Nov 20th: Tuesday
We had to get up really early today for our Favela tour (explanation on those in a sec). We had to meet the guide on the beach at 8:45am. I wasn’t terrible excited about this part. So heres, the funny part. Nicole wakes me up and asks me what time it is. I instantly freak out thinking we’re late and check my watch (in the dark). I see that it’s 8:30am. We had 15 minutes to get up, ready, and walk to the beach to meet our guide. So we frantically grab our stuff and run out the door shoving some free hostel food in our mouths on the way. We arrive at the meeting point on time. I’m very relieved. We wait, and wait, and it’s now 9am and no guide. Umm… no it’s not. It’s 8am and of course there’s no guide. I guess being startled awake and reading your watch in the dark isn’t a good combination. So we walked back to the hostel and took a 30 minute power nap in the hammock.
At the real 8:30am, we head back to the meeting point and our guide showed up promptly at 8:45am with a full bus of other tourists. Okay, so a Favela is a very poor city that’s basically hacked together that, until recently, is completely unrecognized by the government as existing (nor it’s people). We’re talking about 750+ favelas with the largest one, Rochina, having what is estimated around 200,000 people living it it! They are run either by the people living in them, or by the drug lords if there’s drug trafficking in them. The police do not enter them, and the government has no control over anything within them. They are notorious for high violence, drugs, and all types of crime. We were on a tour (most of it walking) right through the middle of them =). To get a clearer picture of the favelas, you should see “City of God” or “Elite Troups”.
The first favela that we entered was Rochina, a drug run favela. Our tour guide told us that we have a better chance of having our stuff stolen from us outside of a favela than inside because the drug lords have a strict policy on thievery. First offense, you get shot in the hand. Second offense, you’re killed. So, there isn’t much theft in the favelas.
As we walked through the favelas, we were allowed to take photos most of the time. Sometimes though, we were told that we had to put our cameras away in our bags because there were drug people around. If anyone snapped a photo of them, they would have come up and taken away all our cameras. Of course, they were where all the cool stuff was to take photos of.
These cities are amazing. They is absolutely no organization whatsoever, and they just hack together whatever it is that they need. Wires are just spliced and run wherever they’re needed (for electricity and cable tv), and houses are built as boxes one on top of another. Here’s a couple photos of us walking down a “street” in a favela:
They have all their own everything in the favelas. Banks, shops, TV channels, Radio stations, newspapers, hospitals, schools. Everything. They are completely independent from the city of Rio.
The other favela that we went into was a small one that wasn’t run by the drug lords. We stopped by one of the schools, but it was a holiday so no one was in class. We were encouraged to purchase little crafts made by the students with all proceeds going to the school. We were then also told about funding for these schools. They used to be partially funded by the city for a while, but a year or two ago, they cut all funding, so the majority of it comes from the favela tours (a large portion of our tour cost went to the schools).
When we were done with the favela tour, we were dropped off at our hostel. I think it was sometime around noon, check-out time. I had to run out and buy another smaller backpack for all the misc. stuff I bought along the way. On my way back from the store, a bird took a massive dump right on my shoe. I was so pissed. I scraped most of it off on a tree and quietly cursed to myself as i headed back to the hostel. A couple blocks before I got there, I saw a some homeless guy giving shoe shines… yep, I did. I walked over and put my foot on his box and asked for a cleaning. He wiped it with a towel and then stuck it by his nose to sniff it, out of curiosity I guess. He jerked back, looked up at me, and said, “Shit!”. I laughed and just said, “Yep”. He cleaned my shoes and polished them up quite nicely (they were already pretty muddy from the hike in the forest earlier). When he was done he asked for R$50. I couldn’t help it. I bust out laughing and handed him R$5. Most people wouldn’t pay more than two or three. Just so you know, the backpack I just bought cost about R$30. After some arguing he went down to R$30, then R$20. I was getting irritated now, because I was in a hurry to get back to the hostel and pack up so I didn’t get charged for another night. I didn’t want to stiff the guy because it was pretty nasty, so I told him to take the money or walk away. He took the cash and I left.
After I crammed everything into my backpacks, we left our bags at the desk and headed for the beach. When we got to the beach, I slathered on my SPF50 sun block and then complained about how bright and hot the sun was. Nicole was going for a suntan, so she didn’t bother (she got burned, not too bad though). I wound up getting a really weird sunburn in the middle of my chest. Guess I missed a spot =)
While we hung out on the beach, all these vendors kept coming up to us to show us their wares. “You want a hat?”…no, “You want sunglasses?”…no, “You want beer?…um, ok (not for me), “You want bracelet?”…no, “You want fake tattoo with crap that’s been known to cause chemical burns?”…no…Ah! Get that shit away from me, I said no!, “You want cocaine, marijuana?”…no…what? By the end of our stay on the beach, Nicole bought a dress, and we got a nice hammock for our backyard. Handmade soft cloth, super comfortable (same as the ones in the hostel), and it cost somewhere around $30 USD. We then headed back to the hostel, washed off the sand and called for a cab. We had a plane to catch back to Santiago.
Our cabbie showed up, we threw our bags in the car and said goodbye to Rio. Our flight left around 7:30pm and had a stop in Sao Paulo. We arrived in Santiago around 1:30am. After getting trough customs, we found a cabbie to take us to the better hostel that we found the first time we were there. I think we checked in around 2:30 in the morning. We were given our keys to the room, and headed up for a quick sleep. We were just spending one night in Santiago, because we have a 5pm flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina tomorrow. Nicole found her bed, and crashed. I found mine (the only one available, and crashed). Around 3:30 or so in the morning, some guy woke me up to tell me I was in his bed. We went back and forth a few times before it just wasn’t worth arguing anymore. There was a couch in the lobby that sounded fine to me, so I jumped out of the bunk, scared the hell out of the guy, and left for the couch. I couldn’t fall back asleep right away, so I turned on the TV to see what was on. Nightmare on Elm Street 4… in spanish. It’ll do. I fell asleep before it ended.
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