my first week as a Carioca
My road to Rio hit a bit of a rough patch right up front. Surprisingly, this wasn't in the form of overweight checked baggage (bless you, American Airlines, and your 70-pound allowance for bags going to Brazil!).
I left LAX on the sunny Saturday morning that marked the beginning of that record-breaking heatwave- what can I say, my timing has always been impeccable- and landed at a dark and stormy nighttime MIA. As soon as I got cell service on the ground, I got the notification: yep, my first-ever overnight flight delay. We wouldn't have a properly-operating plane for 12 hours, so a night in Miami it was.
That bump in the road was surprisingly easily smoothed out, and we landed at GIG on Sunday, just 10 hours behind our original schedule and completely off our sleep schedule. Waiting at the airport for us were the directors from our program provider. They helped us collect our bags (including one that was almost lost), load them onto a bus (oh, those poor guys) and wasted no time getting us right into Rio. We had an orientation dinner, complete with everyone's first caipirinha. An important note: the caipirinha is the national drink of Brazil; it's made of rum distilled from sugarcane juice (called cachaça, pronounced kuh-SHAH-suh), sugar, and muddled limes over ice and it's really good. After our inaugural adult beverages, we were deemed proper "Cariocas", or residents of Rio.
After a long night of unpacking, fueled by some excellent-quality plane sleep, our first order of business was to get on the Metrô. Luckily, we are right around the corner from a Metrô stop, the last on its line. I can't mess up getting to the Metrô, and I can't get on the Metrô going the wrong way, so that's a pretty good start. Barring that, though, Rio's Metrô is one of the more straightforward, easier, nicer, cleaner, cheaper and maybe newer metros I've ever been on. Sure, nothing can beat the Tube, but the Metrô was definitely an unexpectedly pleasant surprise.
Each morning that week was an orientation on a different topic: basics of Portuguese; Brazilian history, politics and economics; Brazilian internship and office culture; Brazilian media history and culture; Brazilian sports history and culture; and an overview of the Rio 2016 Games.
More importantly, each lunch that week was awesome. Buffets are very common in Brazil, and are done much better than they are in the US. This is especially true in the case of lunch, which tends to be the biggest meal of the day for Brazilians (whereas for Americans, it's dinner). Everyone takes a legally-mandated hour for a big lunch every day, and it's often at a buffet "by the kilo". When you walk in to one of these wildly popular restaurants, you're handed a card. You pick up a plate and load up with whatever looks good; most restaurants offer a wide variety spanning from steak to sushi, chicken to fish, salad bars to fresh fruit, traditional Brazilian dishes and sides, and lots of stuff in between. Your plate is weighed, your card charged with the amount, and you follow the same procedure for seconds or thirds. At the end of the meal, the total on your card is tallied up and you pay before leaving.
Speaking of food, I have no complaints here whatsoever. Everything is so fresh and so good. It's akin to buying produce at Trader Joe's: you have to use it fast because you know it'll go bad soon, but you're okay with that because you also know it'll be good. A very typical Brazilian meal is grilled chicken, steak or fish, rice, black beans, vegetables and farofa, a traditional condiment-like thing that's ground and toasted powder stuff from some root vegetable, which I clearly have yet to really get into. Maybe one day, farofa.
And the fruit here really is amazing. I never knew how many fruits I never knew existed until I went to a Brazilian produce market. Fruits you just can't find commonly, but even the ones you can...the sights and scents of them alone are enough to stop you in your tracks in the store.
Okay, enough about the food (for now). When we weren't in orientation (or eating) (or grocery shopping), it was all settling in, exploring our neighborhoods, and running all those kinds of errands you have to do when you move to a new place.
Our first night out in Rio, we went to Rio Scenarium, which is consistently ranked as one of the best bars in the world. This "cultural pavilion", as it's called, is in a beautiful balconied building that looks straight out of New Orleans, tucked away down a cobblestone alley. The interior is even more visually interesting, completely decked out in antiques and vintage decor. The live music was like nothing I had ever experienced, in the best way possible. It definitely lives up to the many recommendations.
The first touristy order of business to attend to was a visit to Christ the Redeemer. A van took us (a little too fast) on the steep, winding switchback roads all the way up Mount Corcovado to the base of the statue. A few flights of stairs later, we were treated to a truly spectacular view, and hordes of fellow tourists. Eventually, it started getting gloomy and overcast, so we snapped our last few selfies with Jesus and prepared to leave. I shrugged off the fog rolling in (I'm so used to the marine layer), until I realized that it wasn't fog, it was clouds. It was hard to appreciate how high in the heavens we were until we were back down on the ground, looking up at Jesus looking out over Rio. I can't think of something more awe-inducing, more worthy of being one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, or a better way to end my first week in Rio.
Check out my gallery for pictures, and thanks for reading! GS
Sparknotes version: I had a flight delay; caipirinhas are important; the Metrô here is surprisingly not horrible; the buffets here are surprisingly not horrible; the fruit here is unsurprisingly not horrible; the nightlife here is definitely different and definitely not horrible; the view from Mount Corcovado is not horrible.