Tourist risk and fear in Brazilian culture

It was only by leaving the UK that I realised how much I am protected from myself there. Sure, things like safety are important, but we must weigh up how important it is for unattached people with no dependants or other significant responsibilities to be mollycoddled in a cosy nest of protective legislation, cameras and social care.

Yes, I do wonder whether Brazil is a place for the very old. Often poor and always weather-beaten, they struggle their way down the street, sometimes with the assistance of a younger carer, though walking sticks and other aids appear to be quite rare. But for a visitor like myself, little could have prepared me for the different decisions I make here. I must decide whether to walk down a particular street, at what speed and in what direction to leave the Metro in a outlying area, who to follow where there are no street signs. What noises are good and what are bad. Whether behind the eyes of someone watching my beautiful friends Julia and Nina is anything more than inquisitiveness, and if there is something more, is enough to make us cross the road? Decisions. The rattly street car (BRL$0.60 each way; about 27p), the ultimate safety-free option from Santa Teresa to Centro jerks to an unmarked stop above Lapa. The grinning kids from the local morro, tired of entertaining the tourists by hanging by one hand from the car, jump down and saunter off – they don’t pay and neither are they expected to. There is some shouting from the front: it is descision time. Do the four of us get off here and stumble down the steep paths into the relative unknown, or sit for an indeterminate amount of Brazilian time for the thing to move off? We jump down, and find ourselves half walking, half tripping past homes with simple steel meshes rather than glass windows (did they ever have glass?), heading down tiled steps into Lapa. The girls stop for photos but Pierre and I find ourselves fulfilling a quietly observant, protective role which I don’t even remember having need of even by a cash machine in Shorditch at ten o’clock. This job feels oddly male and natural – a purpose for which I was designed. We both seem to know how to act, although guarding our tribe. We make eye contact with the rather ragged occupants of the Lapa arches. We silently note their age, their weight, how fast they might be, how interested they are. We clock the passers by, identifying the body language of more experienced Cariocas to help us make our decisions. After a minute, I hear myself suggesting that we move on, notice myself planning a route through the relatively open space using the same techniques, inspecting the side roads, trying to plot the best path to the cathedral. I always seem to have somewhere I’m going, here. I decide to, say, walk to the tram stop, the shop, the Metro. Even when I’ve been lost, I can see Christo on the hill, and I know from which side of him is visible where I am in the suburbs. I’m constantly compiling this information, ranking it for relevance, then looking at faces, looking for peace. Considering my options.

Thinking about that tram ride reminds me of something. It is wonderful how the best and most exciting things in this city are often nearly free, and the more expensive things are typically international or simply unintrepid choices. There are lots of examples, especially in transport: a larger, airconditioned, more expensive but probably slower bus, or a smaller, more aggressively driven bus for half the ticket price, cooled by sea air through the open windows as the driver dodges through the traffic? A yellow taxi (still very reasonable) or a white, unlicensed (although that is changing as the government sees the value they provide) VW camper (still made here to a slightly modernised 1950s design) with the destination simply printed on a card in the window with the price? Ok, so no seatbelt, not much padding on the bench, not much suspension, but far more life, and two Reais (less than £1) rather than 7. I jumped in one of these with a Caucasian Brazilian girl who moved to Philadelphia years ago and who I had been chatting to in Santa Teresa’s winding cobbled streets. She seemed as much the tourist as I am, but reassuringly streetwise. And we both made a new friend as we walked from where we were dropped through the streetlife to Gloria Metro.

Still more examples of price being an indicator of appeal. Food, one of my favourite subjects. There are three lads from South London here. They enjoy hamming up their accents and making everyone laugh, but one joke revealed something typically British. Last night they ate at Domino’s Pizza. To do that, they would have had to walk some distance down Praia Botafogo Shopping past any number of Brazilian bars, all selling fresh food at a quarter of the price. They admitted to having arrived at one of the popular local eateries here, sat down, accepted the menu and walked out five minutes later. Ok: they couldn’t read it or even guess at its contents, but they could read the prices and maybe the headings and have a stab at ordering something in their budget. I don’t blame them: the temptation to be risk averse can be quite strong, and often for good reason, but I’m sure there was some pizza in that menu, and probably visible in the hot cabinet by the bar. There is no way they needed to pay Dominos for something they could get better from a Brazilian joint. People have been telling me that Rio is a risky city, but in some things, I think the risk is actually of missing Rio after you get home without having got much out of the place.

Which reminds me that I’m sitting in front of a computer writing e-mails when there’s a breeze and a view from the beach three minutes walk away. Mind you, it has to be Rio when to get to that view you have to run across eight lanes of dense traffic…