For my own personal travels I had tended to shy away from Rio, as I believed that any place that so many people consistently raved about would have nothing of interest to me - far too fake and touristy, I thought. I was also sick of people in Europe thinking that Brazil was Rio (and conversely Rio was Brazil) and I didn't want to propagate these ideas further. But after a year in Brazil and constant advice from my colleagues in the North East not to go there and after reading sufficient Machado de Assis, I decided that enough was enough and bought a bus ticket there for the two-day trip from Fortaleza to Rio. If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing the hard way.

In the year of 1502 André Gonçalves slipped out of Portugal on a very secret mission. His ultimate aim was to confirm the existence of the fabled land that Pedro Alvares Cabral claimed he had discovered (reportedly by accident, as he'd been sent on an expedition to India) a few years earlier. Gonçalves found, perhaps by chance, the bay today known as Guanabara, which he mistook for the mouth of a mighty river. River being Rio, in Portuguese and the month being January (Janeiro) he brightly concluded: Rio de Janeiro! The name stuck and today perhaps it is one of the most evocative and famous cities in the world.

Some historians claim that the first building in Rio de Janeiro was built in an area known today as Flamango. Nothing much came out of it though, and the Portuguese, typically, did not give much importance to their finding for awhile. This changed when the French decided to set their cloven foot there in 1555 with Admiral Villegaignon, who landed to found the superbly named Antarctic France, a colony of French Calvinists.

The Portuguese were not very happy with this idea and thus sent Mem de Sá who, according to legend, managed to expel the French in a mere two days. He left Rio and sailed back home, quite sure he had taught everybody a lesson. He should have known better, though. The tropical beaches and welcoming climate had left too much of a good impression on the French, as they have on many modern day visitors, and they soon came back for more. In 1564, Estacio de Sá (a nephew of Mem de Sá) was dispatched from Portugal. It took him a full two years, and much bloodshed, to finally get the area back into Portuguese hands.

Rio only started to grow faster in 1690, with the discovery of gold in neighbouring state of Minas Gerais. As the state was landlocked, Rio became the destination port of the expeditions, and suddenly started to attract unprecedented attention. The French attacked Rio in 1710, and again 1711, this time with a large fleet. Their endearing idea was to sack the city, and extract a ransom. Both times they were repelled - as should always be done with the French - and the city began to grow in importance and wealth.

Rio eventually became the second capital of Brazil, after Salvador in Bahia. During the early nineteenth century when Europe was being ravaged by Napoleon, Dom João VI, the Portuguese monarch, packed up and fled with his wife and the whole court to Rio. This increased the city population from 50,000 to 65,000 in one year, and 70,000 by the next. Although the Portuguese royalty was not exactly a model of sophistication, they did bring with them civilized habits, like using silverware and lavish court entertainment. Other habits, like taking regular baths, were still regarded as something that only the Indians would do. Locals did their best to please the sovereign, and taking advantage of this, Dom João VI often paid his debts by giving nobility titles or awards. These were heady times, which Machado de Assis captured so well.

However, Dom João never really took to life in the tropics and as soon as things quieted down he moved back to Portugal leaving his son, Pedro, in charge of things. This same Pedro would later declare the country independent and cause his father considerable pains when he declared himself Emperor. Aside from a few obvious flaws he was a good emperor, but quite a ladies man. His extra-marital affairs were common knowledge (Marquesa de Santos became almost as famous as his wife, Austrian-born Empress Leopoldina). He brought about major improvements to the city with access to gaslights, plumbing, a sewage system, telephone, telegraph and a railway linking the city to the State of Minas Gerais.

The first Republic was born with a military coup in 1889 led by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca and Rio remained the capital of Brazil until the year of 1960, when President Juscelino Kubitschek (JK to his friends) inaugurated what was his dream vision of a model capital (I hate to think what his nightmares were like). The federal district was then transferred to Brasilia, a city oddly shaped like an airplane. Today, however, Rio remains the cultural capital of the country and, perhaps, of South America itself.

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