Rio Grandly

Two years ago, nearly a million football fans went to Rio de Janeiro for the 2014 World Cup. Every February, two million or more dance their way through its famous Carnival. For Brazil’s second largest city, then, when it comes to the 500,000 visitors expected for the Olympic Games’ Latin American debut in August this year, it should just be pretty much business as usual.

Indeed, people have been flocking to Rio for hundreds of years. Back in 1501, when a small group of indigenous fishermen saw the first Portuguese sailing ships nose towards the coast, they were not to know they would get little peace thereafter.

The French followed, taking over an island in the bay. Huge numbers of slaves were shipped in to work on the sugar plantations. Indigenous people moved east from the interior. Half a million Portuguese arrived in the gold rush of Minais Gerais. More slaves were brought to labour in the coffee industry, then on the cotton and rubber plantations. In the last hundred years, immigrant Italians, Russians, Germans and, more recently, Japanese have been added to the mix.

This history has created the spicy stew that is Rio today. The people call themselves Cariocas, a word from the indigenous Tupi lnaguage. They pray to African and European and local traditional gods, eat food with roots in the Amazon, Africa and Portugal and have created a musical genre all their own – the Samba and the Bossa Nova.

To understand Rio de Janeiro, take a cog train to the heights of Corcovado – The Hunchback – a mountain in a rainforest in a city of 37 beaches. From there, you can see the city spread out on all sides.

The locals call it Cidade Maravilhosa – the City of Marvels. Many of the world’s great cities display a sterile plain of high-rises and housing. But not Rio. From the top of this 700-metre granite peak, you are struck by the spectacular natural environment – white sand beaches, monolithic mountains of rounded rock, lush tropical forest, lakes and lagoons, and an emerald sea stretching out to both the South and East. The city is tucked into the spaces between the blue, the gold and the green.

The iconic Christ Redeemer statue on Corcovado stands with outstretched arms presenting the delights of Rio. Straight ahead, the Sugar Loaf mountain rises out of the sea. To the left is the Centro, the commercial and historic centre of the city, with the great bay of Guanabara curving away in front of it.

Turning to the right, you look down on Copacabana beach, with its high rise blocks between the sea and the hills. Further still to the right is the Ipanema beach, backed by a lake and the Botanical Gardens. Stretching away even further to the West is a long finger shape of sand – the Barra – separating three great lagoons from the Atlantic Ocean.

All of the four Olympic venues are visible from here – Maracanã and Deodoro on the left in the city centre and the suburbs, and Copacabana and Barra on the beaches to the right. The Maracanã area, close to the city centre, is based around a famous football stadium of the same name.

For Brazilians, it is a temple to soccer, a piece of footballing history. It was here that Brazil won four qualifiers in the 1950 World Cup before losing to Uruguay in the final round. It also hosted the 2014 World Cup and will be the centre for the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies and all the key football matches.

From the Maracanã you are short taxi ride from Centro, the business district, once an area of historic buildings with sixteenth century foundations –  the Imperial Palace, churches and monasteries. The modern city has grown around them and the imposing Church of Our Lady of Candelaria now stands at the eastern end of an enormous highway bisecting Centro.

A few blocks away, the Teatro Municipal, built in 1905 in the art nouveau style of the Paris Opera, continues to be the home of Rio’s opera, orchestra and ballet. The opulent interior can be viewed during the daytime, but looks better still if you can attend a performance – booking and formal dress are essential.

Deodoro, an hour inland from Centro, will be the setting for the modern pentathlon events – the swimming, the fencing, the riding and the shooting. The five-kilometre mountain biking course and the white water canoe slalom course look spectacular and will form part of Rio’s Olympic legacy.

Then there is Copacabana, one of the most famous parts of Rio. It was while staying here that singer Barry Manilow dreamt up his hit song. The calm waters of its bay will host the long distance swimming events, whilst triathletes will cycle and run along the waterfront.

Just three parallel streets fronted by a five -kilometre beach and backed by steep forested hills, Copacabana is spectacular in the sunlight, but a little less safe after sundown. An early twentieth century party venue for the rich and famous, it still has historic architecture hidden among the high-rises.

The neoclassical Copacabana Palace Hotel retains its glamour and remains the destination of choice for heads of state, rocks stars and royalty. If you can’t get a room there, you can at least have a chance to sample one of its excellent restaurants after a day on the beach.

There is one stand out Olympic sporting event being held in Copacabana – the beach volleyball. Beyond football, this sport is Brazilian down to the last drop of sweat on a tanned thigh. The body beautiful, the beach and the Samba beat all come together when Brazil’s women’s beach volleyball team hits the sand. This year, according to insiders, they will finally take gold from Kerry Jennings and Misty May, the US’ three-time Olympic winners.

There are several preliminary rounds before the USA and Brazil, barring upsets, meet in the later stages. Larissa Franca and Talita Antunes are the Brazilians to cheer for, in their green and yellow colours, and the hot tickets will be the quarter finals onwards, from 14th to 17th August.

The next beach west of Copacabana is Ipanema, known to the world from a song written by two composers in a local bar. The Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema), is still there behind the beach, serving cold draught beer and appetisers.

The Ipanema-Leblon district is the neighbourhood for the young, the beautiful, and the wealthy, with the most expensive apartments in the city. It also has many of the best restaurants. The beach is long and, like a street of bars, has areas for different cross-sections of Rio society – surfers, young stylists, old hippies and gays, and perhaps a small section for shy teenagers with legs like wet spaghetti.

Moving a couple of blocks back from the sea front, the scene opens out on the Lago Rodrigo de Freitas. Bordered by several parks and private clubs, for the first week of the games the lake will host Olympic rowing, followed by sprint canoeing. Lakeside “Quiosques” are great venues for evening dining in the open air, often with live music. Those fronting Parque de Cantaglo on the east side have some of the best sunset views.

This could be time to try your first caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink. It’s a sharp and feisty blend of lime, sugar and crushed ice, all served on a base of cachaça, the sweet and powerful cane spirit. Strangely, after beer, it has now somehow become one of Germany’s most popular drinks.

Cachaça is cane alcohol and most cars in Brazil run on cane alcohol, so you may find your caipirinha a little rough. Ask instead for a caipivodca, the same fruit cocktail with a vodka base.

Funnily enough Rio also has the unique distinction of having been, for a short time, the capital of a European nation. Fleeing Napoleon in 1807, the future king of Portugal Dom João sailed for Brazil with 15,000 of his followers. He was so enamoured by Rio that he chose to stay on after Napoleon met his Waterloo eight years later. And, really, why not.

Dom João made Rio the capital of Portugal and Brazil and created many of the city’s more reflective retreats. Further back, beyond Lago Rodrigo, you can take a walk in his Jardim Botånico. Laid out round one of the city’s more accessible smaller lakes, it boasts elegant rows of royal palms imported from France, giant water lilies from Amazonia, and a steamy greenhouse where you can watch brightly coloured hummingbirds sip nectar from hundreds of native orchids.

The rhythm of Rio – and of Brazil – is the Samba. This and its more modern jazz- and blues-influenced offshoot, Bossa Nova, are best experienced in the district of Lapa. In the early years of the last century Lapa developed as an area for the midnight hours – gambling dens, cabarets, brothels and late night bars. Lapa retains an edgy feel and is now a centre for old style dance halls and samba clubs. If you watch the Olympic sailing in the sublimely sculptured Marina da Gloria, you can head up the straggling hillside streets to Lapa in the evening.

The fourth Olympic Games area is out to the west of central Rio.  The Barra de Tijuca (literally swampy sandbank) is 18 kilometres of beach with the Atlantic Ocean in front and the lagoons and salt marshes behind. The Olympic Village will be based here, along with many of the main events, notably the gymnastics, swimming, cycling and tennis.

Once an area for fishermen and marginal farmers, Barra was not redeveloped until the twentieth century. Now it is an elite extension of the city, complete with US-style shopping malls and private access communities. Barra Shopping, for instance, is a giant mall. At four kilometres long with 700 outlets, it is Rio’s largest and is clearly aiming for an international Disney feel with its giant replicas of New York’s Statue of Liberty, Paris’ Eiffel Tower, London’s Tower Bridge and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The affluent residents of Barra live a modern, Miami life, but it lacks the cultural layers of central Rio. Visitors come at weekends to surf and shop. There is, though, more to Barra. Several areas of the salt marsh and beach have become protected reserves, including the Chico Mendes Ecological Reserve, named after an environmentalist who was murdered in 1988. Like many progressives, he has achieved more in death than he did in life.

There is also the Museo Case de Pontal, a collection of folk art representing Brazilian modern culture. Here you will find visual expressions of daily life, music and dance, family and home, religion and race – the interwoven strands of Rio de Janeiro. To complete the picture of Rio’s exuberant diversity, this would be a fine place to end your visit.

The Rio Olympics opens on August 5th and closes on August 21st. Tickets went on sale in April 2015, and are available through authorized agents in each country. The authorized agents for Hong Kong and China are China Travel Service (Hong Kong) Limited or Grand China Express.Tickets are also available through brokers and resellers but you should plan your schedule and buy your tickets as soon as possible.