Rio De Janeiro: Third World City With European Style

Before this trip Brazil had been an abstraction, obviously a real place but not a place I thought much about. My total awareness consisted of a childhood memory of the band Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66, the Girl from Ipanema song, soccer star Pele, the bossa nova, the samba, the movie title Blame It On Rio, and most recently Brazilian steak houses. All that changed 10 days ago.

Brazil is the largest country in South America, the only Portuguese speaking country there, ranks fifth in population (212 million) and first in Catholic population. Portuguese explorers are credited with its discovery around 1500 and for 500 years harvested its natural resources for Portugal; first sugar cane, then gold and subsequently coffee. For about a decade during Napoleon’s reign in Europe, Portugal’s capital was moved to Rio De Janeiro, an historic first and last for any European country.

Brazil takes its name from a hard wood tree that yields red dye that became a valuable commodity for dyeing clothing back in Europe centuries ago. Rio De Janeiro (hereinafter referred to as “Rio D”) is the second largest city in Brazil with 13 million persons amounting to 5% of both Brazil’s population and its economy. Its name means “January river” and was incorrectly named by the explorers who assumed its bay was the mouth of a river.

We came to Rio D for its internationally-acclaimed beaches, Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon and can vouch that its reputation is well deserved. The beaches boast a crystal clear ocean, and a wide, nearly 10 miles of pure white sand with no rocks or broken seashells to bombard your feet. Right now Rio D is in winter with a climate perfect for beach goers: 70s for both surf and turf and enough humidity to keep the chill away.

We stayed in Ipanema, which is smaller, more upscale and more laid back than Copacabana, and has small boutique hotels and dozens of cafes nearby. Copacabana, to the east, is much larger with an impressive hotel skyline, but with a much less accommodative collection of local bars and cafes, even though two thirds of Rio D’s visitors go to Copacabana. Just west of Ipanema is Leblon beach, a quieter residential area.

Five million visit these beaches annually, and mostly during Rio D’s summer. It is difficult to imagine more people here because the crowds now at the beach and in the streets during their winter are overwhelming and appear to be near capacity.

Copacabana and Ipanema are considered two of the "sexiest beaches" in the world, probably because the display of female and male pulchritude is abundant and extraordinary. The Brazilians take fitness very seriously especially at the beach where dozens of joggers, bicyclists, and soccer and volleyball games can be seen throughout the day.

Brazilians take soccer very seriously where kids and adults of all ages fuss with soccer balls wherever you go. Although soccer jerseys are ubiquitous and prevalent, occasionally you will see basketball jerseys too, most notably from the Chicago Bulls (especially Michael Jordan 23) and L.A. Lakers. Most surprising are the many New York Yankees caps worn by both men and women especially because Brazilians typically don't play the game and don't follow major league baseball.

Most Rio D visitors come from neighboring Argentina. Visitors from the USA and Chile rank second and third, respectively. Perhaps Brazil is South America's Florida for its neighbors, especially during their winter months.

We stayed at Sol Ipanema, which is a 4-star rated boutique hotel with 90 rooms. The physical features were adequate but I believe the 4 stars comes from its beach front location, the high level of service provided by the concierge and staff and the fantastic restaurant that performs a dual function that offers hotel guests a complimentary gourmet quality buffet breakfast, and is open to the public for lunch and dinner as a top rated Italian seafood restaurant called Masserini.

Despite the outstanding physical amenity of the beach, the dozens of mobile beach vendors make the beaches less than relaxing. You can buy apparel, personal items, food and drink, and even massages from these seemingly ubiquitous vendors, but must endure constant noise, cooking fumes and peripatetic commotion that accompanies this frenetic activity. My sense is these youths are expending lots of energy for very little pay. Just another reminder of the large scale underemployment that exists in this emerging economy. Also, we were advised to pay cash to these vendors who have been known to play fast-and-loose with credit cards. Making matters worse, few vendors advertise the cost of their products.

When was the last time you went out to dinner to nine different restaurants and were satisfied each time? We were amazed at the excellent food quality, consistency, variety, and concentration of eateries everywhere, across all food types; meat, fish, seafood, fruit, bread, and desserts; certainly the best we've had in this post Covid world and even the best I have experienced since I started traveling 40 years ago, even compared to places known for their great cuisine such as Italy, France, Spain and Holland, which obviously offer some great food but I have found each to be inconsistent. My only disappointment is that for such an agriculturally rich country, evident from the abundance of great fruit, vegetables were not featured in recipes in typical meals. It is a head-scratcher, because when vegetables were offered, they were superb.

Even more amazing is how generally inexpensive food and drink is here. Brazilian beer (e.g., Brahma, Praya) cost $3 and cocktails (e.g, caipirinhas made with cachaca rum, Brazil’s own) were downright cheap at $5, sandwiches cost $6-8, great burgers made with real beef with fries and club sandwiches cost only $10-12. Typical entrees in most cafes are less than $20 in most cases, and maybe reach $40 for swanky luxury dining. And portions are most generous as a rule. By comparison, McDonald's in our neighborhood was rather pricey. Even though not publicized, a 10-13% service charge is usually included in your bill even though it often does not specifically appear as a line item. But additional tipping is not expected, as in Europe.

In addition to our hotel, we dined at Rio Brasa, a local churrasqueira which is their name for a Brazilian BBQ. It was like our Las Vegas favorite Fogo de Chao on steroids, with more variety, better quality, and less expensive. A full all you can eat meal there including a cocktail, dessert, and service charge cost us less than $70 per person. We dined at one of the best known fish restaurants in Rio D called Satyricon for a similar cost. Even the simple cafes a few steps from our hotel offered outstanding meals. The Girl from Ipanema Cafe, just around the corner from our hotel is the actual site where the lyricist of that song was inspired by a 17 year old girl passing by in 1960 (who by the way is 83 years old now). Great eats. Barzin, another 2 minutes away, has in the words of our concierge the best burger he ever ate, a statement we can defend after sampling the goods. Barzin also offered some of the best tapas we’ve had in years! Others in the area were great too. Further away we found a gem of a Chinese restaurant that served us a great traditional meal that even included mu shu pork, which apparently most folks west of the Mississippi in our country have never heard of. Great stuff!

All of the aforementioned eateries have been in existence at least 25 years, with many approximately 50 years old.

If you plan to come here or most places in South America, you need to at least fake your way through Spanish and even if you do, a group or private tour is well advised, and Brazil is no exception. This is a Portuguese speaking country and although few speak Spanish or English here, many do understand some. English is spoken by 5% of the population. Despite the language barrier everyone we encountered here was friendly and tried their best to assist us.

Assuming language is not an issue you must remember this is not Europe, where travel infrastructure has been developed over many years. Communication and organization is idiosyncratic here at best, which means plans are not always executed as expected. Be prepared to be surprised and even disappointed at times. When we took our city tour, we had to pursue the tour bus twice to ascertain our place on the tour. Even obtaining typical services from our hotel didn't work the same way two days in a row. Be patient and be prepared to be pro active.

Physical infrastructure here is also lacking. Getting on and off the beach was a struggle in many places, and poor sidewalks make walking around the city more challenging than you might imagine. Beach entrances are makeshift, and sidewalks can be difficult to navigate.

Despite all the hectic pedestrian and vehicular traffic, the atmosphere is generally easy going but the obvious police presence is reassuring. Most of the residential and commercial structures in our area had huge imposing steel gates to shore up security and made us wonder what circumstances caused them to be deemed necessary. Also, despite all the commerce taking place at the beach and the complete lack of trash receptacles, this area of Rio D is extremely clean.

Rio D is a great place for those seeking a world -class beachside experience and some great food and drink. Those seeking a more cultural experience may be disappointed. The city tour is basically a trip to Christ the Redeemer, which, as one of the world's seven wonders, is well worth the trip. But the rest of the city tour is a half hour drive by you can easily do without. A visit to Fort Copacabana, a museum that acknowledges Brazil’s significant involvement in World War 2, is near Copacabana beach and is worth a trip and provides a nice vantage point to view the entire beach front. There's a nice outdoor cafe there too.

One final note. You can't get there from here, at least not easily. Las Vegas is approximately 6,300 miles from Rio D and it takes at least 18 hours with required transfers and layovers. Door to door you’ll be traveling more than 24 hours. By comparison, a nonstop flight from London, a hemisphere away and slightly shorter distance is 11 hours. To us that means if you come here from Vegas, plan on spending at least a week because it will take several days to recover from the trip there and back.

Those who know me know I would be remiss if I didn't complain about something so here goes. I have often complained about the health risks of traveling on a jet-propelled petri dish in sub-humanly sized accommodations (you'll need to be double-jointed or to engage a chiropractor to use those tiny lavatories or sleep in those tiny seats). However, when you add in the obstacle course of running around an airport with heavy bags because of poor signage trying to catch your flight, waiting on long TSA and immigration lines that seem to serve no real purpose, you have the makings of a stress test that NASA ought to consider using to condition astronauts for flight. On the plus side, I was inspired to write about our trip to take my mind off the physical discomfort and horrendous waste of time of getting there and back, which I hope you found useful reading.

Hawaii: The "Other" Eight Islands

Las Vegas is considered the ninth Hawaiian island, because of its large Hawaiian population and its involvement in Hawaiian culture. This note is about our trip to the most important of the other eight islands, Oahu, for which we had no knowledge but many expectations based on our life-long devotion to some TV dramas: Hawaiian Eye (1959, by the way, the first year of Hawaii's statehood), Hawaii 5-0 (1968) and Magnum P.I. (1980). Our goals for this trip were to take a beach break from winter while soaking up some exotic Hawaiian culture and to visit the Pearl Harbor memorial site. We also figured it was high time we reconciled the many preconceptions we developed over the years with the reality of the place.

We chose a hotel on the beach in Waikiki (the word means "spouting water"), which is a major neighborhood in Honolulu (a word that means "calm port"), on the island of Oahu (which means "gathering place"). Although Hawaii consists of eight islands, 70 percent of Hawaii's 1.5 million residents live on Oahu (25 percent of the entire state's population resides in Honolulu, which we learned is also the hometown of Peter Hernandez, who we recognize as Bruno Mars). One of the eight islands is totally uninhabited.

Tourism, hospitality, government (especially U.S. military), real estate and construction are the primary drivers of Hawaii's economy, which is quite easy to understand after learning the modern history of the area and seeing all the hotels, high-rise condominiums and retail mall space. Everyone knows that the cost of living is very high in Hawaii, but those prices are obscene in the areas, such as Waikiki, that cater to tourists. Prices fell dramatically as we moved away from purely tourist venues.

Not surprisingly, Hawaii's population is dominated by Asians, especially Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos, but it was surprising that only 10 percent were native Hawaiian and that more Hawaiians live outside the state ( for example, Las Vegas has the largest concentration of Hawaiians in the U.S.). Some European influence is still evident today in various cuisine and we were surprised to learn that the ukulele, only associated with Hawaiian music, was introduced to these islands by Portugal more than one hundred years ago.

The surf and turf conditions were exactly what we expected and fabulous; weather a bit warmer than usual in the 80s and no rain. Ocean temperatures were in the high 70s, the surf was very calm and a sandbar allowed bathers to wade out nearly a quarter mile. However, the image instilled in us of an isolated expansive pristine beach didn't materialize; rather this was a very small, urban, congested beach in the midst of a bustling city with huge high rise hotels and condos towering over us.

Exotic seashells or sea creatures and birds were nowhere to be found. (Even in the city, pigeons were the only birds we saw, and mostly moving freely in and out of restaurants, not something we east coasters are accustomed to seeing.) Maui is probably the place to find the beaches we had imagined were everywhere in Hawaii.

We also didn't imagine that Waikiki would be a seemingly limitless chain of luxury shopping malls that extend in all directions like those on the Las Vegas strip, including the Royal Hawaiian Center and the International Market Place. Even most hotels had retail catering to shopping rather than the immediate needs of hotel occupants, like food kiosks and decent restaurants. Foreign tourists must be the target shoppers for those products because mainland Americans have easy and cheaper access to such products back in the states. All that high-end retail space eliminated any possibility of picking up a local vibe anywhere throughout Waikiki.

Wherever we travel we like to indulge in local cuisine, and supposed that an undeveloped land mass like Hawaii would boast a rich variety of fruits and vegetables and many tasty new dishes. It doesn't. We had great pineapple but it wasn't as ubiquitous as we imagined, and there really were no other fruits worth mentioning. Further, surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean we also expected to be introduced to a variety of fish and many new recipes. We were disappointed. Honolulu is apparently one of the most important U.S. fishing hubs and is 72 percent of Hawaii's commercial fishing industry, but don't ask what they do with all that fish because it doesn't appear to be sold locally.

The food quality everywhere was mediocre at best, so it didn't really surprise us to learn that spam in nearly 23 varieties features prominently in the Hawaiian diet, and that a dish called "Loco Moco" consisting of a hamburger on a bed of fried rice smothered with onions and brown gravy is a staple of the Hawaiin diet. We were skeptical of our own harsh assessment of Hawaii's cuisine until our Pearl Harbor tour director, a native of Hawaii, confirmed our evaluation when he recommended a fish place frequented by locals that he claimed was Waikiki's best and it turned out to be a total bust, serving tough, fishy fish. Our conclusion: Hawaiians eat an unhealthy diet limited in variety, and do not generally include the use of fruits and vegetables.

There are a few bright spots; apparently, some of Hawaii's spicy fish dishes such as poke are very good and it's Kona coffee and banana bread were outstanding. And if you're wondering about over-priced King's Hawaiian bread, know that although it originated here more than 60 years ago, it's been made for decades in California, and we didn't see any evidence that folks in Hawaii actually eat the stuf.

It took us a couple of days to realize that the main sources of prepared food consumed by tourists weren't restaurants but rather food courts and hybrid stores combining groceries, packaged food and extensive deli items. ABC stores, which are ubiquitous in Waikiki (practically every 200 yards), seem to feed most of this neighborhood and are particularly noteworthy. Our experience is that the fresh daily packaged food is generally better than restaurant food.

Midway through our week we took Hawaii's most popular historical tour of Pearl Harbor, which included a visit to the Arizona memorial, the actual grave site of more than 1000 sailors (out of the nearly 1200) who died on the USS Arizona battleship that blew up the day Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, and the battleship Missouri memorial, the vessel that served as the venue that, among other events, hosted the surrender ceremony that ended the war with Japan in 1945. We learned on the tour that the "surprise" attack had been anticipated by many in our Government, but we also learned that the day of the attack there was a radar warning of a potential attack had been carelessly dismissed as a false alarm! We will never know how a proper response to that warning might have changed the extent of the devastation that day but we can be sure that many lives would have been saved. I wonder if that's what FDR really referred to when he said that day "would live in infamy"! This tour was quite a sobering experience and no visit to Hawaii is complete without a visit to Pearl Harbor.

In addition to the obvious advantages of travel, such as a refreshing change of environment and an opportunity to learn new things, it also provides a reality check on the evolving state of the leisure and travel industry. We've noted in previous posts that trends in those industries have for some time shown an overall decline in customer service and this trip shows that trend continuing.

We were fortunate this time to have one non-stop flight from Las Vegas to Honolulu so our travel ordeal was merely 10 hours between airports (7 hr flight plus 3 hr waiting at the airport). However 10 hours is a very long time to have very limited access to food and drink, including the airport and flight. Thank heaven our airline offered us a small sandwich (no choice) and soft drink. Only very light snacks were available for purchase on the flight, and the airport barely had some kiosks offering junk food. Is that really the best they can do?

Upon hotel arrival there was no information available in our room indicating hotel amenities including restaurants within or outside our hotel and it took a couple of days to sort through the possibilities to find eateries offering decent food at a less than an exorbitant price. Eventually we found a few places in close proximity to each other on side streets. Based on our Las Vegas and Hawaiian experience it would seem that tourist purveyors are conforming to a mushroom business strategy: keep consumers in the dark, engage them in a one shot transaction and not worry about repeat business (much the way restaurants on the Las Vegas strip do). Even our Pearl Harbor tour, which was worthwhile despite a marketing deception, offers an example: it was sold to us as a 7 hour guided tour but ended up a 4 hour tour with a 3 hour free-for-all waste of time. All of this happens because nothing is available in writing.

Our sense is that there is a constant tension between vendors and customers, with vendors giving "deals" with one hand and attempting to short change customers with the other. There's very little "leisure" involved in "travel" these days and it's likely to get worse with time.

Our trip to Hawaii had been a long time coming and we feel fortunate to have finally made it. Some of our preconceptions and childhood dreams were dashed, others confirmed. We imagine that Maui might uphold some of the preconceived images of what we thought Hawaii is and our next Hawaiian trip will delve into that island.