Let me take you to Rio, Rio!

11.21.12

Hey everyone! I'm so glad I'm almost caught up with my blog! (After
this, I'll just have to write about this week-it's been pretty busy on
the MV Explorer!)

But first, let's talk about my times in Rio de Janeiro! I had a pretty
great time in Rio, I wish we would have had a couple more days there,
even though I still haven't been feeling 100% better.

Day One: I went to a Hippie Market and Impanema Beach! The Hippie
Market was really neat! There were so many different items, like masks,
jewelry, headbands, purses, etc. Most everything was hand-made as
well! I'm glad I didn't have much money on me, because I probably would
have spent it all there! The group afterwards went to Impanema
Beach...it was extremely crowded, not what I would have expected since
the beaches in Uruguay had hardly anyone there. Our group (Chris, Jen,
the twins and Ellie, Colleen, Danielle, Ali, and me) met up with the
Freeman family there too. Elena and I tried to walk to Copacabana but
it turns out it was a little bit of a walk and we didn't have shoes on
(we thought it connected to Impanema beach-which it does, but there are
rocks in the way, so we have to walk down a different road to get
there) So we just hung out on these giant rocks, and it was a gorgeous
sight!

Day Two: I went with the Freeman family to the Botanical Gardens! It
was definitely interesting, and we saw so many plants and animals! We
saw these adorable monkeys, they were so little too! I don't know what
kind they were. Elena, Willa and I also saw a Toucan!! It was a rare
sight in the gardens, so we were pretty lucky! :) My favorite part was
probably the sensory garden though! We got to touch and smell a lot of
different plants, like an aloe plant, lots of spices, etc. The
Botanical Gardens was a huge area too, and I know we didn't get to see
it all, but I'm glad I got to go see some of it!

Day Three: This was the day of my "field lab" for Coastal Cities and
Climate Change. We went with SAS to the Babilonia favela, and got a
tour of it. (The entire day it was pouring down rain!) A favela is an
area which is lower in economic status, built on hills, and can be seen
as the "slums." There isn't necessarily good sanitation, nor the best
police enforcement, but Babilonia is a good favela in terms of trying to
be eco-friendly! They're taking steps to incorporate green practices
into their everyday lives. There are a couple examples of these
practices. The first is having basins on the top of their roofs so that
when it rains, they can catch the rain water and rely less on city
water. Another green practice is that for everything a family/person
recycles, they get part of their electric bill reduced! Babilonia also
relocates people in areas of high risk at no cost to them, so that they
can remove the houses in high risk areas (areas that are more
susceptible to climate change/mudslides/flooding, etc.) and start
planting trees...Reforesting the top of the hills. We got to take part
in helping reforest! My group (Jenna, Tori, and one other person, I
can't remember his name right now) had a caja fruit tree that we
planted, and we named it JaJa! While up there, the people who were
helping us let us take some sort of fruit off a tree to eat...They were
like little berries. I have no idea what they were, but they were a
little bit spicy! We then had a traditional Brazilian lunch afterwards
for all our hard work. I had a lot of fun this day!

I didn't get to do everything in Rio that I wanted to do-I did not get
to hike Sugarloaf, nor did I get up to the Christ the Redeemer statue,
but this is one city I know I will come back to in the future, and will
have the opportunity to do these eventually!

SH