Favela tour
Rio has around 500 Favelas. The Favelas is right in the city, sometimes just beside a rich neighborhood. Favelas in Rio are run by drug dealers and Favelas have their own laws. Police can’t go inside to the Favelas since it can be very violent.
I was deciding whether to take a favela tour since some people say it’s morally incorrect to pay to see poverty and treating people as objects.
However, I took the Favelas tour (65 reais) anyway to Rocinha which is the biggest Favela in Rio. The Favela at Rocinha has 100 thousands people officially and some say there are as many as 200 thousands residents. The disparity between the rich and poor is Rio is big and
to understand Rio, I guess we will need to understand a little more about the Favela. There is an agreement between the Favela tour program with the local drug dealers and the guide told us that walking in the favela is safer than walking around the city because if someone
tries to pickpocket any tourists, they will be killed by the drug dealers.
We got up the Favela by motorbike.
Favela in Rocinha
Favelas in Rocinha has water and electricity, it’s just like any small town with their own community. Saw some people carrying machine guns on the street, they are the drug dealers and we can’t take photos of them.
Met up with Emily and Jahmila again and we went to the Botanical garden. The botanical garden has a wide varieties of plants (more than 7000 plant species) since Rio has great weather
The area Lapa is the place to be on Friday night. Brazilians love to party and there are many clubs with all kinds of music in Lapa. Met up with Alindro, a brazilian friend I met yesterday at the CS event and we went to Lapa. Brazilians are a friendly bunch, hang out with Alindro’s friends and we went to one of the club with rock music. Brazilian girls are great dancers and we had a good time there.
Even at 3am there are still many people on the street with samba drums playing. The place is 10 times more crowded than lower east side on a Friday night..Lapa is amazing..
