December 04, 2018

Rio de Janeiro. Just thinking those words caused an inexplicable sunburn to parts of my brain I didn’t even know existed. And saying them aloud made my pupils dilate in a way that was probably not medically advisable. They also had the power to summon vivid, slightly alarming hallucinations. Typically, in the form of glitter-stained samba dancers performing increasingly improbable acrobatics on the booze-soaked shores of Copacabana Beach. 

If South America had a welcome mat, Rio was the acid-stained corner you might consider wiping your feet on. Naturally, we decided this was the perfect launchpad to begin our grand, possibly catastrophic adventure.

I was travelling with Callum—my suspiciously cheerful, curly-haired housemate and reluctant co-conspirator in all things vaguely illegal or ill-advised. Once upon a time, we both paid taxes, but that was back when we were sane. Now we were fugitives from responsibility as the plane screeched onto the steaming tarmac of RIOgaleão Airport at sundown—vibrating with a combination of naïveté, adrenaline, and the lingering belief that someone, somewhere, was probably trying to warn us that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.

We had booked a place nearby. Our main goal was to avoid our brains combusting from jet lag. The listing, an alleged “entire apartment” priced at the astonishingly specific rate of £4.70 a night, showcased three blurry photos at increasingly odd angles, as if trying to hide something. The promise of two bedrooms, climate control, and a rooftop retreat—which, by all available evidence, existed solely in the realm of theoretical physics—hovered delicately between optimism and outright delusion. Everything about it screamed “probably not real,” but the price was irresistible. So, we chose to politely ignore all rational warnings.

Callum, operating on four hours of sleep and an impressive amount of Duolingo Portuguese, recited our address to the driver, who raised one eyebrow in response, which in Brazilian driver language meant: Are you absolutely certain you want to do this, gringos?

Then we shrugged. He shrugged. A delicate, highly coordinated mutual shrug-off ensued. And then off we went, toward whatever version of reality awaited at £4.70 a night.

The ride started simple enough, with the comforting illusion that we were merely heading somewhere vaguely residential. But it soon became ominous, as the streetlights winked out one by one like dying dreams, throwing a hood over the head of our visible surroundings. The road itself seemed to develop a sense of dramatic flair, twisting and narrowing into an estate that seemed designed to provoke existential dread in unsuspecting foreigners. Finally, without warning, the driver slammed on the brakes, refusing to take us any further.

“In there,” he said, pointing down a slender corridor of despair. Then he delivered the line that should have been our cue to run for our lives: “Good luck…but be careful. This place is a favela…”

Of course it was. It would have been far too simple if it weren’t.

Being British, we were both genetically programmed to avoid confrontation and, more importantly, to continue with any regrettably bad decisions simply out of politeness. So we stumbled off into the night, backpacks scraping along behind us, as the concept of street names, numbers, or anything resembling logic vanished entirely around us. In its place was a rising tide of shirtless children, unsteady adults, and barking dogs who clearly considered us a minor nuisance.

We must have looked spectacularly out of place, because within minutes, a small crowd had gathered, observing us curiously before a Christ-like figure emerged from the swirling haze of uncertainty. He extended a hand toward us.

“Daniel? Callum? It must be you!” he thundered, arms flinging open in such a vast, sweeping arc that several nearby pedestrians ducked for cover. “It’s me, Fabian! Your host! Welcome! Welcome to Brazil! Welcome to Vasco da Gama!”

Fabian moved with the theatrical certainty of a prophet, while his voice boomed with conviction—like he was presenting a keynote address at a conference only he attended. Callum and I followed automatically. When someone loudly shouts your name in a foreign country, evolutionary instinct tells you to comply. He immediately clamped one muscular arm over each of our shoulders, steering us forward in a manner that was part friendly tour guide, part nightclub security.

As introductions went, Fabian was the sort of man whose backstory required a stiff drink and possibly a whiteboard. He had once been an engineer in Holland, enjoying the glamorous riches of a corporate salary, safe bicycle lanes, and the mystical treasure of free dental care. He was seduced here by something more intoxicating than stock options: love. He threw it all away and decided the only sensible response was to emigrate to Brazil. Now, he lived somewhere in the centre of this favela, knee-deep in community projects and waist-deep in what appeared to be his own existential renovation.

“It is the Brazilian way!” he declared with a voice that was equal parts ancient sage and man who had misplaced his shoes. “Come!” he commanded, “Let me show you the house!”

Inside, our bags vanished into a temporal storage vortex. Before we could mutter a “thank you”, Fabian piled a small mountain of glistening fruit into our arms like Brazilian Jenga. Then, without missing a beat, he shepherded us outside as if we required urgent, expert guidance. Which we did.

“You need cash,” he declared, pointing vaguely toward the dark edges of the settlement. “To the petrol station! There’s an ATM there.”

Ah, yes. A nocturnal stroll through a favela to withdraw a ludicrous amount of cash. Brilliant. Surely nothing could possibly go wrong. We set off, flanked by our messianic guide.

Upon arrival at the petrol station—just beyond the community walls—the mood immediately shifted. A black truck glided into the forecourt, and a trio of hulking police officers emerged, stocked with heavy assault rifles and even heavier leather. They looked more like black ops mercenaries than protectors of the peace.

Fabian leaned over and whispered, “They won’t go inside Vasco. Not welcome. They’ll be eaten alive.”

Splendid. Just the sort of reassuring guidance you want on your inaugural evening in a foreign country. I had questions, but my brain was busy marinating in a tropical soup of humidity and adrenaline.

We safely retrieved our cash and floated back toward the favela’s throbbing heart: the central plaza. There, the air was a curious cocktail of limes, sweat, and something just barely on fire. Plastic cups sloshed with caipirinhas. Grandmas danced like tiny hurricanes. A toddler DJ presided over the proceedings from a crate, like a tiny, uncompromising overlord of rhythm. And beyond the fields of haphazardly arranged plastic chairs, at the absolute nucleus of everything, was a row of caged football pitches. Each one was alive with armies of sugar-fuelled children flickering under floodlights, playing and screaming as if their lives depended on it. Maybe they did.

Fabian floated among it all like a high priest, a community hero seemingly anointed by a constant stream of handshakes, hugs, and emphatic fist bumps. Even the buildings seemed to lean forward, eager to acknowledge his presence. With every step, he seemed to exude wisdom and blessings in roughly equal measure.

“No one will help us here,” he said softly. “We must look after each other. We are our own guardians.”

Back into the maze we meandered, Fabian leading the charge until he suddenly stopped abruptly. His eyes, usually twinkling with the calm assurance of someone who believed in communal hugs and the occasional minor miracle, darkened with concern. Ahead of us loomed three shadowy figures, exchanging cash, huddled over a flimsy plastic table stacked with bulbous bin bags bursting to the brim with bush weed.

“Those guys…” Fabian whispered, his trademark grin evaporating, “…are gangsters. ‘Businessmen’, we call them.” He frowned. “I don’t like these fuckers. They have nothing to lose. Way too unpredictable…”

“Do they know you?” I asked, hoping for some divine protection.

“Yes,” he said. Then, after a dramatic pause, “But they don’t know you.”

Wonderful. I straightened up instantly. Fabian tightened his grip on our shoulders and rerouted us with the subtlety of a GPS avoiding a potentially fatal traffic jam.

Moments later, we collided with one of Fabian’s apostles—a man so thoroughly drunk that he seemed to be phasing in and out of reality—draped in a psychedelic bucket hat and clutching a potent bottle of cachaça.

“Peace and love! Bem-vindo!” he hollered, cigarette dangling precariously from his lip.

“This is Raúl,” Fabian muttered, half-laughing, half-cringing, entirely embarrassed, “My neighbour.”

Raúl drifted away into the walls behind us like an apparition, leaving only a fragrant trail of booze and burning tobacco. Fabian, meanwhile, beamed at a pregnant woman perched in a window, cradling a snoozing baby like a trophy.

“My old lady. And my firstborn,” he said with a paternal pride normally reserved for lions introducing their cubs to bewildered tourists. Then, without a pause, he extended an invitation to delve deeper into the favela in the morning on a private tour:

“Tomorrow, I'll show you the real Brazil. Free of charge.”

Just like that, the favela was growing on us, or at least worming its way into our sensibilities. Our initial apprehension quickly mutated into a sense of misdirected adventure—the danger, chaos, and charm of Fabian and his people became oddly inviting. We agreed to the tour. Madness seemed infinitely safer than hesitation. In making that choice, we officially entered the subterranean underworld of Brazilian tourism. Somewhere real. Somewhere sweaty, weird, and gloriously alive.

In our ‘apartment,’ I climbed what I assumed were stairs—but might’ve been a repurposed fire escape wrapped in alarming electrical spaghetti. The ‘climate control’ was a wheezing desk fan from 1969. The ‘two bedrooms’ were barely closets and possibly haunted.

Up on the surprisingly real rooftop retreat, I ducked under clotheslines and vaulted over flowerpots, trying not to plunge into the concrete pit below. Although the tangled web of washing lines adorned with yellow and blue football jerseys probably had some hidden cushioning effect, or at least I hoped so. Flags drooped lethargically in the heat. Satellite dishes sprouted like metallic fungi.

In the distance, firecrackers detonated with a cheerful disregard for safety, Fabian plotted his next sermon, and the children continued to scream with either joy or terror—it was genuinely impossible to tell.

And so it began: a very warm, slightly terrifying welcome to South America.

_______________________________________________

December 05, 2018

Propelled by a combination of gnawing hunger and a curiosity about the precise culinary alchemy Brazilians engaged in before noon, we extracted ourselves from the mattress, got dressed, and plunged back into the labyrinthine streets.

Our master plan was breathtakingly sophisticated: head to the main square. Statistically, it was the most likely place for things that might conceivably be considered food. Lacking our host, a map, or any coherent sense of direction, we relied on a method perfected over centuries: follow the scent of humanity. This consisted primarily of sweat, meat, diesel, and, inexplicably, hints of optimism. Somewhere in that chaos lay breakfast.

When we arrived, the plaza gleamed in the fluorescent morning sun. Children were still rattling in their cages. Had anybody slept? The previous night’s carnage had undergone a complete transformation. It was now a new life form entirely: bars had morphed into cafes, beer bottles had evolved into pitchers of juice, and the rum had converted into bubbling vats of coffee.

Then, without the slightest hint of ceremony, a grizzled yet vaguely welcoming local held out his hand. It was as if he had been expecting us all along, which was unlikely, but who could say? In his hand rested two small salgados—golden, deep-fried pastry grenades bursting with mysterious meats and cheeses.

We accepted. No money exchanged hands. And no one asked inconvenient questions about where we came from or why Callum was wearing socks with sandals. Our initiation into the savage beauty of Brazilian street cuisine was complete. The salgados were inhaled with an efficiency designed for consumption rather than digestion, we wrapped up the mission and set off to rendezvous with Fabian for the grand Vasco tour.

Retracing our steps home turned out to be a futile exercise. The alleyways weren’t just confusing—they were actively hostile: twisting, and occasionally imploding. Our only navigational aid was a deranged and unreliable list of lefts, rights, Jesus murals, and a particularly memorable warning: avoid the hole with rats. Memorising it was impossible. We were doomed from the start. Landmarks disappeared. Murals mocked us, and our confidence disintegrated.

We stumbled into a quiet corner. Too quiet. Dangerously quiet. And there they were: three young men stationed at the same flimsy plastic table, arms crossed, eyes sharp. These were not boys selling lemonade or philosophical pamphlets. They were the businessmen.

Callum and I stopped speaking mid-sentence. There was a strange telepathic agreement in that silence—a sort of shared panic that communicated: do not attract attention, do not breathe too loudly, do not trip over rising dread. Instinctively, we picked up the pace and kept our heads down. Pretending that the table overflowing with green packages was, in fact, a perfectly innocent pile of very enthusiastic lettuce.

My gut screamed at me. My eyes stubbornly stared straight ahead, desperately attempting to ignore the whispers of mischief: Do not look at the bin bags. Do not inquire about discounts. Or strains. And under no circumstances should you grab a bag and run for cover.

An eternity passed. In practical terms, it was about thirty-seven seconds, but it felt more like a century if you happened to be standing in front of several extremely suspicious human beings. Their gazes drilled into us. I was fairly certain that any remaining hope of leaving this scene unscathed had just quietly packed its bags to a nicer destination. It was too late. The trap had sprung with a dramatic flair.

Without warning, the businessmen lunged forward, barking in paranoid Portuguese at a speed and pitch that was frantically undecipherable—half of it sounded like riddles, half like threats. I understood precisely none of it, but the message was obvious: we were not in control. Not even a little bit.

“Camisas para cima! (Shirts up!)” One of them yelled.

We obliged. Immediately. And without argument. They went up like surrender flags, revealing our pale, undeniably unarmed torsos, which were far from threatening. Were they inspecting us for firearms? For a wire? Alien implants? A suspicious tan line test to separate gringos from gangsters? We couldn’t tell. But whatever they were measuring did not pass the test.

And yet, our compliance only seemed to make things worse. Suspicion sharpened. Our silence, which we fondly considered to be ‘innocent,’ was instead interpreted as ‘weird, unsettling, and exactly the sort of behaviour displayed by people who are probably smuggling something highly suspicious.’ Which, in retrospect, was entirely fair. We were, in fact, both of those things—and we might have been smuggling something.

All of their fingers twitched near small silver pistols neatly cradled in the front of their Adidas waistbands. In a moment of clarity, slightly tainted by fear, it occurred to me that I did not know how to say “please don’t shoot me” in Portuguese. But they hadn’t pointed the guns at us yet. If we squinted very hard, hoped for a miracle, and ignored all survival instincts, there was still a small, flickering candle of hope.

Then—boom—Raúl, the benevolent, quasi-spectral hero, materialised in his trademark bucket hat. He glided down the alley with the confidence of someone who definitely, maybe, knew what they were doing.

He cannonballed into the chaos like a one-man symphony of intervention, producing a verbal exchange that somehow suggested he might just manage to rescue us from this mess without anyone needing emergency surgery.

“Fabian,” we heard him call out, loud and clear. It was the sound of a golden ticket being printed and handed to us, with a small congratulatory fanfare.

Just like that, we were untangled from the hostility. Raúl yanked us away, still verbally jousting, as we retreated in stunned, awestruck silence. Apparently, Fabian’s protective aura had been activated. I assumed this was part of the standard-issue favela security package.

Raúl winked, grinned, and, with an elegance that defied several laws of physics, produced a fresh glass of cachaça in his right hand, while his left hand simultaneously extracted an already-lit cigarette from the side of his hat.

“Peace and love, amigos,” he declared, before providing us with directions to Fabian’s residence.

When we arrived, Fabian was already there and waiting. He already knew, somehow. His omniscience seemed to extend into multiple dimensions. He looked slightly disappointed, apologising on behalf of the favela as if he were both its mayor and its conscience.

We shrugged off his concerns. At this point, shrugging seemed to be the only appropriate human response.

“They take cocaine all day,” he explained. “Possessed by a powerful paranoia. You two were strangers poking around. You’re lucky they didn’t think you were undercover police.”

We didn’t feel lucky. More like survivors of a slow-motion car crash who’d somehow walked away still blinking. But we nodded anyway. It seemed the polite thing to do.

Then he shoved a bowl of bananas into Callum’s arms, dispensing both sustenance and survival advice. “Eat,” he said. “You’ll need it.”

Then the tour began. It mostly involved trying not to look like complete tourists—a task at which we were spectacularly unsuccessful.

Fabian was not just a guide—he was far more than that. He was the sort of human being who seemed to have been dropped directly into the cosmos for no other reason than to make it look slightly more pleasing and morally sound. Apparently, he was the architect around here. A builder, a legend, or reasons that remain mostly unexamined, a philosopher in flip-flops. He casually gestured toward the houses he had both conceived and constructed, each one a testament to his strange ability to combine the worlds of high design, low budget, and utter confusion.

We were introduced to a toothless matriarch. She kissed Fabian on both cheeks and immediately greeted us with the same gesture, speaking Portuguese at what we later estimated to be 2,000 words per minute. Fabian’s translation was something like: “She says you are now officially part of the family, and also very welcome to do chores if you like.”

She cackled gleefully. “This is one of the nicest houses here,” Fabian informed us. “Her neighbours are all jealous!” We believed her. Logic has nothing on enthusiasm delivered at maximum volume with teeth missing in all the right places.

Meanwhile, Vasco da Gama was somewhere in the midst of a community uprising. Fabian, with a gleam in his eye, described it as a “middle-class favela.” It was a place clawing its way upward with grit, hope, and zero government assistance. Somehow, amid the ambition and occasional stray chickens, they had cultivated pride. This was a miraculous achievement that flipped the finger to government neglect.

Out in the open, Fabian pointed dramatically at the Estádio São Januário, home of Vasco da Gama FC.

“It’s sacred,” he declared, as if we had just bumbled upon a relic of unimaginable significance.

And, truth be told, it was. Not just a game, but a full-blown obsession—a community-bound, heart-thumping, voice-shredding love affair that seemed to involve far more irrational yelling than anybody could have anticipated.

With a wink that could only be described as too charming, and what we assumed was a deeply spiritual negotiation with the receptionist’s very soul, we were granted access to the inner sanctum. Fabian casually led us through the club, his stride more majestic than any human has a right to possess, guiding us past gleaming trophies—each one a testament to the never-ending struggle between pride and victory. Fabian admirably informed us this was no ordinary football club. They were the first to smash the chains of racial segregation in Brazilian football—a bunch of rebels in socks and studs, sticking it to the bigots while the nation continued its stubborn devotion to prejudice.

Before we knew it—and without our consent—the VIP tour had somehow extended into full pitch-side access. Suddenly we found ourselves standing in the technical area of a youth match, nodding with the earnest wisdom of semi-functional talent scouts who had accidentally survived a morning gun inspection. As the final whistle shrieked, Fabian shook hands with a variety of followers and waved cheerily at the staff. We drifted out behind him, part entourage, part confused bystanders.

We were deep into extra time. Fabian wasn’t finished yet. “One more stop,” he announced.

Up a steep hill we climbed, dodging loose bricks, before arriving at a labourer’s checkpoint somewhere between scaffolding, power tools, and half-constructed dreams. With a nod and a flourish that could have been choreographed, we were waved through onto the site. Fabian and three men in hard hats unfurled blueprints—ambitious projects sprawled across the paper, promising to breathe new life into the community. Each seemed to whisper, “Yes, we will rebuild the world… eventually… maybe.”

We climbed higher, up a backstreet shortcut, where Fabian pointed out landmarks of questionable legality and peculiar absurdity. Among them, a monolithic corruption prison, reportedly housing the most notorious politicians past and present. Fabian was clearly optimistic, envisioning a future free of corruption. I was less convinced—but the look in his eyes dared me to join him in the pursuit of hope.

At the top, our tour merged seamlessly into the orbit of more cheerfully eccentric comrades. One was balanced precariously on a revving dirt bike. Another triumphantly hoisted a potted marijuana plant above his head, shouting something in Portuguese with all the epic pride of Pelé lifting the World Cup—if Pelé had been a particularly enthusiastic gardener.

“He says you can go to his rooftop; he has the best view… It’s not bad,” Fabian translated.

He was right. The man’s shack clung to the hillside like a stubborn barnacle, perfectly positioned to survey a landscape of impossible contrasts: on one side, the gritty, hungry underdogs of Vasco; on the other, surgically enhanced Rio—glamour, plastic decadence, and butt-lifts.

Our unconventional excursion was coming to an end. We deposited wads of cash into Fabian’s hand before he could refuse, shaking the other with a mixture of gratitude and mild incomprehension—a small price to pay for a guided tour through the underworld. Before we departed down into Rio, the Vasco messiah imparted his final sermon—a mantra to carry us forward into whatever improbable madness South America had in store for unsuspecting travellers.

“Listen to me,” he commanded, his voice low and shamanic, “Always trust your gut…”