The helicopter throbs around the stone monoliths of Rio geology, over the Favelas of uncounted millions and their blue, rooftop water tanks and above the crescents of gold that are the playgrounds of the millions of New Years Eve revelers even now, once again coalescing into the world’s largest party . On looking down I see through oceans’s shallows to the bathers within and looking up I see through light clouds that veil sun and rock and offshore islands. Soaring, breathtaking, as if a 1962 birds eye view to the mindful strains of Jobin & Moraes’s poignant music and lyrics whereby a young and eye catching Heliosa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, likely the original and certainly the immortal “Menina Que Passa” and better known now as Helo Pinheiros inspires them to render : “a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone”. She passed them daily, them sitting in a bar, their attention caught. It is timeless and I am here right now, suspended above history, geography, myth and legend. Once more to the strains of Bossa Nova.
Such reverie should be short lived as Carioca’s and Brasilian’s at large seem to share a purpose derived from apatite and upon a rotors slowing we duck briefly and are off in search of food as at the same time viewing the most famous strips of sand in the world. I am awed by the number of umbrellas that can be erected on a beach. This color for that beach and that color for this beach. Tall stacks of impossible numbers of them being wheeled back and forth on make shift carts by lean brown bodies. Shade as a business seems to be thriving here. Beach as business is not merely business, here it is a culture and everything from a meal, today’s newspaper to a fresh Caipirinha suitably blended with Passion Fruit is served, all as you perfect the arts of bronzing, reclining and conversing while observing. Getting wet is going to involve effort and if one is (as I am) wearing US flavored board shorts in favor of the rather shorter and more shall we say “form fitting” Sungas, risk being identified as… something other than local. At some point I have my kids to face… so other than local I gladly appear.
So many beaches, so many apartments, so many hotels prospering from the rich and famous… The Copacabana Palace/Madonna and so on… pale in the face of a good Churrascaria and the carnivore’s mindset of Alessandro. A good portion of the crowd that will pack Copacabana in a night or two just happens to be feasting, shoulder to shoulder at his favored venue and thus the art of queuing necessitates a beer or two. In retrospect I am happy, as during that same time likely a thousand head of beef were slaughtered along with untold numbers of Boar, Ostrich and creatures safer for my digestion in their not being translated. While the tables are not round, those seated eat like starved knights. Plates come and go and come and go again and again. The dishwashers union must be a major force here. Men carrying skewers of meat and brandishing sharp knives with a polished deftness appear at your token’s call and dare you to be anything but clumsy as you grasp succulent slices with your ‘meat tweezers”. You request it sliced thick or gossamer thin as a flies wing. As the meat comes to you, you must go to the vegetables, fish and fruit, all the time careful not to slip on the meat juice splattered floor or bumping into the kid, more like a bloodhound with a mop, anything but sanguine in his abattoir like duties.
This is shoulder to shoulder dining with a noisy recklessness and an awareness of the joy and abundance of life in such a place. There is also a knowledge weighing on me, it is one of weight gain by association and it is past time for relocating the airport and the trip back to Sao Paulo where tomorrow morning my seat at the Paderia Europa awaits me. As tempting as the churrascaria may be and as delightful as the company of Alessandro and his family is, the ubiquitous and splendid Paderias win by a spare tire. As hybrids of bakeries, diners, coffee shops and convenience stores they are replete with lightening fast service, awash in fresh squeezed orange juice and piled high with pastries, breads, petit fours and in my brief experience, english as a first, second or third language is a sure form of starvation so hand gestures, basic Portugese or a Portugese speaker to buy breakfast for … are the paths to ample girth.
The promenades adjacent to the beaches are now really populated with the afternoon/evening strollers and Atlantic Blvd is choked with buses, cars and trucks creating more lanes than the highway engineers envisaged. A motorized tapestry sewn together by the pesky 24/7 hatches of the swarming, horn beeping motoboys who dare all to dispute the dominance bestowed by a 150 cc engine! OceanAir has it’s aircraft back in operation, service is back to being attentive and the space between seats underscores the brutality of GOL and dates to a time long past. The million lights of Rio do a page flip to the billion lights of Sao Paulo and tomorrows promise of a drive to where there are still stars in the night sky and citrus trees replace beach umbrellas.
To be Cont…