Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Beaches, Beauty, and Birthdays.

Rio de Janeiro was everything they say and more! The city was gorgeous, we all had an amazing time, and the time spent there was awesome overall. Although you didn't see many physical changes being made for the World Cup or the Olympics at the moment, you could definitely see it in the enthusiasm and feel it in the air. Celebrating a 21st birthday here was definitely an experience!

Day one, Katie, Josie, and I hit the town with Jake and Nick. We went to the local Sunday market known as the Hippie Market, wandered around for about an hour and a half, and looked at all the cool shirts, gorgeous handmade goods, and the awesome jewelry. At one point, we got the luxury of enjoying the stunning artwork being displayed by all the artists and eating some delicious açaí berry smoothies. The açaí berries are native to Brazil, huge part of the diet, and hold many antioxidants. Afterwards, Josie left for a field lab and the remaining four of us hit up Ipanema Beach. (You may have heard the song The Girl from Ipanema, who we found out is actually a legitimate person! I found that interesting.) In 2012, CNN elected Ipanema the best beach city of the world! We spent a few hours there, sipping coconut water and drinks out of actual coconuts and munching on roasted cashews. Quite a life indeed. We then moved to a smaller more locals-filled beach on which we met some students that go to a local college. Through a mixture of some broken Spanish, Portuguese, and English, we talked to them for almost an hour about our lives and times. I must admit, attempting to explain the concept of Semester at Sea in that manner was exceptionally difficult, along with explaining our majors to each other.

That evening, Katie, Josie, Jack, and I teamed up with Jarvis and huge group of people to celebrate our joint birthday! All of us went to an enormous Samba club that had all kinds of bands playing live music in the multi-room and -patio place called Casa Rosa. We danced and jammed the night away, and then hit the hay to rest up for the next adventure-filled day.

On the second day, a group of us (Katie, Josie, Tree, Lisa, Inés, Vlad, Sean, and me) got one of the van drivers to take us around for about 6 hours and show us the sights. We went up to a helicopter pad right next to Corcovado, on which the Christ Redeemer statue stands, and got an incredible panoramic view of the city. Numerous pictures were taken, and then onto the next place. Thanks to our incredible tour guide, we went almost straight to the top of the Corcovado mountain and then paid a little to make the rest of the journey up. And it was worth every penny! Getting to see one of the 7 manmade wonders of the world up close and personal was and absolutely incredible experience and one that I won't forget! The place was absolutely packed with people posing and lying on the ground to take pictures (us included, of course). We then began a drive through the Tijuca National Park. The Tijuca National Park is the largest city-surrounded urban forest and the second largest urban forest in the world and is filled with gorgeous plants and waterfalls! Our driver took us to a secluded waterfall inside the park, which was stunning and reminded me a lot of the Cascades in the mountains by Virginia Tech. A gorgeous view, to say the least. All of us hopped back in the cramped van and went off to a little beach where we were the only ones! While the rest of the gang basked in the sun, Katie and I ate some more açaí berry deliciousness and chatted with our guide and a man born and raised in Brazil, but who had lived in Texas the last few decades. We talked about the states and traveling and Brazil and life in general. It was fascinating! Exhausted, we headed back to the ship. 

Later on into the evening, a few of us went out to a local seafood restaurant to celebrate my birthday (again)! Katie, Josie, Bronwyn, Bryn, Natalie, Quinn, Jack, and I all had some caprinihais and incredible seafood dishes. There were a few toasts and birthday songs and a fried plantain and ice cream dish with a candle! I'm so grateful to have such amazing friends on this journey.

Fourteen of us spent the 3rd day on an amazing favela tour. Favela is the term for a shanty town in Brazil, most often within urban areas. In the late 18th century, the first settlements were called bairros africanos (African neighbourhoods). This was the place where former slaves with no land ownership and no options for work lived. However, most modern favelas appeared in the 1970s due to rural exodus, when many people left rural areas of Brazil and moved to cities. Without finding a place to live, many people ended up in a favela. These neighborhoods are built on illegal land  in places where it is exceptionally dangerous to build anything. The mountain sides are steep, and mudslides and such occur frequently. These people manage to siphon electricity and cable from the main areas into the favela completely on their own; with no recognition or help from the government, they managed to build power lines and create ways in which to collect rain water in order to survive. In addition to that, because they are not seen as the legitimate, they live outside elf the law and are completely unaffected by anything the government does. This means that they are instead run by drug lords. 25 of the 1,000 favelas are "pacified," meaning the government has a specially trained team of police come in and taken everything over. Frequently, that involves incredible violence and periods of 4-10 days in which the peoples are unable to leave their homes. Once pacified, they have people and programs stationed inside, but there is still title infrastructure or financial help. Everyone family in Brazil gets a stipend if they send their child to school, but that's about the extent of the help. To say the least, it was another eye-opening experience for me and something I knew almost nothing about before coming. We visited a local program within the favela that had been working over the last 35 years (and only the last 2 were pacified) to work with the kids in the favelas by teaching them various instruments or activities to keep them off the streets and out of the reach of the drug lords. The woman running it was awesome, and you could plainly see how hard she worked to keep those kids in school and going towards brighter futures. We also got to see a small computer lab that Coca Cola had funded and put in place! If I wasn't already, I definitely became an avid Coke fan then. After a lunch at an amazing all-you-can-eat Brazilian buffet, we walked around with our amazing guide to see the parts of Rio by the port that were immediately affected by the slave trade and some monuments in their honor. After all that, Jack and I grabbed some more açaí berry smoothie (if you couldn't tell, I miss that stuff) and walked around the part of the city near the terminal. 

Saying farewell to Rio that night was such a sad time! I definitely plan on using my visa to go back there in the next decade.

Photo 1, 2, and 3: Our entrance into Rio de Janeiro by ship after a gorgeous sunrise.

Photo 4: Part of our flying welcoming party flock.

More pictures in separate posts! :)