Sunrise Over Copacabana

I woke up and there it was. Sunrise. Over Copacabana Beach.

I always sleep fitfully on the night before, or the last night of, a long trip. I'm scared I'm going to miss my plane! So even if the plane does not leave until 10:00 at night, I'm still nervous.

I had a good final evening walking around the neighborhood.

Dinner wasn't anything special, but then I saw this place:

Rufo's!

Rufo's may look like an ordinary juice bar -- of which there are many all over Rio de Janeiro, but they had the flavor I've been dreaming of, and asking for, all during this trip. And no one else seem to have. Which fruit is that? You can see it tucked in between the yellow melons in the picture above:

Caju! This is the fruit of the cashew tree. The fruit is so sweet it cannot be shipped to the United States. So we eat only the delicious nut from this same tree. Finally, in my final hours in Rio de Janeiro, I have found my caju.

I can sleep peacefully. Until I wake up at 4:30 and see the glorious sunrise over Copacabana Beach:

Time to fly home.

Vacation Ends with a Long Walk Along the Beaches

From the far southern end of Copacabana Beach, looking north to Sugarloaf

If I were sufficiently flexible -- and thankfully I am not -- I would be kicking myself in the hindquarters. I first visited Rio de Janeiro in 1997. And it took 25 years to get back here. What took me so long?

On my second time in Rio de Janeiro on this trip, I am staying on Copacabana Beach. 

I'm now at the end of a two-week vacation and I really lost the interest in planning anything in particular to do today. Besides, there is a Brazil game in the World Cup coming up mid-day, so anything that would be open will not be open. Except the beach.

So I'm on the beach,

This is a game of futvolei, which is volleyball played like soccer-football. In other words, it is volleyball where you don't use you hands. You use your feet, your head, your legs, your chest, your shoulders. Anything but your hands and arms. There is no regular volleyball happening here. There aren't even any soccer-football games. It's all futvolei.

And paddleboarding. There will be surfing when I stop at Arporador. But I haven't worked my there yet on this walk.

I was thinking of visiting Forte de Copacabana, the old military fort that was built to protect this area from French privateers. But there was a line.

So I continued on to Ipanema.

See. I'm at Ipanema Beach. Tall and tan and young and lovely. Well, one out of four ain't bad.

The beach was crowded when I walked past, but it thinned out as game time got closer. And there was plenty of futvolei here too.

These people were particularly good. It's strange seeing people playing volleyball with their heads and feet much better than I could even imagine playing in the ordinary style.

Ipanema is not as deep (meaning it's not as far from the sidewalk to the water) as is Copacabana. It's also quieter. And, based on nothing, I have the impression that the ratio of locals to tourists is not as heavily skewed towards us turistas as it is on Copacabana.

There's some locals in that picture, no? Well, the lifeguard sitting up in his lifeguard tower most definitely would be a local.

I then wind my way back to Arporador, with its giant rock and surfers.

Surfers going to surf.

Or just walking around with surfboards to look cool. Either is cool.

People hanging out in the water and people hanging out on the rock.

There were a couple of professional photo shoots happening on the rock. Here's one.

But some people climb up on the rock to get away from the beach crowd, I guess.

The Brazil-Croatia game has started, so it was time to walk back up along Copacabana Beach to my hotel.

It's not the Jobim statue on Ipanema. This is the Copacabana's statue of Dorival Caymmi.

He was an important figure in the development of samba and bossa nova, although he does not have the international legacy of Jobim.

The last day of the vacation is coming to an end.

My mood is blue. Blue water. Blue skies. That kind of blue.

It's been a great vacation, but it's time to go back home, which is how you should feel at the end of a great vacation. If you're not ready to go home, the vacation was not a long enough. And if the vacation was too short, how can it have been "great."

Sitio Burle Marx: the House and Gardens of the Landscape Architect of Brasilia

The backyard of Burle-Marx

Back in the Rio groove.

Those of you who know me well, or well enough, may be surprised to hear this, but sometimes when I am a tourist, I like to go to places that my fellow tourists fail to go., whether out of lack of knowledge or lack of interest. In Rio de Janeiro, when I hired a tour guide to show me the sights, one place I wanted to see was Sítio Roberto Burle Marx. These are the gardens of the famed landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. The guide dissuaded me from going on his tour, not because of the obscurity (he says he usually gets about one request a year to be taken there), but because of the distance. It may be 42.5 km (about 27 or 28 miles), but it takes about two hours to get there because of Rio traffic. He said he would find me a driver to take me there on the second Rio segment of this trip.

He did. And two hours after departing my hotel, we arrived at the Sítio Roberto Burle Marx exactly on time for the scheduled 9:30 a.m. English language guided tour.

This is not on the typical Rio tourist trail. There were four of us for the English tour (and that includes my driver-guide who came along) and, maybe, three others for the Portuguese language tour. This is no Cristo Redentor and Corcovado by any means.

The site is fairly large and you can explore only as part of an organized tour.

The site is not so much "gardens" as it is a large plot of land with lots of very interesting species of plants.

I was expecting a Brazilian answer to Butchart Gardens in Victoria, B.C., Canada.

This is not that. Although, interestingly, one of the other people on the English language tour (obviously not me) grew up on Vancouver Island, Canada, apparently not far from Butchart Gardens. I was under the impression she may have studied landscape architecture, hence her interest in Mr. Burle Marx and this particular tour.

I'm not even going to pretend to know the names of all the various plants and trees and shrubs and succulents we saw. Even the trees around the parking lot were interesting.

We first explored what was kind of, sort of, but not quite, Burle Marx's greenhouse.

Who is Roberto Burle Marx? He was one of the world's pre-eminent landscape architects. Along with urban planner Lucio Costa, architect Oscar Niemeyer, and structural engineer Joaquim Cardozo, Burle Marx was one of the key figures responsible for giving Brasilia its distinct, futuristic look. 

Burle Marx was most definitely Brazilian. And he searched Brazil for plants that he could domesticate and use in his landscaping designs. He personally found several new species of plants. A couple of dozen plants bear his name due to these efforts.

Brazil was a very good backyard for him to use for exploration, as this is one of the most bio-diverse countries on the planet, with the Amazonian rain forest in the north, the swamps of the Pantanal in the South, the deserts of the Sertão in the northeast, and a whole of nature everywhere else.

Feel the nature! The flower of this plant really did feel artificial. Only it was real. Isn't nature weird? By the way, my driver and guide João can seen below the plant leaf on the far left of the picture. Oi João!

The above plant, I believe, has become a common ornamental. Or perhaps not. I really should have taken notes. In addition to taking pictures.

The flower of the above plant looks like meat hanging to dry. It's not! And it feels furry. Not a little hairy. Thick furry. Nature is weirder than we can imagine.

There was a reason I took a picture of this plant and it's flower. Anyone remember?

And the plant above might be in the ginger family. We saw a lot of plants in the ginger family in the Burle Marx greenhouse. This likely was one of them, but I'm not guaranteeing it.

 

Again, it was not quite a greenhouse. It had concrete walls, not glass. I probably should have used the word "enclosure," as that is a more accurate description than "green house," but I already made my choice and I have to forever deal with the consequences.

Next on the tour: we're going to take a ride up to the Burle Marx workshop or, if you prefer the fancy-fancy term, his atelier.

All the big-name artists in the big-name cities of Europe have "ateliers," the most notable being the Atelier Mestrovic in Zagreb, Croatia. OK, it's not the notable. It just was my favorite.

 

This is Burle Marx's studio / workshop / atelier:

I thought the place had a Spanish feel to it.

He designed the "atelier" with repurposed stones from somewhere for which they were originally purposes.

It is decorated with his art.

Here I am with Mr. Burle Marx himself.

He's probably telling me we're not good enough friends for me to be posing for that photo in such a chummy manner.

Burle Marx was an artist. Not just a landscape architect.

And while his art was quite interesting, there is a reason he is known primarily as a landscape architect.

The plants are the stars of this artistic show.

The art? Less so.

But any art would look good with this natural backdrop.

The studio is near the highest point in the complex. There are no trails to points higher, so we begin the downward trek.

This tree has produces hard-shelled pods that are hard (and sound like) coconuts.

But they're not!

Water lilies!

It's late spring in Brazil in early December, so everything is bloom.

If I were allergic to South American plants, this would be a problem. But I don't seem to be, so it's not.

And then we arrived at Burle Marx's house.

Maybe it was the falling water, but the place reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania.

Only this is not Frank Lloyd Wright. And we're in the Zona Oeste of Rio de Janeiro.

But there is plenty of falling water. 

Even if it is not "Fallingwater" per se.

But does Frank Lloyd Wright have any houses with a chandelier that looks like this?

Or this?

This is a chandelier befitting the house of the world's foremost landscape architect. Sadly, they did not sell any replicas in the gift shop.

This is the backyard.

Symbiosis:

Great views.

Interestingly, there is a chapel, the Chapel of St. Anthony, Capela Santo Antônio, right next to the house.

Now, why would a Jewish agnostic such as Burle Marx have a Catholic chapel next to his house?

Answer: it already was there. This was a sugarcane plantation at one point in time and this was a chapel for the slaves who worked the sugarcane fields. Also, Burle Marx may not have been religious, but he had a fine appreciation for his religious art. As will be evident when we enter his home,

But first, another plant, in bloom, right outside the house:

These heads along the back wall of the house have the effect of gargoyles, do they now?

This is Burle Marx's bedroom. It was stripped bare by "fans" after his death in the 1990s and redecorated with art of the same there. There is a portrait of a young Burle Marx in the top right corner of the back wall.

Peruvian pottery:

Apparently you put water into these vessels, pour it out, and it makes the sound the animal makes in nature.

So they say.

And here is a handsome couple:

We will end the tour with this art object from inside the Burle Marx house:

A chicken with a single human foot. Again, no replicas for sale in the gift shop. Opportunity lost.

For this being the home and gardens of one of the four men most responsible for making Brasilia what it is, there is very little here with a classic retrofuturistic "Brasilia" look or feel. But it is beautiful greenspace.

Not far from Sítio Roberto Burle Marx are some stunning beach and ocean views. This viewpoint is Grumari. The land in the picture is military land, so it's undevelopable.

From Grumari, there is a nice stretch of lightly visited beaches before you reach the Miami-like development of Barra de Tijuca. This beach is known as Praia do Abricó:

This is known as Rio's "nude" beach, but best that I could see, everyone there was wearing beach clothing.

Blue skies. Blue water.

 

Black rocks, however.

Here I am. On the beach.

I did not partake of the beach. I only snapped a few pictures.

Traffic meant that it would be a very long drive back to Copacabana.