Daily Deadlock

Some time ago it rained a bit. When leaving work I had the option to take a taxi, and I did. I will not make the same mistake another time in a rainy day...

To explain, this is Rio:

In this area there are around 15 million people. And every day, we all need to go to work.

Now, we have two main areas, the rich zones in the south(inside the red areas) and the poor zones in the north:

The poor zones tend to start working earlier,  and they basically go to work to provide services in the rich zones:

The rich zones work concentrates in the centre,  where there is a lot of offices. The centre is considered to be only this:

Now, the thing about Rio is that, do you see these green marked areas? Those are mountains.

And I mean mountains. The green right area's highest point is 700m. In the coast there are 350m and 500m mountains. Basically they sprout from the ground and get high fast, giving Rio this peculiar look:

So, if you check the map again, you'll notice that most central and rich areas are actually surrounded by mountains. As in completely surrounded. No chance in hell to make a superhighway connecting them.

So, we get tunnels or "valleys" of two lanes in each direction. Mostly in these points:

Of course, we cannot forget people coming from other cities to work, which have these entry points too:

Now, check what's the subway line available to help move all these people around these very closed areas with very specific and sparse entry points:

(this is an approximation of the subway, but you get the idea)

So basically most people need to take cars or buses. Of course the rich areas use cars, but the poor areas also have plenty of those.

This results in a daily clusterfuck of epic proportions. People in the south zone may take up to two hours to reach the centre, and 2 more to get back. If you do this in the middle of the night the route takes 20 minutes.

When it rains especially, seeing as how people clearly dissolve under the rain, people that maybe would walk a bit and take buses or metro in a clear day takes car or taxi.

The average time to go from the south rich area in the centre and the actual business centre is 2 hours during rush hour. Outside rush hour it's actually 20 minutes. And when it rains, you just better forget to take the car becasue then moving just from the business centre towards Zona Sul, where Copacabana is, can take already more than one hour....

Summer in Rio and Buzios

We're reaching the end of Summer in the south hemisphere, and I wanted to comment a few things.

First of all, Rio gets really really hot.

I commented before that in "Winter" we could already reach 30 degrees in the sun. However, that was Winter still.

In Summer, in the sun, it's closer to about 40-45.

However, since humans adapt to everything, we're already rather fine with the situation. When temperature goes back to 32 or around in the street, we can already tell that it's "fresh", or "not so bad today". And at night we consider them "cold" if it is less than 26.

Anyway, it does feels hot. And here the pool comes into action.

Let me tell you: It is fucking awesome.

Elay and my wife enjoy it almost every hot day, and I only go there during the weekends, but when the heat is almost unbearable, when the simplest task makes you sweat, being able to just submerge yourself and cool your body is great. Especially because I go to the pool from my apartment in my swimsuit, without needing to change, and in 2 minutes I can be back taking a shower. We pay more condominio than other people because of the pool, but it's totally worth it.

As a side effect, Elay has learned how to hold his breath underwater and how to swim with floaters (even if he doesn't speak any language that we understand). And we are developing a brownish skin tone as well, which maybe its not the healthiest thing, but it seems better than the nuclear "pc-screen-at-night glow" white that we usually have.

While all this was happening, we reached February, and the city went crazy. We were told, and it feels like this, that the new year only starts after Carnival, and it is a quite accurate description.

Offices closed earlier, and all buildings put extra protection against their glass to avoid accidents. Streets were cut, and crime rised worrisomely.

We missed the worst of it because we went to Buzios for 3 nights.

Buzios is a resort town in the lake  area east of Rio. It is not far in distance, but with the current infrastructure of roads it takes still 3 hours at least, if you do not find traffic jams. We found traffic jams and it took us quite longer to get there.

The place is a tourist area, full of little houses and hotels but with lots of greenery and space between them, and with plenty of Atlantic beaches. It reminded us of plenty of other resort areas we had visited. It had touches of Eivissa (not many people,a few small streets, you can always see a house or hotel around...), Adler (small streets with dirt, tacky souvenir shops, shady tours all around, physics-defying 5D cinemas...) or other typical resort/beach towns.

Our hotel was in a hill, 10 minutes away from a very big and calm beach. We were not very happy with it. It could have been great, but it was advertised as a 4 star hotel with several services, and it was not 4 stars and it didn't have those services. Going with lower expectations, we would have had no problems with it, but you cannot promise what you don't have and expect people to be happy.

It did have great views, an awesome pool and quite a calm atmosphere, that is true. We ended up going to the hotel pool most of the days (it had great views too), and walking for a bit in the centre at night, to have dinner.

We also went to the beach once, to mark it as "done", but we realised we don't enjoy beach that much. Especially a beach with no services like showers or toilets...but also the beach atmosphere was not that good. Tacky is the word to use again, a little bit like in Adler. The sand was awesome, though, very fine grains that felt quite good to step on (although we ended up with sand everywhere, another thing we don't enjoy). The water felt cold after being used to our building pool of 26-30 degrees, thanks to the sun, but we discovered Elay doesn't mind at all (to the point of craziness, because he was clearly cold but still running towards deeper water and getting mad when we had to grab him back and dry him).

Anyway, it was actually quite relaxing, in a "doing nothing" kind of way, having a beer from time to time, swimming and just relaxing far away from the city. The natural aspects of the area are awesome, with lots of exuberant vegetation, clean beaches and little hills and mountains for you to explore.

I don't know if we will return to this area (because with Elay there are not that many things to do for his age there, later on he could actually enjoy it), but we had 3 good nights there, and we managed to avoid the chaos that ensued in Rio during the carnival.

All in all, we're happy with the experience

Arrival to Rio

I've finally decided to write a little again, because we finally have two basic requirements: a permanent apartment, and our own internet connection.

So, we moved to Rio De Janeiro this August :) .

Our first impressions are mixed, as usual. Rio is a big city, with lots of people, lots of cars, lots of neighbourhoods. It’s a busy city, much bigger than Barcelona. It has lots of mountain ranges, lots of green areas, and lots of residential zones and places to walk around. It’s also a nice change from Adler, since we have more options of apartments, shops, and things to do in general. 

However, Rio also is a very dirty city, with greyish buildings, lack of efficient public transport, old constructions and styles…and there’s a lot of poverty around (no, we haven’t visited any favelas, but we have seen quite a lot of them from a distance), and it’s also less secure than Sochi or Barcelona.

People are really nice here. Most people are helpful and attentive, and they love children. Strangers usually stop in the street to say something to Elay, and everybody treats him quite nicely. Most people smile a lot when attending you. 

At the same time, traffic is terrible and aggressive. They don’t respect pedestrians like in Adler, while driving in a similar way that causes huge traffic jams. Motorbikes, meanwhile, ignore any type of rule, security or common sense and beep around as if that would be enough to get right of way.  Personalities change a lot when they are behind a vehicle…

The weather has been rather nice. You can see it is normal to have some clouds around and sometimes its rainy or stormy, but we arrived in the middle of “deep winter”, and that only meant that it was rainy and that temperatures went below 20° Celsius (even reaching 18° clearly a cold wave). When it’s sunny we easily reach 30°. That’s “Winter”. We don’t want to imagine “Summer”….At least, it seems it is not as humid as Singapore or other such regions...

The first month and a half was not the easiest period. We started in a temporary apartment, but it was booked just for a week. Then we had to move to a second temporary apartment, where we luckily stayed until we found our permanent one. The temporary apartments were…barely adequate, to say it politely, but it was enough for us, for a while. 

We had to do a lot of paperwork. Brazil loves bureaucracy, and the amount of useless papers you need to make is insane. For example, you may need to notarize your signature and notarize documents. But nobody really cares about it, they don’t check signatures and who are you that closely, they just want to have a stamp from a notary. To live here you also need 3 different documents, and to work you need a 4^th one. Most of these documents are fast enough to make, but you need to queue first, and that can take several hours. Which makes no sense, because they have timetables and numbers….

Lots of people here are really inefficient. It took us a lot of time to get the apartment, and lots of this time was wasted in administrative steps or going through agencies, which have hundreds of other clients and cannot attend your demands, while a simple direct call to the owners would be enough.

You can also see that there is lots of corruption, since lots of apartment owners want to rent the place without declaring it, and even get angry or increase the price when mentioning that you will do everything legally. 

My office is pretty awesome, new and nice (with cafeterias and a small terrace/garden), and it’s next to the subway so we needed a place connected to the local subway. The subway in Rio is quite limited, it has only 2 lines so far, and they share a big amount of stops. Most of it communicates the “Zona Sul” with the actual centre of the city, so we have been searching apartments in the Zona Sul, Rio’s posh area for tourist and expats. 

Initially we wanted to live in Ipanema, which is extremely nice, but it is also more touristic, less safe and further from work. It is also very expensive, so in the end we found a nice place in Botafogo, further from the beach but still 10-15 minutes away from Copacabana or Ipanema in subway. It is a very residential are, with plenty of shops and a couple of shopping malls around. 

The ideal area, where everybody wants to live now, is called Barra. It’s extremely residential, very nice and clean, with lots of commerce, clean beaches, new buildings, and cheap rents. It’s also 2 hours away from the centre by car thanks to traffic (unless you wake up at 05:30 and go to the centre at that time), and it has no subway, so we discarded that option quite fast. Botafogo is older and not as nice, but our building is quite new. 

In here it is very normal to have common areas and services in the building. You usually need to pay some extra for them, but even in buildings that have nothing you may pay 100 euros or so for them, so it was worth investigating, to find a building with nice services. The one we have chosen has, among other things, 24-hours security, a park for kids, a swimming pool and a gym, so we’re quite happy it^^. We haven’t used the pool yet (we have been less than 2 weeks in the building, and last 2 weekends were annoyingly cold or we had other things to do), but it’s nice to know we can go there if temperatures get crazy.

The apartment itself is quite new, and while not very big, is more than enough for us, while having room for visits too. (So, everybody’s invited^^). 

We haven't done much toursim yet, because with Elay it's not as easy. There are very green and tall mountains (like the Pao de Açúcar or the Corcovado) that make the landscape look awesome, and the combination of these weird mountains and the beaches is beautiful. However, we do have walked around, and gone to plenty of restaurants. Local food is pretty awesome, and the fruits and juices are simply incredible....

After the first days of paranoia, the city does not seem as dangerous as you would think. There is plenty of people in the street most of the time, and the Zona Sul and the workplace are quite busy all the time. I don't doubt that walking in areas with less people is not healthy for you or your wallet, but things are not as bad as one would imagine, and we're told the city has imporved a lot in the past few years.

All in all, it's quite an interesting place :). We'll see how it goes...