Every Friday, my language school, Casa dos Caminhos, hosts a tour of some part of the city. This Friday, it was a hike up Morro Dois Irmãos (Two Brothers Mountain) via the Vidigal favela. The Vidigal favela sits on the coast, stretching precariously up the side of Two Brothers Mountain and offering residents spectacular ocean and beach views.
We caught a bus from Ipanema to Vidigal, which sits at the southwest edge of Rio, where we tranferred to a minibus to take us up the favela. As you can see from the pic above, the streets are narrow (that’s a two-way street) and windy – no room for regular buses here. Instead, vans operating as minibuses take people up and down the mountain and vie for the narrow road space with cars and motorcycle taxis in both directions, as well as pedestrians.
The bus dropped us off near the top of the favela where we caught the trail that would take us to the top of the taller of the Two Brothers. It was kind of half hike/half mountain climb, and I swear our guide was part mountain goat the way he bounded up the mountain. It was an incredibly steep and challenging hike, but well worth it for lovely view we were rewarded with:
Click on the pic to see the full-sized version – you’ve got Cristo Redentor on the peak on the left, Sugarloaf Mountain in middle (the narrower, taller peak behind the big hill in the middle), Copacabana Beach next to that, and Ipanema and Leblon beaches stretching along the right side. In the distance, you can see Niteroi, which sits across the water from Rio. It was a popular photo op, and we stayed for maybe 20 minutes to rest and enjoy the view before heading back down.
Once we got back to the favela, a group of us decided to walk down through the favela instead of taking the minibus. I wanted to take pictures of everything, but I also didn’t want to treat the people there like zoo animals in their own neighborhood. The favela is extremely colorful and all the buildings are tiny. I walked by several little barber shops or hair salons with only 2 chairs in them – because that’s all that would fit, and even that looked very cozy. Because the homes are mostly handbuilt by each of the residents (or were, back in the day), nearly every home has its own roof-top patio where they hang clothes to dry, keep massive blue buckets which I assume are used for catching rain water, and hang out to enjoy a meal, drink, or smoke with their incredible view. And, because the mountain is so steep, everyone there seems to have an incredible view.
The street art was also pretty spectacular:
So, of all the random things in the world, there was a girl on the tour with us I hadn’t ever seen before at the school, but I did see her the night before….in my Zouk class! She’s a fellow Zoukeira. A Slovaki Zoukeira. And she recently quit her job and came to Rio to Zouk her butt off. How’s that for an unlikely coincidence!
TL;DR: A brief encounter with a different side of life in Brazil, a gorgeous view, and a series of unlikely coincidences.
