RIO A CITY, A STATE & A STATE OF MIND
Beyond the familiar Copacabana and Carnival are time-capsule villages, nature trails and littleknown African tales. By Chris Leadbeater
On the corner of Rua Argemiro Bulcao in the Little Africa district of Rio de Janeiro, a painting of Zumbi dos Palmares adorns the wall. His neck bulges with muscle, and his eyes assess the viewer with a precision that feels all the more remarkable for the fact that he died more than 300 years ago. Such is the skill with which his image has been recreated, that this mighty man — one of the resistance leaders of African slaves against their Portuguese “masters” in 17th-century Brazil and one of the founders of the network of quilombos (small settlements of brave souls who had escaped their bondage, which formed in the interior) — looks as alive in mural guise in 2019 as he did at the peak of his influence, in the 1680s. To my shame, I do not know who he is.
Thankfully, Damiana Silva does. She leads me across the road and into restaurant Bodega do Sal, where another set of faces is printed on the plaster. Heitor dos Prazeres, Dona
Ivone Lara, João de Baiana, Alfredo “Pixinguinha” da Rocha Viana Jr — 20thcentury Afro-Brazilian pioneers of the samba music that is forever associated with the city.
“They were the first generation of free black musicians in Rio,” Damiana says. “They are the descendants of slaves from Bahia but were born in this city. They were shaped by this city. And they shaped it.”
We are less than 3km from the enormous Sambodromo, where this most hip-shaking of musical genres is acclaimed every February amid the glitter of Carnival.
But we are more than 12km north of Copacabana Beach. It might as well be 700 for all the part that Little Africa plays in the popular tourist perception of this metropolis of sand, sun, soccer and sex. The statue of Christ the Redeemer and the grand outline of Sugarloaf Mountain are similarly distant, and could just as well be on different continents.
I am trying to see beyond this postcard — not just to less recognised areas of what is a vast conurbation of 12 million inhabitants, but to the untold tales, the tree line and the urban concrete beyond.
HER NAME IS RIO
For Rio de Janeiro is not just a city. It is also — as is often overlooked — a state, one of 26 such zones into which Brazil is divided. True, it is the third smallest of these enclaves — but it is also, at 43,695km², the size of Denmark. Much of it lies swaddled by the thick foliage and the heavy humidity of the Atlantic rainforest.
I am exploring the state with TravelLocal, a company that connects tourists with local agencies and experts on the ground. Hence my morning with Silva, of tour specialist Rio Encantos, who picks me up at my Botafogo hotel in an Uber, but spirits me swiftly back to former centuries.
There are more echoes as we stroll Little Africa — a statue, on Largo de Sao Francisco da Prainha, of Mercedes Baptista, an AfroBrazilian ballerina whose style of dance, infused with candomblé, broke moulds; a museum, on Rua Camerino, devoted to Tia Ciata, a Bahian woman who became one of the pillars of the area in the 1910s, helping to fund funerals for the poor.
THOSE WRETCHED GHOSTS
Not all the flashbacks are positive. Adjacent, the ruined Valongo Wharf was the site where, by 1831, as many as a million slaves had been dragged ashore. Nearby, the Institute of Research and New Black Memory wears its horrified expression openly. Restoration of the building in 1996 uncovered the “graves” of those who did not survive the voyage from Angola and were dumped at the dock; in one case, now cradled under illuminated glass, the skeleton of a 12-year-old girl.
These wretched ghosts stay with me into the evening, along the port avenue of
Boulevard Olimpico (hugely renovated for the 2016 Olympics), and into the bright lights and busy eateries of Lapa.
They linger with me into the next day, too, as I leave town and go north — from sea level to an altitude of 871m in just 90km. Now a city of 180,000 people, Teresopolis was the site of a quilombo in the 18th century. I find myself imagining its escapees battling the gradient, treading the damp trails — long before the railway that would make the journey easier in 1908 (or the highway in 1958).
My own ascent gives me a hint as to the state’s geography — and the existence of its high plateau, which rises almost immediately inland. This point is underscored by the Serra dos Órgãos National Park, on Teresopolis’s outskirts.
IN A NATIONAL PARK
The Postcard Trail within it lets me continue my climb, on foot, past tabebuia trees and pink-flowering tibouchinas, to a viewpoint that reveals a ridge every bit as epic as that which frames Corcovado. Each of the spines o rock that pierces the sky here has an evocative name — Dedo de Deus (God’s Finger), Cabeca de Peixe (Fish Head), Capucho do Frade (Friar’s Cowl), Nariz do Frade (Friar’s Nose). Rio is visible far below, Guanabara Bay a broad puddle of blue at its back.
I have this vista to myself. But when I return to the gates of the national park, the scene is livelier. A phalanx of bikers, tempted up the switchback road, has set up camp at Caldo de Cana da Adriana. The titular Adriana flits between the tables, dispensing the beakers of sugar-cane juice that the name of her café promises.
It is a warm Saturday morning and the statue on the adjacent roundabout is dressed for the weather — Teresa Cristina, the mother of the Brazilians, after whom the city was christened (in 1891), is brandishing a parasol.
Her stint at the country’s top table (18311889) was a boom time for a nation that had just divorced itself from Portugal. European immigrants — Italians, Germans, Swiss — crossed the ocean in numbers, lured by hope and opportunity, swelling the populations not just of what would develop into Teresopolis, but of its neighbours Petropolis and Nova Friburgo.
Echoes of this era are manifold — a statue, outside Teresopolis town hall, of George March, a British-Portuguese outrider who founded a farm in the area in 1821; the
Casa da Memoria — a small museum that displays photos of the railway line that
was ripped up almost as soon as the highway arrived.
Brewery Vila St Gallen takes a more 21st-century approach to gazing backwards, celebrating the city’s Swiss heritage by pouring out its punchy beers in a complex that approximates an Alpine village (complete with chapel).
This strand of lineage is given more focus 56km to the east, outside Nova Friburgo — where the Casa Suica analyses the struggles faced by Swiss immigrants who sailed southwest for a fresh start (not least a voyage in 1819 on which 400 out of a total 2,006 passengers, on seven ships, died).
The museum tells its stories at the side of the RJ-130 road, which is marketed as the TereFri Circuit, due to the number of intriguing pitstops found on its camber. Closer to Teresopolis, the Sobrado José Francisco Lippi salutes an Italy-born businessman and the way of life he brought with him in the early 20th century (partly via the forlorn poems his girlfriend, Catarinella, left back in Europe, sent to him).
EXPLORING THE SHORELINE
By contrast, Rancho G feels wholly Brazilian — locals devouring Sunday lunch at tables laid out around the farmhouse of this family estate. Owner Gilson Lima proffers bowls of pork stew, his land so fertile that avocados, seemingly numerous, wait ungathered on the paths.
If this makes me dream that I am lost in a garden of Eden, then I also know I must leave. For it would be remiss to ignore the shoreline of a state that is so feted for it — bracing a 636km shoulder against the Atlantic’s insistence.
My transfer west along it silences the final traces of Rio’s clamour and cacophony, the day becoming increasingly peaceful through the town of Mangaratiba, and the port of Angra dos Reis, where ferries cast off for the leafshrouded outpost of Ilha Grande — which was declared a Unesco site in July.
A TOWN LOST IN TIME
Paraty, at my journey’s end, shares this new World Heritage status. It is not difficult to see why — although it can also be hard to believe that it occupies the same stretch of seafront as Brazil’s second-largest city. But then, it developed in solitude — founded by Portuguese colonists in 1597 and given its raison d’être in 1696, when gold was discovered in Minas Gerais. Initially, the export route ran south to Paraty’s harbour, and the good times rolled.
But when a new trail was cut to the burgeoning Rio in the mid-18th century, the town was left marooned. A proper road from the state capital would not be finished until the ’70s.
Even now, Paraty clings to its halcyon age. Its original kernel remains unpaved; mud sticks to my soles as I negotiate my way across its rough stones. The whitewashed church of Nossa Senhora dos Remedios looks completely unaware that the 17th century has ended, as it rears over Praca da Matriz. Falling asleep in the walled courtyard of Pousada do Ouro, I feel as if I’m laying down my head on history.
But life goes on. Tucked into the north side of town, chef Flavia Alves’s home doubles as her restaurant, Quintal de Mae — a culinary hotspot where she offers lessons in a style of cuisine that splices African and Brazilian traditions. I join her in her kitchen — the buzz of the generator in my ears as her three-yearold son watches cartoons in the next room — to learn how to cook a moqueca loaded with fish, and acaraje dumplings filled with shrimp.
I need the carbohydrate hit because the next day will be an odyssey of sorts. Not that Jeferson Lobato Fernandes, my guide, is anything less than relaxed when I meet him at the coach station. A Paulistano by birth, but a Rio resident until five years ago, he moved to Paraty with his wife and young daughter seeking a gentler pace of existence.
“Rio is a city for parties and late nights,” he smiles. “But we weren’t doing that anymore. Paraty offers a calm and quality of life that we need at the moment.”
WHERE CHAMPIONS TRAIN
We bounce 16km down the road, on a bus seemingly bereft of suspension, to the hamlet of Paraty-Mirim, where a beach nuzzles the water and a bar clicks to the uncapping of beer bottles. But we aren’t stopping here. We hop into a boat for a right turn into Saco do Mamangua — a tropical fjord that bites into the landscape for 8km.
We will decant again, into kayaks. We have to, because the southern end of the inlet is mired in mangrove swamps. The only way to explore it is with a paddle in hand.
This isolation has benefits. The fjord has retained its soul — as home to eight communities of indigenous Brazilians. So it is that, once Jeferson and I have steered our way to a small waterfall hidden among lowhanging trees, we fix our prows against the tide and paddle hard to reach the microscopic settlement of Regato — which lies concealed at the back of the bay.
Here, a single family goes about its business amid boat workshops and nets — but the main house is open for lunch. Gracinha, the matriarch, brings us platters of fried fish, and glasses of juice squeezed from the limes on the boughs. Here, I am 275km from Copacabana but this is still Rio de Janeiro — pure, persuasive and far beyond the crowd.
Teresopolis’s image as a refuge from the turbulence and heat of Rio de Janeiro has ebbed into the 21st century, and into perhaps the most eulogised facet of the national soul. Since 1987, the city has been home to the training centre for the Brazilian men’s international football team.
Granja Comary occupies 14ha of land on the south side of the centre, and has been the starting point for some of the side’s more recent successes. Preparations for the nation’s victories at the World Cups of 1994 and 2002 were conducted at the complex.
What is remarkable is that, in an era where football is a major global business, the site is effectively accessible to the public. While not officially open to guests, it is in a part of the city where Teresopolitans go to relax, on the shore of Lake Comary. Visitors can walk the adjacent Avenida Hercilio Ferreira dos Santos, which leads to the gate, and look at the practice pitches — where Neymar might just be doing shooting drills.