It's simply skimpy fun
It was raining on Christmas Eve when I sailed
into the port of Rio de Janeiro. Sugar Loaf Mountain was lost in cloud
and the beaches were drenched in drizzle, so I didn't see the girl from
Ipanema.
Immortalised in the eponymous song, the girl from Ipanema now runs a
modelling agency in Rio. It is the natural choice of career for a girl
famed for her lithesome grace and beauty.
The story behind the song is that two men who met for drinks at El Garota
de Ipanema, a bar by the famous beach, were so attracted by a girl they
saw walking to school every day, they wrote a song about her. The bar is
still there and has become a tourist attraction. (Perhaps if someone wrote
a hit song called "The Boy From Bentota" it would help revive
Sri Lanka's own tourist industry.)
Ipanema is one of Rio de Janeiro's 23 beaches, stretching for 43 miles
around the city's coastline. Copacabana is another, renowned for its gorgeous
girls sunning themselves on its crowded strand. Alas, in unceasing rain
it looked a miserable mass of damp sand as dingy as the beach in Madras.
Of course, it is the girls clad in little more than strategically-placed
shoelaces showing off their buttocks, who have given Rio and its beaches
notoriety and its image of fun.
 Surprisingly,
even in the rain, the women of Rio radiate allure, perhaps because visitors
expect it through the city's reputation. When the sun isn't shining, they
are to be seen at their best at Rio Sul, a massive shopping mall in Botafogo,
on the way to the beaches.
With promenade-side cafes and fast food stands, the shopping mall is
a place to sit and stare, as much as to shop. The young women who are charming,
and even provocative, sales assistants, make shopping there a joy.
Even out of the sun in the mall, the young of Rio de Janeiro wear the
skimpiest of clothes. Shops selling sports clothes abound and anyone wearing
more than a sleeveless top and shorts seems dowdily overdressed.
There are 10 million residents of Rio and they are known as cariocas.
They are renowned for their fierce pride in their city but visitors are
warned of street crime.
Tourists are advised to remove their jewellery when they go out, before
someone else does.
Since hustlers traditionally lurk around a port area, I expected Rio's
Praca Maui, which is the public square at the harbour entrance, to be infested
with rogues. Perhaps it is at night, but on a rainy afternoon the day before
Christmas last year, it was dreary. Oh yes, there were some seedy looking
hotels and a sleazy bar offering a stripshow, but no one troubled visitors.
Instead the off-duty girls of the night showed an unexpected concern for
the welfare of the elderly foreigners who found their way to the red-light
part of the city when all they wanted was the bus station.
Rio de Janeiro was named as the "River of January" in 1502
when a Portuguese navigator sailed into South America's Guanabara Bay on
January 1. Nearly 500 years later, the port still lures mariners, as well
as tourists. While many of the old, Portuguese style buildings have been
torn down and replaced by skyscrapers, sufficient remain to add charm to
the city's bustle and modernity.
Gold was discovered in the area in 1690 then followed wealth from growing
sugarcane. Rio was the capital of Brazil from 1763, until being replaced
by Brasilia in 1960.
The skyline is dominated by two mountains, but the clouds that descend
on the city when rain is falling, keep them out of sight. Corcovado Mountain
is famous for the statue of Christ which stands with outstretched arms
at 2,300 feet above the city. There are 336 steep steps to climb to the
foot of the statue after a tiny cogwheel train has deposited passengers
on the mountain's side.
 Sugar
Loaf Mountain is 1,300 feet above sea level and soars above the city like
a green island in a sea of concrete. A cable car sweeps the intrepid to
the top of Sugar Loaf in two stages. This calls for a walk around the mountain
at the halfway stage. Parked there is one of the original cubed gondolas
and the old cog wheels that were in use from 1912 to 1972 when the cable
and its cars were modernised. Now the ride to the top takes three minutes
in a car which carries 75 standing passengers.
Rio de Janeiro has been promoting itself as the world's ecological capital,
since the landmark environmental summit conference that took place there
in 1992. However, its reputation remains that of a fun city thanks to the
cariocas themselves and their delight in the street revelry of carnival
that erupts every year. It spills out from the Avenida Presidente Vargas,
a boulevard almost 300 feet wide, slicing through the city for nearly three
miles.
The city's rival thoroughfare is the main Rio Branca Avenue, modelled
after the Champs Elysee of Paris. A scaled down version of the Paris Opera
House adorns it.
Perhaps it is because they wear so little and dress down for most of
the year, that cariocas like to dress up so much at carnival time.
Those sleeveless tops and shoestring bikinis are replaced by extravaganzas
of silk, outrageous outfits in feathers and sequins, and colossal designs
that require frames and wheels to help the wearer progress in rhythmic
splendour to the insistent beat of the samba.
Even the rain cannot dampen completely the effervescence that is Rio
de Janeiro, nor spoil the frank friendliness and sparkle of the cariocas.
Even though I didn't see her, the spirit of the girl from Ipanema reigns
everywhere in Rio.
|
