well-lubricated with sh sounds. The food, the fruit, with names not on the map. The feijoada, shot through with smoke. The spectrum of skin coloring that makes me crave milk chocolate. If there is a country where African genes express themselves more gorgeously, deliciously, sonorously, sensually, please let me know asap.
But don’t get me started on the caipirinhas (my head still throbs).
Don’t even get me started on all the warnings from guidebooks and people about how could I go alone—it’s so dangerous. DO NOT leave the hotel at night — or I would be smuggled off to the white slave trade (good think I’m Sicilian). Hogwash. I walked everywhere I wanted, late at night. As did many people. Everyone is friendly – many of the tourists are Brazilian. Even the policemen, who all seem to be black, tall, thin, and so handsome in their uniforms, are friendly.
I stayed at Hotel Debret on Avenida Atlantica in Copacabana, right across from the ocean, which is so clean and clear, you wouldn’t even want to spit in it. You might even want to shower before you get in. The sand reminds me of ground peanuts – it’s always moist as is the air. For those of you who have never been here yet, Copacabana and Ipanema are the two smiling crescents of beaches joined like Siamese twins by a knot of land with a handsome military fort on it. Each beach is maybe 3 miles long (guessing).
Copacabana is considered the hipster, sizzling with youthful juice area, Ipanema is calmer, a bit more sophisticated. I’d have slightly preferred to stay in Ipanema (also more expensive), but was content in Copa. I walked day and night between the two, just drinking it in–sometimes literally from a green gourd of coconut. My god, there is always something, even if it’s just the pristine surf crashing. There are surfers where the waves are big, people playing soccer, volleyball, paddle ball, buns of all shapes and sizes—even the little girls wear thong suits (I felt like a dinosaur in my modest one-piece Speedo). There are the cleavers hacking into coconuts. There are sand sculptors who spend months building Sand Villages, or naked bodies, then sit near their artwork with a can–you pay them a few reals (two to the dollar) to take pictures. Very enterprising. Massage therapists open up their tables or chairs under copses of palms—and I always meant to get one, but time ran out.
One night on the beach boulevard, which is a broad Wizard-of-Oz mosaic of swirling black and gray stones, I caught a flaming drag queen show. They were hysterical, strutting, lip-syncing to recorded music, telling jokes in Portuguese with families standing around enjoying it. I got some great images.
“I like the gays, I have two gay friends,” my hired taxi driver told me next day. His name was Luis Junior (yes, that’s his last name, pronounced Zshunior, sort of). He spoke great English – having learned—where else?—in Newark, NJ, where his sister and brother live. He is fair-skinned with sparkling blue eyes. He took me to the Parque Nacional de Tijuca to see the “world’s largest rainforest in a city.” It was amazing. Lush, dense, cool, vines and not-quite-ripe jackfruits hanging like human sex organs – take your pick, male or female. We saw a sloth and monkeys – little guys, I don’t know their species, but they coyly posed for my camera. The forest is only 15 minutes outside the city center, but it is high above it and feels remote. We went to a lookout and the views down on the city were dizzying. Also, people (nutty people) were jumping off this cliff in hang-gliders wings. My stomach had a lot of mariposas in it and I had to sit on the ground, my head spinning, Junior laughing, but I took some fun pictures that make it look as if I were in the air above them (nice trick).
I also never realized how stunningly the monolithic outcrops of mountain backdrop Rio (they remind me of Phallic rock in Hawaii). They dwarf (and maybe beautify) the otherwise bland architecture of high-rise hotels. One of the rounder outcrops juts into the ocean and has a ledge you can walk, where fishermen were lined up with rods cast in the sea. I don’t know what they were catching but I may have eaten it the first night. An odd thing: there are no sea shells here and I couldn’t get why there are no shellfish (I mean, maybe the place is so clean cause they dropped an oil drum of Clorox over it all?). But you can imagine the menus are swimming with fish – I ate lots, including sardines big as trout. I ate a whole plate of marinated mussels, the best-tasting I’ve ever had–not one had that, ya’ know, sewer taste you get occasionally in mussels.
I came to love the street in Ipanema, called Rua de Farme Amoedo. I liked the Portuguese colonial architecture on and near it (don’t ask me how it differs from Spanish Colonial, but it does). One night, I sat eating at a restaurant there and I saw out the open window three young men literally go bouncing down the street in fast back aerial flips. It was like a cartoon. They were doing the famous capoeira. They belonged in Cirque du Soleil. One, with platinum frizzy hair, stood for a minute on one arm, rippling his brown muscles. Oh those Brazilian street kids – love to take one home.
I wandered the artisan booths in the streets, just to feast my eyes on the colors of things (and thongs and people). One afternoon, an old toothless crone saw me, aimless and alone. I smiled at her. She grabbed my palm and kept reading it in Portuguese. I tried to tell her nicely I do not want to know my future. I’m still working furiously on the present. She was crest-fallen and later, feeling bad, I tried to find her to pay her to NOT tell me about the future. The only thing I understood was that I’d have a long life (no shit sherlock). It’s not the quantity I ever worry about.
Another night I decided to eat my way through the street vendors that sell from shacks or streamline-modern booths all along the ocean walk. They have seats sprawled around. I started with a cool, refreshing caiparinha. Then I had a huge plate of sauteed shrimp with searing red hot chili sauce that required a second caiparinha. Down the line, it was creamed spinach (not at all stodgy here), then fried cassava, then polenta, then corn on the cob. Mango puree juice.
OK, this was my ill-fated night.
But first, you need to know what a caipirinha is. (My head hurts just thinking of telling you.) It’s distilled sugar cane juice (called cachaza), lotsa wedges of fresh limes, sweetener, ice. They go down easy, the way Margaritas do. They make your upper thighs tickle and fool you into thinking god wants you to drink them. Demon firewater, they are. I can tell you I’ve learned my lesson. I had the worst headache starting somewhere in the night.
Next day, I came back to life with the help of espresso doble at my café, Cafeina, where they serve waffles that are soft like pancakes, very good.
My last night, I ate the famed feijoada at Casa de Feijoada (say: fay-sho-ah-dah). The devil waiter gave me a free glass of caiparinha. I took one sip and pushed it aside. (In truth, if it had been a few days later, I’d have been over my symptoms and downed it.) The Brazilian black bean stew, containing an array of succulent meat, including ear of pig, chorizo, rib, loin, and the most seductive smoke flavor, all sprinkled with ground manioc (which tastes like its relative the peanut) was a feast I will try to duplicate some day.
Before I get off the food, which I hardly tapped – because really you can only order so much for one–I’ll just say, the bananas are those tart ones, not the mostly mealy overly sweet ones I get up north that I can only eat if I’m working out and burning the sugar. I bought some papaya (good, but not as good as Hawaii’s), and the pino, I learned it as a cherimoya up north. It’s a grenade, it’s an artichoke. No it’s a custard apple. So, this is how they should taste. Sweet and custardy – the seeds are beautiful elongated ebony-like. I smuggled them back to Buenos Aires.
I just had to touch the hallowed ground where The Girl from Ipanema was written (the bossa nova hit that came out in the 1960s when I was striving to be “Tall and tan and young and lovely”). “Garrota de Ipanema” was written in the café restaurant of that same name. Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote the undying music and Vinicius de Moraes wrote the Portuguese lyrics. A few bars of the music are enlarged and hanging over the modest wooden table. And much as I hate souvenirs these days, I had to bring back the sound of Brazil. —in a pair of maracas and those handheld skin drums and the whistle, all of which you hear in the samba. I refused to pay $75 (tourist prices, hah!) to see a samba show, but I did see people dancing to the music in the open air cafes. Women just stand up and move and groove to the music. God, I wish I were born Brazilian.
Some years ago, I reviewed for Food First, a manuscript of a book on a black Brazilian woman who made it up from the favelas. Her name was Benedita da Silva. She became the first woman in the senate in 94 or so. She has brought about many changes for the poor and women. I was glad to see she is still in the government—Secretary of State Assistance. I was handed a free little booklet on Human Rights with her name in it. I hope Brazil has improved its performance on her watch. Too scared to check. I want the whole country to feel as upbeat as it made me feel.
But, I’ll say this, I agree with Luis Junior, who lives with his accountant wife, and three-year-old daughter in the city, the media and guidebooks focus on the “crime” there, which is not overall as violent as elsewhere (well I’m not going to get into stats).
At the airport, arrival in Rio, there was a little girl of maybe three or four full of vim and vigor running wild in gay ol’ happy way. Her adults couldn’t keep her still. The Brazilian security cop moseyed on over to her and led the entire family to the front of the line of about 100 people, no questions, pardons, excuses. People all just smiled. I should’ve known I’d love a country where a kid’s comfort and importance are considered paramount to all other biz and bureaucracy.
When I got the airport to head back home, I had five reals to dispose of. So I finally got what I’d been craving since day one: a piece of Brazilian chocolate. It was divine.
All is well back in mi barrio en Buenos Aires—where it’s the Italian genes that express themselves so well in all that I love (yes, in tango, too). I will be celebrating my one year anniversary here on Sunday, the 26th (it’s actually Aug 29), with food, friends, music, and Brazilian instruments.