I'm freshly back from New Year's in Rio and I was amazed. Before I went my carioca friends had looked me in the eye and said with deadly seriousness, "You have to understand, Rio is the most beautiful city in the world," as if expressing uncontestable fact. Now I see what they were talking about.
I had braced myself for a more typical third-world experience: gritty air, dangerous food, the need to dodge beggars at every step and beauty which requires a bit of squinting to see clearly. I was thinking Mexico City with beaches. Instead I found air I could breathe, salads I could eat and water I could brush my teeth with. The beggars were around but not especially numerous or aggressive. And the setting -- my god! Think San Francisco on Kauai and you'll be maybe halfway there.
The Brazilians I met in Austin had warned me so enthusiastically about how dangerous Rio has become that I began to think that scaring the gringo was edging out futebol as the national sport. I don't doubt that dangers exist but I wasn't mugged on sight as widely predicted. There were plenty of people of all ages and genders out enjoying the city everywhere we went, even a fairly seedy downtown entertainment district, and if tourism has fallen off there are still plenty of tourists left. My gut feeling is that Rio is closer to pre-Giuliani New York than to Bogotá. I'd go again in a minute, even without a local guide.
Photos to follow. Meanwhile content yourselves with some other people's.