Blogging no Brasil: Episode 2

Hey guys!

Welcome to Episode 2 of my Blogging no Brasil series on the Study Abroad blog.

In this part I will be looking at one of the funner parts of being an exchange student – even better if you’re in South America! Since Brazil was a former colony, they had to get independence at some point and that is the 7th September. As a result, they celebrate the whole week as a week of independence. I took the opportunity of a break in classes to travel the short(ish) distance from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro to get a taste of the Cidade Maravilhosa. Here is a taster of what I got up to…

Day 4 – 6/9

Woke up that morning not expecting in the slightest what was going to happen. The plan was: climb Corcovado mountain on foot, enjoy Christ the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor), come back down, beach and watch Brazil play in the World Cup Qualifiers beer in hand – happy days.

The morning was fairly uneventful, we turned up at Parque Lage, the start point of the hike and waiting for some others to arrive. By absolute chance, others from FEA (my faculty at USP) had also decided to do Cristo at the same time, which made us a group of 11.

You can see Cristo from large swathes of the city, from which he looks pretty petite. In reality, he has to be quite big in order to be seen from so far away. Between the several platforms on the summit, you can get a 360° view of Rio. That though, if you can fight through the throng of tourists swarming around. Since the platform lies directly under Cristo, it can be rather challenging to get a good shot of yourself posing in front of him and get the whole statue in the photo. To achieve this, often you have to enlist a photographer willing to deform themselves in weird positions on the floor for you. I have very lucky friends who I was willing to help out… of course they were bound in helping me too!! After lingering at various points of the 360°, we set off on our descent, which is where the “fun” began…

All was fine and dandy until about 20 mins into the descent we came across a metal wire running diagonally across the path, marking clearly that we should not pass. So of course we passed, thinking it was an alternative route down the mountain.

*2 hours later*

We realised we were lost. The trail that had initially been heading downwards had starting veering upwards again, making us realise that instead of nearing civilisation, we were actually climbing another completely different mountain. A gap in the foliage appeared and through the chink of light we were able to see Cristo in the distance; tiny, as he always was, and this made us realise how far we had come without actually properly descending the mountain. I had good survival hopes for 11 people, especially as I was hoarding an extra 1.5L water bottle in my bag and various sweet treats for sugar energy. Nonetheless, I was still worried, mostly due to how close we were to sundown, and once the sun sets that’s generally when the less kind animals come out to play and you can’t see anything as no light penetrates the leaves and branches. Most of the others agreed with this, not showing their fear outwardly but we all knew we needed to get out before the light disappeared. Whereas, some people were certain everything would be ok and were keeping up the morale of the group. In a world of his own, the German said that he didn’t care about the fact that we were lost, the only problem was that he didn’t have a beer in his hand! Not long after, we heard shouting coming from somewhere inside the shrubs and thought someone was hurt. Luckily it wasn’t that, just that we’d found a group of 3 lost people who’d thought it a good idea to take the same wrong path as us. We weighed up backtracking upwards, which would take us eventually to a familiar path, but it was a long, long way. Otherwise, we press on with the unknown path and pray it takes us to civilisation. The strong voices in the group decided to take us further into the wilderness. Very fortunately, we soon encountered a topless and toothless Brazilian man who informed us that the exit was 10 minutes away. Not everyone spoke Portuguese there, but everyone understood “ten minutes” and erupted into cheers as he said it. The truth is, maybe he said it to keep out spirits up, because it was 10 minutes… to get to a signpost to tell us it was 10 more minutes to the exit. During a hike we did later on in the trip, one of my friends said “On hikes, 30% of accidents happen in the last 10 minutes of the descent. This is because people basically think they’ve reached the end so they switch off. That’s what makes it so lethal.” I would certainly say some of our group were switching off as we could gradually see a cobbled road appearing at the bottom of the hill. I’m surprised I held on as my trainers had poor grip leading to me twisting my ankles countless times. We arrived on the road and just cheered and cheered, jubilant that we had come through alive from our brush with death. We walked down the road a little, saw some big houses and asked some directions and it was the best Uber ride back knowing everything had turned out OK….

I spent 10 days in Rio and this was just one afternoon!!! To read the full post and the rest of my blog, Avenida Brasil, be sure to check it out at https://bloggingnobrasil.wordpress.com

Até mais e grande abraço!