ROAD TO RIO
The Olympic Games kick off next month in Rio de Janeiro, a city that mixes revived heritage districts with Carioca charm.
Always ready for a party, Rio de Janeiro is about to host its biggest festa yet. The Olympic Games kick off next month in a city that mixes bold new design, revived heritage districts and laid-back Carioca charm, writes Alexandra Forbes.
TheRio that the world will see during the Olympic Games is surprisingly, sometimes jarringly, different from the fantasy Rio of postcards and movies. Though Brazil’s most picturesque city will always deliver scenes of beaches packed with bronzed locals and dramatic vistas of sea, city towers and forested mountains, it now boasts new promenades and starchitect-designed museums, bike paths and hotels.
“The transformation hasn’t been homogenous,” says Vik Muniz, a Rio resident and high-profile artist. “But that would’ve been impossible in a city of six million. What matters is that parts like the old downtown have been given a big revamp and the new museums are top-notch.”
The new Rio de Janeiro, made over at enormous cost to host the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games next month, is much more complex than the old stereotypes. City and state authorities have invested heavily in infrastructure, including a subway line linking the city’s north-eastern beaches to its south-western beaches, adding six new stations to the grid. There are new sports venues, including Rio’s first golf course, and Maracanã, one of the world’s biggest soccer stadiums and venue of the opening ceremony, has had an extensive overhaul. Beyond the sports obsession, there has been significant public and private investment in new galleries and museums. International hotel chains, too, have gathered en masse in Rio, triggering a flurry of openings and nearly doubling the number of hotel rooms in the city in the past three years.
Several neighbourhoods have been spruced up, some beyond recognition – most notably Centro, the once unsafe and crumbling old downtown quarter, and its adjacent docks. Rio’s charismatic mayor, Eduardo Paes, is particularly proud of its transformation. “We knocked down a five kilometrelong elevated expressway, which ran along the coastline and isolated residents from the sea, the culprit of decades of urban degradation.”
It made way for a public waterfront park and promenade, Praça Visconde de Mauá, and two world-class museums. Crowds flocked to MAR (Museu de Arte do Rio) when it opened in 2013, and they grew exponentially (as did the queues) when the adjacent Museu do Amanhã (Museum of Tomorrow) opened in December. The seaside complex instantly became a tourist attraction on a par with Rio’s classic landmarks, the Christ the Redeemer statue and Sugarloaf Mountain.
While Olympic events will be staged in venues around the city, most of the action will centre on Olympic City, a huge complex in the satellite town of Jacarepaguá, just west of Rio. That area, much like Rio’s old downtown, has been entirely transformed by the construction of venues for the Olympics.
Those with tickets to sporting events are best advised to stay at hotels near Olympic City, such as the Grand Mercure Riocentro, to avoid spending hours in cabs. Even when traffic is flowing well, the drive from the Olympic park to central locations such as Ipanema Beach can take up to 90 minutes. Another advantage of staying near Olympic City is its proximity to Prainha, one of Rio’s most beautiful beaches. A favourite among surfers and starlets seeking privacy, “it has the best waves and the most beautiful scenery”, says Pedro Scooby, a high-profile surf pro and big-wave rider.
He’s often spotted here with his wife, actress Luana Piovani, and their three children.
In colourful contrast are Rio’s famous downtown beaches: Copacabana, a favourite among foreigners and suburban dwellers, and its more upscale neighbours Ipanema and Leblon. Weightlifters and footvolley players share sand space with sun-worshipping crowds, while vendors selling bikinis, suntan lotion and temporary tattoos crisscross the sand shouting sales pitches. On weekends, when the beaches reach full capacity, one lane of the beachfront avenues is closed to traffic and filled instead by joggers, cyclists and parents pushing strollers, fringed by a kaleidoscope of bodies, umbrellas, drink stands and beach chairs.
Beach-going best defines Cariocas, as Rio residents are known. Each crowd tends to hang at a different part of the beach, usually identified by “postos”, numbered lifeguard stations. The teen to twenty-something crowd light up their joints around Ipanema’s Posto 9; the families, nannies and toddlers gather at Leblon’s Posto 12. The cool crowd, including young soap stars and the city’s fashionistas, congregate just north of Posto 10. Many will spend long days swimming, playing beach games and snacking on skewers of coalho cheese and polvilho crackers sold by roving vendors, and drinking coconut water and beer sold at makeshift stands, which also rent beach chairs and offer showers.
Known for being more easy-going and informal than residents of São Paulo, the nation’s rich metropolis to the south, Cariocas tend to shun overt luxury. Only>