That night as I was passing through the hotel foyer, I was arrested by a gruesome sight on the television – a Rio city bus lying on its side while white-coated attendants rushed about taking passengers from it on stretchers. In the background were piles of black plastic bags that looked suspiciously like they contained bodies, while to one side the fire brigade blasted blood off the road with a massive hose. Until then I hadn’t imagined that a local bus could have a fatal crash. After watching this, I thought about it all the time as I rode about town.
A couple of days later Murphy took the day off. When I rang the airline for my daily nag, a perfectly agreeable woman not only understood everything I said but also offered me a seat in two days time. That left me forty-eight hours to cram in everything that I wanted to do. I set off immediately and in downtown Carioca found Rio’s library, the Biblioteca Nacional. An imposing nineteenth-century, four-storey building, it has a superb foyer containing a wonderful marble staircase flanked by graceful columns. I had thought that I might be able to use the internet there but a sweet receptionist with good English told me that it was only for students – and no stretch of the imagination could inveigle me into that category, except perhaps as an extremely slow learner. The receptionist gave me the address of an internet cafe in the Rio Branco, the main street. She said it was most easy to find. And I did!
Next on my list was the magnificent municipal theatre and opera house – the Teatro Municipal – an exact one-quarter scale copy of the one in Paris. Another impressive late-nineteenth-century creation, its exterior had everything possible in the way of domes and cupolas, as well as great bronze eagles on its roof. I went inside and mingled with its many statues as I listened to singers on stage practise for a coming opera. The voices followed me as I wandered through the fabulous and extensive restaurant, a fantasy reminiscent of a Cecil B. de Mille biblical extravaganza. Built on two levels, with seating downstairs and a bar and grand piano up top, the whole caboose was tiled in bluish turquoise. The walls were interspersed with wonderful French glass lights made by Henri Lalique that were supported by carved, wooden animal heads and separated by marble columns.
The tram that runs across an aqueduct built in 1723 and ascends to the lovely residential area of Santa Teresa was another must. I had read that the station was somewhere near the cathedral and had seen the aqueduct, a big white procession of arches that stuck up high above the surroundings, on previous forays around the town. I found the aqueduct and followed it to its source. From a distance the aqueduct appeared far too skinny and fragile to carry such a boisterous object as a tram. It looked as though it was made of plaster, but now that I was about to trust myself to it, I sincerely hoped it was concrete.
The tram cost seventy cents and was very comfortable. However, it had not occurred to me that it would not be fully enclosed. It sides were actually open and from your feet up there was nothing to stop you pitching out into the abyss. The tram driver arrived, put one foot on the running board, stopped and blessed himself, moving his lips in silent prayer. I thought, Well, that’s him taken care of, but what about us?
The tram was metal with lots of shiny brass fittings and lovely old polished wooden seats, but I was wearing slippery silk trousers and I shot back and forth on my seat like a jackin-the-box each time the tram lurched. Trams seemed to do a good trade – every one I saw was full. The paying customers sat on the seats, but as soon as the tram started off, the nonpayers jumped on the outside and, hanging onto the side rails, swung precariously in the breeze. Much as I like a free ride, there was no way I’d have done that, for when the tram took off it circled a garden then clanged out onto the narrow aqueduct where it pitched from side to side alarmingly. The city beneath me seemed kilometres away. Good grief, I’d had apprehensions about the cable car and yet here I was, terrified, on a wobbly tram a long way from the ground, rocking about on a high, skinny edifice. As I slid back and forth on the seat I clutched the back of the seat in front of me for all I was worth.
Our driver, Pedro, was a happy soul with a bright smiley face and he knew absolutely everybody on the route. As the tram wound around and up the very steep hill, all along the way he called greetings to people, or stopped the tram so that they could get on, giving extra help to women with babies or heavy middle-aged ladies, who I’m sure wouldn’t have made it onto a bus. He always made certain that his passengers were safely on board before he started gently off again.
Suddenly, half-way up the hill, there was a loud explosion and a great flash of flame, followed by sparks and smoke, shot from the controls. Pedro, unperturbed, stopped the tram and, reaching up into a wooden box above his head, fiddled with some knobs. We waited for the smoke to clear and after a while off we went again. By now our pace was down to a crawl, which gave Pedro time to chat to everyone we passed. He knew all the school kids, who rode free, by name. One curly-headed blond girl was obviously a favourite. He stopped the tram and waited until she had finished talking to him before taking off again. At one stage I pulled my camera from my bag and he stopped so that I could take a picture. The tram had a big brass bell which, to my delight, Pedro dinged loudly every now and then. This ride was so relaxed and sociable after the nightmare bus journeys that, once I survived the aqueduct, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I decided that it would be mainly the rich who lived on this hill. Some of the houses, which were built rather precariously either on the slope above or below the tram line, were extremely grand. Some were Mediterranean in style, others had turrets like castles and many looked ancient. It took forty minutes to reach Santa Teresa and return again and it was the nicest thing I did in Rio.
Back safely on terra firma, I celebrated with a divine lunch in the kilo restaurant at the tram station. Fortified, I set off once more in tourist mode, this time to seek a ride across the harbour on a ferry and visit the market. Where the market was alleged to have been, I found a car park. Perhaps it had moved or become defunct or perhaps, perish the thought, the accursed book had got it wrong again. It couldn’t have been me.
I boarded the ferry easily enough. Built like a landing barge, it romped up to the wharf and disgorged a mob of people from its maw like Jonah being spat up by the whale. I rode the ferry across the fantastic Rio harbour, the Guanabara Bay, and back again, passing a stupendous bridge that crosses to an island a long way out. Rio has one of the finest natural harbours in the world and this, as well as Brazil’s other great ports, has greatly contributed to the wealth of the nation. A Portuguese navigator, Gaspar de Lemos, discovered Guanabara Bay in 1502 and, thinking it was a river, named it Rio de Janeiro. The French established a settlement here in 1555, but this was taken over by the Portuguese in 1560. In 1760 Rio replaced Salvador as Brazil’s capital and remained so until 1960, when Brasilia secured the title.
I started my last day in Rio by waiting on the wrong bus stop for half an hour before I twigged and tootled down to Central and, finding the right bus, asked the driver to put me off at Sugar Loaf. I had finally mustered the courage to ride the cable car, but I suffered severe misgivings when I saw that my ticket was dated the thirteenth and my jitters didn’t improve when it came to the moment of truth and I had to step aboard. I really didn’t want to get into that wobbly thing. On a scale of nought to ten, the bus through the Andes took the ten for terror, but this horror was at least eight. Once in the cable car the ground was a dreadfully long way down and you were supported merely by an itty-bitty rope, which from the blessed dirt looked about as thick as a piece of cotton. The box-like car swayed alarmingly as I stepped on – and you don’t get a seat. I wanted to lie down and hide my head, but had to stand and look either out, or under my feet. Either way there was nothing. I had a vivid sensation of being suspended out in space with only a great emptiness around me.
As you got out of this wavering capsule, you had to jump over a gap and, looking down, you saw the earth thousands of metres away. One slip and I’ll fall down there, was all I could think. I wasn’t the only coward either. Another woman was even worse than I was. Her friends dragged her protesting into the cable car, but she wasn’t going to look. She kept her eyes shut tight whimpering, ‘Is it over yet?’ I tried to console her, which took the edge off my terror, but, as if one ride wasn’t enough, when I got off the first time I discovered that, wait, there’s more. From the first peak you go on to another even higher. The view was spectacular, a vivid panorama of Rio and her natural beauties, but I wondered why in the name of heaven anyone, except a sadist, would have conceived the idea of building this device.
Not satisfied with this mental torture, I then took the cog railway up to the summit of Corcovado – the Hunchback – mountain on which mountain stands the enormous statue of Cristo Redentor, Christ the Redeemer. This necessitated going back into Central and again asking a bus driver to put me off at the right place. This time he said, ‘No, no, no.’ Then he said more. I actually don’t know what he said. I just let drivers rattle on and waited for developments, hoping that they would push me off at the appropriate time. I would never have found my way anywhere without someone to help me. But this time it turned out that the driver was chasing another bus for me. When he caught up to it, he said, ‘Quick, get on this one.’ Then I was braving a third extremely high and terrifying ride in the space of twenty-four hours.
To be honest, looking down from this one was the least frightening of them all. I don’t know how a cog railway works, but I sat in a double train carriage that was pulled up a mountain on a wire. We ascended steeply. At first there were a few houses and then we were going through a national park that was very beautiful. On both sides of the railway line the park’s lush green vegetation crowded closely, one side going up the mountain and the other down. You either looked down into many glorious greens or up to the green-covered hillside. Plants and ferns – ones that at home are pampered, petted darlings cosseted in the house – scrambled wildly over walls and clambered madly up trees. There were all manner of many coloured flowers – big red blooms like hibiscus and strelitzia; salmon pink, pale pink or mauve busy lizzies that romped over the ground in pretty profusion; lilac and purple flag iris; and bushes that had blue and white flowers like plumbago. The top half of the train’s windows had no glass and through them I could breathe in the smell of the forest, that luscious, damp, green scent of fresh foliage, a wonderful earthy smell that I adore.
The train made several stops on its long climb to the top of the mountain and now and then picture-postcard vistas down into the blue bay appeared through gaps in the foliage. I had read that you could reach the summit by road, but it was not recommended – in fact, it was said to guarantee that you would get robbed. I could imagine that bandits hung about in the forest. It was very dense and would have been scary to venture into alone. The railway disgorged me at the end of the line, from where I had to walk up about a million steps to reach the top. At intervals on the way I encountered a snack bar or someone selling souvenirs. Then, there it was, Corcovado, the enormous statue of Christ with arms outstretched. Built in 1931, it stands forty metres high and weighs seven hundred tonnes – thirty tonnes in the head and eight for a hand. Once again I wondered why this had been built. Why not go down into Rio and spend that money housing the homeless or erect some ruddy public toilets so that the stench of urine is not the strongest memory tourists take away from the city?
My day of departure arrived. The airport bus proved difficult to find so I engaged a friendly taxi driver. He told me I should not be standing in the street with my bags in this area as it was too dangerous. When I asked why, he said that there were not enough police and too many robbers. Then we flashed at the speed of light to the Aeroporto International. At the plane check-in a sympathetic girl said she couldn’t put me in the exit seat I requested (they have more leg room) but, even though the plane was full, she managed to leave the seat next to me empty. I had told her that I had a bad leg. This is true. I have two bad legs if you go by looks.
The plane was ninety minutes late. Finally, at eight-thirty I was allowed on board, only to sit and sit until an announcement was made: ‘We will be twenty minutes delayed.’ Half an hour later we taxied to the runway where we again sat until another announcement: ‘We will be one hour delayed due to a technical problem.’ That could mean anything.
I debated getting off. I wonder if anyone ever has. A technical problem could mean that there was an engine on fire or all the wheels had fallen off. By the time they decided to move the plane I was almost ready to quit. I was very nervous. They did not say the problem was fixed and no one asked me if I still wanted to go on their faulty air-machine. I didn’t, I wanted out. Here I was, flying with a South American airline I didn’t trust anyway, and now they had confessed to a defective plane. Once you are up there, there is no way out.
Dinner distracted me for a while, but it was soon interrupted by the seat-belt light coming on, followed by turbulence, rain and lightning. Oh boy, now this. I imbibed quantities of the red wine on offer as a general anaesthetic.
To my great surprise we landed safely in Buenos Aires. It was cold in the airport where an announcement informed me that there was an hour’s delay. What’s new? I really didn’t want to spend twelve hours flying over the Andes and the Pacific Ocean with this mob in this suss plane but I got back on it anyway. The flight was rough at first but I was served another dinner and more red wine.
The female flight attendants wore a cross between a football jersey and a waitress’s pinny with butcher’s stripes, but despite this lack of sartorial elegance, the service was superior. With two seats to lie across and the therapeutic effect of the wine, I managed some sleep, but it was still an interminable night as I woke often and thought of all that ocean underneath me. At intervals I would get up for a drink and a sandwich; breakfast, consisting of lots of sweet rolls and cake, was served before we arrived in Auckland. From the air New Zealand looked green and pleasant, but as long as it was solid earth I didn’t care if it was desert. Back on the plane I had another breakfast, with less cake now that we were onto Australian tucker.