Rio de Janeiro (3 of 4)

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Dauro was thrilled to see me and dragged me immediately off to his house. Getting into his house was no mean feat and even Tom Cruise would have thought twice about it. Dauro had a bunch of keys about the size of my backpack and worked them in the various locks with a degree of proficiency that I was never to achieve. Within two minutes we were sitting in his apartment admiring the view - the quickest I ever managed with the keys was something closer to a few hours. 'How was the trip? Long? You must be tired, oh well never mind, let's go out now on the town. We have wasted far too much valuable drinking time already.'

Although Dauro is not a carioca (according to linguists, the term Carioca, as locals call themselves, is not derived from the word Rio, as in carioca. It is actually a Tupi Indian term kara'i oca, roughly meaning, "white house", or "house of whites". That's how the Indians called the houses built by the Portuguese. For some reason, eventually the Portuguese started thinking of themselves as Cariocas), he shares their almost devotional love of beer, which to me seems a perfectly rational attitude to adopt especially if you are forced to travel by taxi in Rio (I have a similar view of life in Argentina, but beer is never strong enough after a rush hour taxi drive in downtown Buenos Aires).

Forty five minutes later we bounced off a bus in the wildly dangerous looking and decadent neighbourhood of Arco do Tales. It was a maze of winding, cobbled streets packed with bars, music and strobing lights. It was not that there was an inherent tension in the air, just that there was just a great potential for something to happen. We dodged around beefy doorman and signs which read: entrance 8 R$, consumption 20 R$ - special price for women and Happy Hour every night.

It was like Covent Garden for adults, everyone had a hustle and if you didn't then somewhere along the line you had gone badly wrong. Even the ubiquitous street kids were in on the act and had boxes wrapped in Christmas paper which they were shaking for change, 'Hey mister Gringo, want to be my Santa Claus?' One particularly dirty little girl, who looked like she had stepped straight out of Dickens took a shine to my shaved head and followed me through the streets rubbing greasy fingers over my head till Dauro shooed her away with a kindly word. Drunk men in designer suits swaggered around eyeing the mini skirted girls whilst transvestites in sheer, see-through dresses played the crowd with humour, if not grace.

We eventually found a table and a willing waiter. Cold beers started to appear with frightening regularity. Some friends arrived. I was now feeling exhausted, hungry and more than anything wanted to go home. To go to the toilet I had to explain to an over developed bouncer in my desperately poor Portuguese that I didn't really want to enter the club, just use the bathroom. He made me repeat myself several times; I could see in his eyes that he found my pleadings amusing. The club was packed from wall to wall with hot, sweaty, beautiful people all grinding their hips to Madonna, drinking beer and living the fabled hedonistic carioca lifestyle - I was too exhausted to care. Rio is famous for its frantic pace of life - each day feels like the end of the world with everyone trying to squeeze extra minutes out of an already stretched day. I just felt tired. We cruised from bar to restaurant to bar to snack bar till it all became one alcoholic fuelled binge and events began to blur into one long party.

Very early the next day, with only a small hangover, we rushed to the airport to meet my girlfriend. The sun was just beginning to make its way towards the peak of Pao de Acucar as we rushed to find the bus stop and pick up a bunch of flowers. The mountain, back-lit by the first rays of the sun looked like a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and I kept expecting alien space ships to whizz past us. Stranger things have happened in Rio I am told and we were so busy gazing at the magnificent view that we nearly missed the bus - which would have been a disaster as Saskia had already predicted that we would forget to meet her. We had to chase the bus for two blocks before we finally got it to stop and let us climb on board.

The ride out to the ultra-modern airport was lovely. We screamed by (at typical carioca velocity) past great architectural triumphs of buildings which would have not looked out of place in Paris or Vienna, a huge derelict warehouse earmarked for the site of the new Guggenheim museum, and even a navel shipyard where we could just make out the black hulls of submarines glistening in the early morning tropical sun. It was paradise personified for me - all the bustle of the city within a palm fronded framework of hedonism. You could imagine this as being the preferred holiday resort of immortals.

We arrived with plenty of time to kill and sat complacently eating Pao de Queijo and drinking coffee waiting for the flight to arrive. Of course, we were in the wrong terminal and when we arrived, breathless from running the length of the surprisingly long airport to the other terminal, Saskia was already sitting there wearing an 'I told you so' look on her face. The birthday flowers cheered her up and once we were in a taxi and heading across town all was forgiven. It's difficult to be anything but scared in a Rio taxi.

Later that day we took a bus across town to one of Rio's most enduring landmarks. Brazil may not be Rio and Rio may not be Brazil, but the statue of Christ the Redeemer, which looks like it's about to bungee jump down onto the city from the summit of Corcovado, is most definitely Rio and essential to everyone who visits the city. Some people say that Christ has a melancholic expression on his face as he looks down on to the city that typifies both the epitome and decay of the urban dream. Personally, I feel the look is one of awe and I challenge anyone not to feel similarly as they stand high above the city and look down on its heaving, sun baked streets.

Read all four parts of Rio de Janeiro

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four



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