CHAPTER EIGHT

Rio!

R

io de Janeiro! We did it! We crossed an ocean, we crossed the equator, we changed hemispheres. We landed on a new continent, in another culture, in another world. We were dumbfounded. We were jubilant!

Michel's landfall prediction was right on target, employing a navigation instrument used by ancient mariners. We were amazed—maybe dazed—to have crossed an ocean under our own power. It didn't sink in right away. Physically and mentally it was a strange feeling setting foot on land after 30 days at sea, and we had trouble adjusting to the stable ground. We had previously experienced smaller symptoms of "landsickness" after spending just a week at sea, but this time the feeling persisted for several days following our arrival.

Simple everyday things also seemed odd at first. Crossing a street proved a bit challenging; it took a few moments to register the meaning of a red light or a stop sign. Our brains worked in slow motion. A few times, we almost even regretted having arrived. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, and everything felt rushed. All of humanity was crossing streets, boarding buses, going to school, buying groceries, busying themselves behind office windows… It was a bit overwhelming. What possessed us to make landfall in such a big city after one month of peaceful solitude? I found myself longing for some of those simple moments back out at sea.

But it was time to get our Brazilian adventure started. Contrary to our usual berthing practices of anchoring in a bay to avoid marina docking fees, this time we tied up in Rio's Marina da Gloria so we could more easily accomplish the entry formalities and get information on where we could anchor. We got initial instructions from the harbormaster's office. Michel took Sean with him to decipher the paper chase, which turned out to be a bureaucratic maze with layers of offices, passports, papers, and stamps.

They were gone all day! Usually, it took an hour or two, but they had to go to the police, followed by immigration, then customs, agriculture, the health department, and finally the Navy. It was the most cumbersome entry process we had ever dealt with. Compounding the aggravation was the diametrically opposed locations in the city ranging from north, south, east, and west of Rio, and one had to respect the order of which office to visit first. Adding to the difficulties was that Michel refused, as always, to cave into the awaited bribery. This, in combination with our poor knowledge of the city, the transport system, and the language, caused the whole day to prove as an exercise in human-wrought, useless complications.

At one point in Michel’s trials, they even tried to turn away our children! Since the kids’ visas were affixed to Michel's passport, the authorities deemed them invalid and stated that our boys would have to leave the country. Michel had to convince the Brazilian officials (while refusing to slip them the expected wad of bills) that our children were only three and one years old, and explain that he wasn’t sure how they expected them to sail off by themselves. Thankfully, he was able to find Madame-the-head-of-something-or-other who recognized the insanity of the situation. With one thump of her powerful stamp, she rendered the problem a moot point.

As Michel shuffled through one step after the other, he was befriended by Dr. Bastos at the Public Health Service department who took a liking (or pity) to him. He accompanied my husband to some of the remaining offices as a translator, facilitating his understanding of some of the "technicalities." Dr. Bastos then accompanied Michel and Sean back to Cowabunga to verify our health records, and we were officially admitted to Brazil.

Then we plunged into Rio! It was hot, it was samba. It was very rich, it was very poor, and it was always about the beach. There were makeshift voodoo altars on crowded street corners, rampant crime and pickpockets. Cars and buses ran red lights to avoid the ever-present danger of robberies in stopped traffic. There were slums (favelas), unimaginable inflation, daily black-market money exchanges. The streets held a permanent odor of alcohol, which fueled the cars made in Brazil.

But Rio was also an abundance of lush, colorful, and new tropical fruits, pervasive at street-corner juice stands. It was Churrascaria restaurants, veritable orgy feasts of meat. It was the Caipirinha—the signature Brazilian cocktail. It was a place where children were kings. It was a kaleidoscope of dynamic contrasts, it was welcoming, it was relaxed, it was unpretentious, it was alive!

Brazil is most famous, of course, for its celebration of Carnaval. Not really knowing much about this Brazilian custom, we didn't think much about it until we arrived in Brazil. That's when we learned that it is the biggest and most elaborate celebration of the year throughout the country.

Originating from the Catholic pre-Lenten period of fun and feasting that heralds the onset of Lent's forty days of abstinence, the uniquely Brazilian samba dance and music define Brazil’s celebration of Carnaval. Carnaval in Rio is perhaps the granddaddy festival of them all—an unbelievably huge, weeklong national revelry of parties, dancing, parades, and competition of the samba schools in Rio's specially-constructed Sambadromo. An outstanding feature of Brazilian culture, samba is not only their national hallmark, but it is singularly recognized throughout the world as the imprint of all things Brazilian. It is a revered pillar of their culture, a road to stardom for some, and a reason to live for others.

However, upon our arrival in February of 1983, we discovered that we had just missed it! This changed our plans for the year to come. We hadn't come this far not to see and experience this cultural phenomenon. We decided we would just have to stay in Brazil for the year, visas be damned.

We spent our first few weeks in a slip in the Marina da Gloria where I reveled in the easy access to unlimited running water, doing buckets and buckets of laundry. During our readjustment to docked life, our good friends from France, Philippe and Françoise, came to visit with their two young children. They brought a little bit of home to us while discovering and taking part in our lifestyle. However, it was also exhausting since they stayed with us on the boat, which necessitated a heavy amount of logistics to create living and sleeping quarters for additional bodies.

We eventually left the marina and anchored around the corner in the picturesque Guanabara Bay, where we had originally first sailed into Brazil under the gaze of Christ the Redeemer. The upscale and exclusive Iate Clube do Rio was located on the shore of the bay and was known to welcome foreign cruisers like us.

The club bid us avail ourselves of their services, free of charge. We had the best of both worlds then: a free anchorage and peaceful solitude in a beautiful setting, easy and quick access to the city and conveniences when we needed it, unlimited use of the yacht club showers and swimming pool. There was even a fully equipped shipyard we were allowed to use, which we did at one point when we needed to haul out Cowabunga for the regular task of hull cleaning. The Iate Clube do Rio made a great effort in welcoming us cruisers. It was rather ironic that we—living a very basic, bare-bones life on a boat—would find ourselves occasionally hobnobbing with the fortuned elite of Rio at the club bar or pool.

We met many new friends in Brazil, which always included genuine kindness and friendship, as well as frequent invitations. It was surprising to us that the invitations were for the four of us, children included. I mentioned before that children are kings in Brazil, and our newfound friends seemed perplexed when we questioned if our kids were invited. Why wouldn't they be? They were everywhere; they ruled the streets, they were excused, they were forgiven. Our boys were growing and changing and enjoyed being a part of all our outings. Sean learned how to swim and drive the Zodiac dinghy with the outboard engine, and Brendan took his first steps on the beach. They both also passed their childhood rites of passage with bouts of the chicken pox.

We also believe that thanks to the constant presence of our children, we were spared a lot of aggression and crime. Just about everyone we met in Rio had some story of a personal encounter, either with a holdup situation or with pickpockets. We were cautious to dress down when going into town, i.e., to forego jewelry and watches, wear simple cotton T-shirts and shorts, and keep money in our shoes or hidden under our clothes. Thankfully, we never experienced any personal attack.

Dr. Bastos became a regular visitor to our boat with his wife. They invited us out several times around Rio, as well as to their apartment in Copacabana. It soon became obvious that there was a wide class divide between the lifestyle of a public employee such as Dr. Bastos—ensconced in the comfort of the visible luxury of Copacabana—and the poor slum dwellers situated in the favela, literally just around the street corner and up the hill from his home. We also found it curious that the poorest districts were located in what would be the upscale districts of any major city in France or the States. The favelas in Rio occupied key hilltop and hillside real estate with exceptional views. Yet this is where the cardboard huts and the tin-roofed cabanas hugged the unpaved, crime-ridden, muddy alleys.

Money in Rio in the 1980s was a joke. It was the era of hyperinflation, and the rate was over 100% when we were there. By the 1990s, the percentage was in the thousands! Prices in the grocery stores and shops changed every day. Consequently, we exchanged dollars for cruzeiros on a daily basis. The key was the unofficial black-market exchange rate. No one ever exchanged money in a bank or currency exchange office. The "official" black market rate was published every day in the newspaper, right next to the actual rate, and travel agencies were the "official" exchange spots. Perpetual lines snaked out of travel agency doors all day long, every day.

For us to stay in Brazil, we knew we would have to renew our visas every three months. As we approached the first three-month deadline, began to understand that in the spirit of the Brazilian way of life, we needed to, at times, fudge the truth a bit to make things more convenient.

Brazil’s bureaucracy and economic oddities encouraged the Brazilians to be very inventive people. For example, since Brazil imposed hefty tariffs on imported goods at the time, highly prized international trademarked items were not available. Consequently, a "copycat" industry thrived. Well-known, internationally trademarked items were manufactured in Brazil and labeled tipo or "type." This meant the item was similar to its genuine counterpart, such as Swiss tipo cheese, Heinz tipo ketchup, etc. We took a cue from these entrepreneurs and decided to manufacture our own tipo tourist visas.

We discovered the trade of carimbeiros, which took place in little back alleys. Carimbeiros were rubber stamp makers who made "paid" stamps, "return to sender," and all manner of emblems of approval for visas, validations, certifications and the like. Bring in a photo or a sketch and a carimbeiro could turn it into a real, physical stamp overnight.

A fellow cruiser kindly let us make a photocopy of entry and exit visas he had acquired from the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. A British possession, it’s known for having been the exile prison of Napoleon. Not many boats pass that way, and Brazilian authorities weren't likely to be familiar with the official stamps or paperwork of St. Helena. A carimbeiro created our St. Helena stamps in short order from the photocopies we supplied.

We then sailed along the southern Brazilian coast, lying low amongst some island anchorages as if we had left the country for a while. When we re-entered Brazil, we submitted our stamped passports with a St. Helena entry and exit and gained fresh tourist visas for Brazil.