Some Photos

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The Favelas, The Asfalto and Santa Teresa

View of Sugar Loaf Mountain and Guanabara Bay from the Parque das Ruinas

I spent this afternoon exploring my hill top neighborhood of Santa Teresa and it really is a place of beauty. It’s one of Rio’s oldest neighborhoods and as such has a completely unique vibe; old Portuguese architecture engulfed in tropical flora, crooked cobblestone streets and the some of the illest, most colorful graffiti to help remind you just which epoch you are inhabiting.

I hiked up to the Parque das Ruínas to take in its nearly uninterrupted views of Rio and Guanabara Bay. I posted up in the garden next to it and sat quietly watching three small monkeys at play in the trees above. But it’s far from some utopia here. Don’t get it twisted.

While geographically close, Santa Teresa is a world removed from Copacabana, Ipanema and the more modern center of town…the asfalto, or flat lands. But at the same time it’s not a typical morro (hill side) community either, although it is surrounded by 5 to 7 favelas. Yeah, there’s no mistaking that fact.

My apartment over looks two favelas in the fore ground as well as a few others in the distance. Opposing criminal factions control the two closest favelas and each one would be more than happy to relieve the other of their turf. I know this because it is what I have heard (literally) and seen…the unmistakable POP POP POP along with occasional red, military grade tracers I can see whizzing back and forth at night.



The view, as you can see, really is quite nice. But, like a politician, a picture can offer a thousand words on a subject but still manage to avoid the whole truth.

The favelas, the criminal factions and their traficantes (traffickers), the general inhabitants of these hill side communities and, of course, the police will be explored in greater detail in future posts so…um…stay posted.

Nega Teresa and the Bahian Magic That Is An Acarajé

The acarajé, essentially a black eyed pea fritter fried in dende oil and smeared with shrimps and a spicy shrimp sauce, may be a staple in the diet of many Bahians but it’s popularity has spread to cities all over Brazil inhabited by migrants from the north. So popular in fact is the acarajé, it has sparked controversy over who may serve the lucrative snack. In Bahia, it is said that a quality acarajé vendor can reach a level of notoriety normally reserved for footballers. In my neighborhood of Santa Teresa in Rio, we are blessed with our own Ronaldo of the acarajé, Nega Teresa. With her colorful head wrap, traditional white blouse and billowing skirt, an outfit rooted in the practice of candomblé (a masala of traditional African animistic and mystic mythologies with a touch of catholicism sprinkled on [I found out today that I had this wrong. Umbanda is mixed with catholicism, while candomblé leaves out the guilt trip]), she holds court every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights just around the corner from my flat. While these days even Emeril has his own acarajé recipe, if cariocas I’ve spoken with are to be believed, you would be hard pressed to uncover a better acarajé than Nega Teresa's in all of Salvador de Bahia!

Ingredients: black-eyed peas soaked over night, dried shrimp soaked 30 minutes, onion, garlic, fresh ginger, cayenne pepper, salt, olive oil, dende oil to fry fritter in.

• mash up softened peas and combine with shrimp, onion and garlic and form into burger size discs
  
• fry in adende oil until a golden brown, rotating as necessary
  
• remove from oil, blot dry, slice open and fill with more shrimp and cover with the mole de acaraje, essentially a creamy shrimp paste with onion, ginger and red pepper
  
• Eat carefully around the edge, “not like a burger, gringo!”