Day 17, Jan 20, 2006: Rio, Day 3: Street Car to Santa Teresa
40-meter-high palms line Rua Paissandu, just around the corner from Fernanda's apartment, which leads straight from the Municipal Palace to Flamengo Beach.


Following another suggestion from Cristiany's friend Liana, I decided to take a ride on the ancient bondinho (street car) to the arty Santa Teresa neighborhood, on a hilltop surrounded by favelas, the ubiquitous slums that house about 40% of Rio's population. This particular Friday was a municipal holiday in Rio, and, in stark contrast to my experience on the first two days I was there, the streets of the city were deserted. The hundred-year-old bondinho leaves from a tiny, hidden terminus not far from the baroque, hundred-year-old Municipal Theater.
Municipal Theater.


View out the front of the bondinho as it crosses the Carioca Aqueduct to get to Santa Teresa.


Every few hundred meters along the trolley route policemen stood guard, supposedly, I think, to keep the trolley passengers safe from attacks or robberies from the favelas.


Old house and flame tree along the bondinho line


The bonde at its Santa Teresa terminus in Praça de Neves


View from Santa Teresa


Favelas (slums) on a hillside near Santa Teresa


View of favelas and Corcovado (Hunchback Mountain) from Santa Teresa


Flame tree


This bana- na tree was not the intended subject of this photo, but, as the great Juscelino Kubitschek once said, "The camera never lies."


Deserted street in downtown Rio


That evening, my host Paul and his friends, sisters Alexandra and Tatiana, and I went to see the movie "The Producers", with Nathan Land and Matthew Broderick. Despite early misgivings, I really enjoyed the movie, though Alexandra did not. I experienced particular irony during the scene where the two producers scheme to embezzle $2M and abscond to Rio de Janeiro, which is portrayed as a backward, tropical backwater.
Alexandra, Paul and Tatiana