Beautiful Ugly Rio

The approach to Santos Dumont at dawn

I booked a flight and flew into Santos Dumont, Rio’s domestic airport. Rio’s main international airport, Galeão International, is a long way out of town and in a very ugly area but Santos Dumont is far closer to Rio’s iconic attractions: Copacabana, Pão de Açucar (Sugarloaf Mountain) and Cristo Redentor (the statue of Christ the Redeemer). As you approach Santos Dumont you get an incredible view of these sights and you instantly understand why they call it A Cidade Maravilhosa (the Marvellous City). 

The thrill of returning to Rio via an aerial approach was immortalised by the father of Bossa Nova, Tom Jobim, in his beautiful song Samba do Avião. I know I’ve been bombarding you with audio recently so I’ll refrain from embedding this track, but if you’re interested do look it up. That said, I can’t resist sharing the lyrics which are typically touching without being saccharin sweet:

Ipanema and Leblon circa 1950.

Ipanema and Leblon today. What happened?

If you only saw the major beaches of Rio’s Zona Sul (Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana) you’d say that Rio’s beauty remains despite the architecture rather than being enhanced by it. It’s hard to love those rows and rows of high-rise apartments and hotels that line so many of Rio’s most beautiful spots.


Indeed, O Globo, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, published this fascinating online article entitled “Rio, only beautiful because of nature”. A series of Rio’s best known views are presented with a sliding window so you can see how different things would be without the amazing natural wonders. Click here to access the website, then drag the blue window to the left  and right of each image to see the ‘with’ and ‘without’ version. Brazilian’s compare it with Miami. Being more familiar with Europe I always think of Benidorm in Spain.


But of course Rio is more than just the beaches of Zona Sul. Elegant Santa Teresa (mentioned in an earlier post) with its crumbling colonial style architecture is relatively free of modern hotel and apartment blocks. And there are many beautiful old buildings dotted around plenty of other neighbourhoods and also some modern classics, exemplified by the work of Oscar Niemeyer.

Oscar Niemeyer’s striking Niterói Contemporary Art Museum with Cristo Redentor in the background.

And it’s a cliché I know, but beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Rio’s favelas (slums) are seen by many Cariocas as an ugly reflection of the city’s problems and yet I find some of them visually stunning. I plan to cover some of the favelas in future posts but here are a couple of my favourite snaps I’ve taken around town:

The Dona Marta Favela close to where I work in Botafogo.

Santo Amaro Favela at night with the Pão de Açucar in the background.

So you can see, Rio is beautiful in places and ugly in others – a city of contrasts. During my journey to work I see young children, messed up and sleeping on the pavement and moments later I am dazzled by the amazing Sugarloaf mountain, blue water in they bay and even bluer skies. Some of Rio’s beauty is natural, some is by design and some maybe even unintentional. 


But this is only addressing the city’s physical appearance. What about the people, the customs, the culture? Well, I hope the fact that I’m writing this blog speaks for itself – during my time in Rio I have seen so much that has amazed and enchanted me that I had to find a way to tell people about it. I am immersed in a population with an infectious happiness and joy for life – something I could never say about London, Paris or New York.

Applauding the Sun

I’ll finish with a quick story about something I saw at Ipanema beach earlier in the year. Some friends and I had spent the day chatting, swimming, lazing around and drinking beer. Eventually the sun started to sink towards the horizon and we watched as it disappeared behind the Dois Irmãos (Two Brothers) the twin mountains at the far end of Leblon. It was a lovely sunset and as I stopped taking photos and turned back to my friends I heard some clapping in the distance. I assumed this was because of a game of beach football or volleyball that was going on. But it got louder and louder, coming closer and closer. I looked around and realised that the entire beach was applauding the sunset – the wave of applause engulfed us and spread onwards up the beach. There was no shouting or whooping, just a gentle applause of appreciation for a beautiful sunset. Everyone smiled and that was that. How’s that for beautiful?

The sun going down behind the Dois Irmãos in Leblon.