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Flying Down to Rio
by Mary
McHugh
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When I told people
I was going to Rio last month, they said, “It’s beautiful!” Then
they said, “But be careful. Hold on to your purse.” So I
was a little worried when I flew off to Rio, but I’m used to New
York where I hang on to my purse but don’t really get anxiety
attacks. I’ve worked and lived in New York at various stages
of my life for 50 years, and the worst thing that ever happened
to me was the time a homeless man reached over the hedge of an
outdoor restaurant and grabbed my cheeseburger.
But when I got to Rio I was immediately reassured as we drove
past one of the beautiful beaches that stretch for 50 miles along
the coast of the city. There, working out in immaculate
blue and white shorts and shirts were 200 of Brazil’s finest young
men training for their jobs as 'tourist police,' an innovation
started in 1994. These men are stationed throughout the city at
places most frequented by tourists, and the crime rate has gone
down, along with the anxiety of citizens and tourists.
My anxiety level was zero as I cruised through the Hippie Fair
(their flea market) on Sunday morning checking out tables and
booths where you could buy purses, sandals, paintings, sculptures,
jewelry, scarves, rugs, and all the other stuff you usually find
at flea markets, and took only the ordinary precaution of wearing
my purse across my chest instead of at my side. I had a great
time.
 It
didn’t hurt that our group of seven journalists was staying at
the Copacabana Hotel on the Copacabana beach. This glorious
old hotel, built in 1923, was the only place to stay in the 40s
and 50s, when every movie star and VIP came to Rio. In fact,
it’s still the only place to stay for President and Mrs.
Clinton and Ricky Martin, but I really don’t care about
them. I wanted to hear stories about Marlene Dietrich who
asked for a champagne bucket filled with sand in her dressing
room because her dress was too tight to use the regular ladies
room, and Ava Gardner who trashed her room and wept oceans
of salty tears at the Copacabana Palace after her break-up with
Frank Sinatra, and Lana Turner who nearly had a breakdown there
when she read that Howard Hughes was marrying Jean Peters when
she thought she was going to be the bride, and Orson Welles who
threw the furniture from his hotel room into the swimming pool
after a fight with Dolores Del Rio, or the Prince of Wales who
got seriously drunk and tried to catch fish in the fountain. Carmen
Miranda loved the Copacabana and there is even a Carmen Miranda
Museum nearby where you can see her fruit basket hats, 6-inch
platform shoes, and outrageous earrings and bracelets. It’s just
a tiny little museum, but it will bring back memories of all those
musicals with Betty Grable and Cesar Romero made in the 40’s,
always with a chica-chica-boom-chic by our vivacious Carmen.
 I
stayed in a suite, with a beautiful living room with a balcony,
a huge bedroom and a lavish bath. I swam in an Olympic-size pool.
I discovered the Brazilian drink called caipirinha made
with cachaca, (a sugar cane liquor), lemon and sugar, which
tastes like a more interesting marguerita. I dined in the Copacabana’s
elegant Cipriani
restaurant with incredible food like quail stuffed with foie
gras, partridge with acerola fruit sauce, ravioli filled with
ricotta cheese with a wild mushroom sauce, and Venetian Tiramisu
and Almonds tuille and ate Brazilian delicacies at the
amazing buffet in their more informal restaurant, the Pergola.
My room looked out on the Copacabana beach just across the
street from the hotel where cariocas (people who live in
Rio) walk around in thongs and perfect tans, and tourists stroll
by in shorts and regular bathing suits and try not to stare at
the cariocas in thongs. The beach, like all the beaches
in Rio is wide and beautiful and you can find surf to your liking
all along the coast. If you go there, hire a car and driver (about
$100 a day, and it’s worth it because you could really get lost
if you tried to rent a car on your own) and ride up to Grumari
to have lunch outside at the Point of Grumari restaurant, where
you can see the Barra da Tijuca beach, eat giant shrimp and drink
ice-cold Chopp beer.
 On
the way back, stop at the Casa do Pontal, a
wonderful museum of Brazilian folk art, with little clay figures
depicting everyday occupations, birth, death, children, old people,
and a special erotica room with a door to keep children out, with
glass cases filled with Brazilians doing the naughtiest things
you could ever imagine, and of course, we took the most notes
in that room. There are also wonderful displays that play music,
show people walking tightropes, and riding in the Mardi
Gras, when you push a button. Children would love this.
(Just keep them far away from the erotica room.)
One evening we took a cable car to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain
at sunset, and for once we were quiet. We stood looking out over
Rio as the lights began to come on, watching the sky turn
from rose to lavender to deep red and orange. It is an experience
you should not miss. Nor should you miss the train
ride to the top of Corcovado, where the 115-foot statue of
Christ towers over the city with arms outstretched to embrace
all us sinners below. At night, the statue is illuminated
and you can see it from all points in the city, a white figure
that seems to float above Rio. Religious or not, you cannot help
but be moved by this statue. One man a couple of years ago
was moved to sneak up Corcovado in the middle of the night and
parachute off one of Christ’s hands, but most people treat the
statue with reverence.
Another day, we ate an authentic feijoada lunch at Confeitaria
Colombo, a gorgeous turn of the century bistro with huge Belgian
mirrors in hardwood frames, rosewood cases, and a stained glass
ceiling to die for. At the buffet in the center of the room,
you pile your plate with pig’s tails, pig’s ears, pig’s feet,
pig’s insides, and beans, beans, beans. You will know you have
eaten.
We had dinner the next night in a traditional barbecue house
called Marius-Leme, next to windows open to the world and ate
food from a buffet with Brazilian foods, salads and fruits, and
then waiters came to your table with large haunches of beef and
pork and sausage and sliced off superbly barbecued pieces of meat.
If you’re a vegetarian, don’t worry about all this meat. There
are always large platters of vegetables and fruit, which are fresh
and delicious.
But probably the most fun was the night we went to a Macumba
ritual. You walk into a room where women in white are dancing
barefoot to drumbeats, swaying, their eyes closed, until one or
another goes into a sort of trance, falling on the floor and being
helped to the side by another woman in white. When they have recovered,
but are still in a trance-like state, they light up a cigar and
counsel people who line up to speak to them to find out what will
happen to them in the future, to talk to relatives who have died,
to ask for help with a problem. It is very seductive, and
if you let yourself be open to the experience, you feel
the drumbeats go through your body down to your toes. My fellow
journalists were a little skeptical about all this, but I happen
to be one of the world’s most suggestible people - I once had
a baby under hypnosis - so I entered into this rich and occult
experience and felt slightly changed when I went back out into
the pleasant seventy-degree air that is normal for Brazilian winters.
(We were there in June.)
Now you know and I know that poverty is a constant presence
in Rio, as well as many other South American cities, and when
you see the slums that line the beaches in many parts of Rio,
you cannot ignore the plight of many people in the city. But
money from tourism provides jobs, and if you can rationalize the
vast gap between the haves and have-nots in this way, you will
love this city of exclamation points - the Copacabana! Sugarloaf!
Corcovado! Macumba! the Samba! Carmen Miranda!
For more information about the Copacabana Palace and Rio, call toll
free 800-211-533; or check out their home page: http://www.copacabanapalace.orient-express.com.
Mary McHugh is the
author of seven books, the most recent of which is "Special
Siblings: Growing Up With Someone With a Disability,"
a memoir about growing up with her brother Jack who has cerebral
palsy and mental retardation. Mary worked for The New York Times
for eight years as a writer, researcher and copy editor. She was
an articles editor at several national magazines and a contributing
editor to Cosmopolitan. Her story, "Telling Jack," which was published
in the "Hers" column of The New York Times Magazine, was
nominated for an award for best personal essay by the American
Society of Journalists and Authors. Her Good Housekeeping article,
"Loving Jack," was nominated for an award by the American Society
of Magazine Editors. She is now working on a book on long-term
marriages and another book about her daughter Kyle. You can
E-mail Mary with questions,
additions to her survey or questions.
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©2000 Mary McHugh
for SeniorWomenWeb |
