Rio De Janiero

I absolutely loved Rio. It is such a beautiful city and made me fall a bit in love with Brazil. One of the best cities I have ever been to.

Brazil politics and economy

In Rio, we learned a lot about the Brazilian economy and political system.

In short, it’s super crazy right now. Brazil is top 10 in the world in overall GDP and the 5th largest country with over 200 million people. They are the biggest economic power in South America and are 4X bigger in population than the next largest country in the continent (Columbia).

This said, they have tons of corruption in the country. 22% of its inhabitants live in favelas (slums), there are massive incarceration rates, racism issues and other political problems.

It is one thing to learn about this happening in Paraguay, which has a few million inhabitants and something entirely different in a country that is so important to the world economy.

This was very eye opening and made me realize the importance of understanding how big countries’s economies and political systems work and change over time. With so many inhabitants and economic power, Brazil, along with other big nations (they are also part of BRICS), are important.

Being in Rio made me more interested in learning about economic/political development and the make up of big economies.

Food

Food in Brazil was awesome. My favorite place for food so far. Lots of variety, they have the best Asaí ever and we had tons of great meals.

Beauty

Rio is also a beyond beautiful place. We went to Copa Cabana beach, a few other beaches, we checked out the huge Christ the Redeemer Statue, which is one of the 7 modern wonders of the world! (even though I thought Iguazu was better).

Other activities

We visited one of the favelas in Brazil, which formed a lot of thoughts in my head. Hope to write about it at some point as well.

We visited their huge soccer stadium. The people there love soccer more than any place I have ever seen. The Caipiriña is a famous Brazilian drink that we had and was very enjoyable as well.

I ate Asai ever day :), we went to their old presidential house where one of the former presidents, Vargas, killed himself in his own bed because he knew he would have been tortured and killed otherwise.

Very interesting fact, in 1957, Brazil decided to move its capital from Rio to a new city called Brasilia. At the time, Brasilia didn’t exist. They built the city and now it is the capital where the president lives along with 4 million inhabitants.

We also went to this place called Escadaria Selaron which are these huge set of stairs that are decorated with tons of tiles that were made or bought by an artist. It was a super amazing place. I took some photos that weren’t so good, so below is one that actually captures what it looked like (or at least partially since it keeps going up).

Overall

Because there are safety issues in Rio, we weren’t allowed to explore much on our own, which I understand. I definitely want to go back though and explore more, go out more, and experience more of Rio and other parts of Brazil.