Throughout the two-month trip I took to South America, I heard about none of the countries I would soon visit more than Brazil. This began immediately after I crossed the equator.
When I arrived at my hostel in Lima, a couple was working out the cost of heading to Rio last-minute for Carnaval and whether or not the cost they incurred would be worth it. After determining that each one-way plane ticket would cost $500 and that a simple hostel dorm bed would cost $80 per-person, per-night, they quickly came to a “Yes” consensus. Brazil, I would frequently hear, was extremely expensive — but extremely well worth it.
Indeed, most of the travelers I met along the way had already been to Brazil — and each was keen to offer his own lengthy, descriptive commentary. As you can imagine, this led me to set many specific expectations for what the country would be like.
After entering Brazil via its border with Argentina, I hopped immediately onto a 17-hour bus bound for São Paulo, the largest city both in Brazil and the entire southern hemisphere. The majority of travelers I spoke with had negative things to say about São Paulo, although most of them had never been. Rather, they’d avoided the city — and advised me to do the same — based on hearsay that it was dangerous, dirty and devoid of anything to do or see. This is patently false. My first rebuttal: this stunning view from the top of the BANESPA building, São Paulo’s answer to the Empire State Building. Unlike that landmark’s observation deck, however, you can visit the one atop BANESPA free of charge.
I was lucky enough to experience São Paulo with the help of my Brazilian friend Valmir, who showed me parts of the city that I can conclude, without a doubt, the jaded backpackers who urged me not to visit had simply missed. The art and culture capital of Brazil, São Paulo is literally overflowing with creative expression. The Galeria Melissa, pictured above, is an outdoor art exhibit located near Avenida Paulista, the city’s grandest boulevard. When I visited, it was adorned with a mural made entirely of Post-It notes.
The largest of the city’s dozens of art museums, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (or MASP, for short), is a work of art in and of itself. The base of the building that houses the museum, which is stilted, beautifully frames the portion of the city that exists behind it to pedestrians and motorists who pass the museum, which sits directly on Avenida Paulista. Coupled with the ground beneath, where locals and tourists alike congregate and enjoy panoramic views of the city, it creates a visual effect not unlike that of a movie shown in widescreen.
I arrived on a weekend, which is part of why Valmir was able to guide me through as much of the city as he was. When he returned to work Monday morning, I took to the streets alone. I was shocked at how docile and unaffected by my presence the vast majority of locals seemed — by the accounts of other who’d visited the city, I should’ve been mugged the moment I set foot outside, if not for my light hair and blue eyes because of the professional camera that was hanging around my neck. As this photo of a crosswalk adjacent to the city’s historical Mercado Municipal shows, São Paulo’s streets are dominated by people far too busy living their own lives to be concerned with what tourists are doing.
The night before I left São Paulo, I drank heavily and barely slept. Call it a coping mechanism — I fell completely in love with the city and couldn’t bear to leave it under sober circumstances. As a result, I arrived in Rio de Janeiro too fatigued to do anything but lie on the beach, including take pictures. To make up for my laziness, I woke up right at sunrise my second morning in the city and headed immediately to the beach, where relics of the previous night’s festivities, such as this rose, were strewn.
Most of the people I met who’d visited Rio advised me to stay in Ipanema, the southernmost and apparently nicest of the city’s two main beach strips (the other being Copacabana). I ended up staying in Leblon, located at the southern end of Ipanema, which was even ritzier — and, consequently, more sterile — than Ipanema proper. Traveling mostly by foot allowed me to partially overlook the district’s seeming soullessness, usually when I came upon pieces of creative street graffiti such as this one.
In spite of how beautiful Rio’s beaches were, I grew tired of how unconcerned most of the other people lying on them seemed with anything but getting noticed — and, ultimately, getting laid. Sadly, I found that this shallow hedonism characterized much of the city’s most-celebrated areas, which led me to become slightly jaded with it. Thankfully, my local friend Felipe spent an afternoon introducing me to the city’s lesser-visited downtown area, which was decidedly more interesting than what I’d seen previously. Among the characters I encountered during our stroll was a man on a bike, who had a banner raised above his head that warned onlookers of the May 21 apocalypse that never ended up happening.
Convinced I would be just as disappointed with it as I was with all the other parts of the city previous visitors had overhyped, I’d initially planned to skip climbing Corcovado, the huge mountain where the iconic Christ the Redeemer stands. Felipe, however, insisted that this particular tourist trap was an exception to the usual rule. Consequently, I decided to bite the bullet and make the trip on my last day in Brazil, which was also the last I would spend in South America. The trek up (I couldn’t bear to pay the R$36 one-way train fare) took about two hours and provided increasingly more-panoramic views of the city as I rose in elevation, including many of its infamous favela slums. When I arrived at the top, I found myself far more interested in the hordes of gringos mimicking JC’s “arms out” pose than I did the actual statue. Indeed, the scene succinctly illustrated the juxtaposition of what I found Brazil to embody with the testimony many travelers had given me: An incredible place largely obstructed by idiots projecting their own views onto it. Likewise, the views I’ve expressed in this photo essay are merely my own. Go to Brazil and form your own — I implore you.
Robert Schrader is a travel writer and photographer who’s been roaming the world independently since 2005, writing for publications such as “CNNGo” and “Shanghaiist” along the way. His blog, Leave Your Daily Hell, provides a mix of travel advice, destination guides and personal essays covering the more esoteric aspects of life as a traveler.
