First Impressions of Rio de Janeiro

April 29, 2015May 2, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

It’s been an eventful start to our trip so far! Our plans got sidetracked almost immediately; we were supposed to meet in Rio on Sunday morning, but I arrived in Seattle to a text from Delta informing me my flight into Rio had been delayed by 8 hours. I called customer service and they told me the flight had been rescheduled due to an ash cloud that was approaching Rio from Calbuco volcano in Chile, which has been erupting over the past few days. However, the ash cloud apparently moved out to sea and Emily’s flight on United took off without too much delay. Even my pilot admitted Delta was a little over-cautious canceling a 10 hour flight so far in advance.

As a result, I ended up spending my first night in a hotel in Atlanta and got up early Sunday morning to catch my delayed flight. It definitely could have been worse, but I was annoyed with Delta, who wouldn’t supply hotels to their passengers. When I arrived back at the airport I was surprised to find half of the passengers sleeping on the floors all around the gate. I ended up missing a full day in Rio, but we made the best of it and had a nice dinner outside under the Lapa Arches when I arrived, where we were accompanied by some local musicians. We tried a few Brazilian appetizers, which were all delicious. We had these cassava balls fried with cheese, pumpkin baked with cream, and these meat pastries.

On our first full day in Rio, we decided to go on a walking tour to get acquainted with the city. Rio is absolutely enormous and split into a number of neighborhoods. We were staying near Centro, the oldest part of the city, in Lapa. The Portuguese first arrived in Brazil in 1500 and starting building the city from Centro. Rio de Janeiro literally translates to January River. It’s named because it was “discovered” on January 1st, but it’s a bit of a misnomer because the river the Portuguese were referring to is actually Guanabara Bay (which is also funny because Guanabara means bay in the native language, so the Portuguese accidentally named it “Bay Bay”).

Our tour guide took us all around the city centre, starting at Largo da Carioca, a square near the downtown. We stopped at the famous Confeitaria Colombo bakery for some delicious treats and visited 15th Square, the Imperial Palace, and vibrant Cinelandia, home to the theatro municipal, city hall, and the museum of fine arts. Towards the end of the tour we stopped into Havaianas, Brazils premier flip flop shop, before finishing at Escadaria Selaron, a set of stairs located at the base of Santa Teresa. Rio is located in the mountains and large parts of the city extend up into the hills. The neighborhood of Lapa borders Santa Teresa, which is located along the mountainside near the Corcovado. Escadaria Selaron starts in Lapa and ascends up into Santa Teresa. The steps were made famous by Chilean artist Jorge Selaron, who decorated more than 200 steps with colourful tiles of green, blue, and yellow for the Brazilian flag. The steps are incredible because partway through the project he ran out of money, but instead of asking for grants, he asked for people to donate tiles. The steps are now covered in tiles from all over the world and bring pride to the neighborhood of Santa Teresa.

Escadaria Selaron

The mountainside neighborhoods are actually an important part of Rio’s class system, which is largely split between the wealthy and the poor. The city originally expanded north from Centro before the wealthy eventually started developing the city in the south zone along the beaches. When slaves were freed in Rio in the mid 1800’s, many of the wealthy kicked them off their properties and with nowhere else to go, they started living in shanty towns up the sides of the mountains. These shanty towns now form Rio’s slums, or favelas, with the exception of Santa Teresa. They’re a defining and important part of the city, but the juxtaposition of the favelas against the beachside resorts really demonstrates Rio’s class disparity.

We had planned to take the tram up the Corcovado to see Christo Redentor in the afternoon, but when we arrived, we were told that it was clouded in at the top. We decided to visit the Jardim Botanico at the base of the mountain instead. Evidently the clouds didn’t stick around too long though because we had a great view of Christo Redentor from the garden. The Jardim was gorgeous and we spent an hour exploring all the different plants and animals we could find (based on its size, I’d call it more of a park than a garden). We saw tons of green macaws flying overhead and a great egret hanging out in the water, but our favourite was a group of tiny little marmosets that we saw jumping around in the trees!

Jardim Botanico

We finished off the day with a huge bowl of Feijoada, Brazil’s national dish. It’s a meat stew cooked with black beans and served with rice. The flavour of the stew was delicious (so was the sausage in the stew), but we were surprised at the huge quantities of meat fat and gristle in the stew, so it wasn’t one of our favourites. Emily’s been eating vegan for the last few months, but she’s taking a break in Brazil. Lucky for me because Brazilians are huge meat lovers!

On our second day we left the city and had a wonderful day hiking in Tijuca National Park, one of Rio’s urban forests. Even though the park is surrounded by Rio, it’s so large that once you enter you feel as though you’ve completely left the city behind. We went into the park with our wonderful guide, Ed, as a party of six. The tour we were doing was called peaks and waterfalls and we started off visiting a few viewpoints and one of the parks many waterfalls. Unfortunately, Rio has been experiencing dryer summers lately and many of the waterfalls have been drying up. Ed was happy that the first waterfall we visited was almost up to it’s normal flow.

We started hiking around 11am and spent about 5 hours in the jungle. We first hiked to Pica da Tijuca, which was thought to be the highest peak in Rio for many years, up until they got GPS and realized that another peak was 6 meters higher. Tijuca is still the most beloved though! We hiked up through the jungle for about 400 meters in elevation until we reached a set of stairs carved into the stone. The steps ascend along the side of the mountain to the peak. They were constructed in the early 1900’s in preparation for a visit from the king of Belgium. The king loved adventure and rock climbing, so they decided to build the steps to show him one of Rio’s best views. However, the king loved rock climbing so much that he was disappointed to see the steps and instead used ropes to climb up the mountainside parallel to the new stairs.

View from the stairs in Tijuca National Park

We opted to take the steps. It was a pretty steep and scary climb and Ed told us to strictly watch our feet as we went, so when we finally stopped and he told us to turn around, we were privileged to the most amazing view of Rio! We could see the city sprawled out beneath us, with Guanabara bay and the city of Niteroi behind it. We ate our lunch at the top while enjoying the beautiful view. We were literally above the clouds, so the other side of the peak was clouded over when we reached the top. Fortunately, they cleared out just before we left and we had another incredible view of the rolling hills and peaks of Parque da Tijuca, all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean.

After lunch, we hiked down to Tijuco Mirim, the pico’s smaller, but no less impressive, cousin. The rest of the hike took us down around the back of the peak, but we enjoyed it even more than the hike up. The path was much wilder and parts of the trail followed the bare rock of the peak. We saw a few hummingbirds, another marmoset, a snake, and some enormous spiders on the way down. Near the end we stopped at another waterfall; unfortunately it had been reduced to mostly just sprinkles, but it was nice to stand under to cool off.

Hiking down Tijuca Mirim

Even though it’s autumn here, we are finding it pretty hot and humid. But we should count ourselves lucky because we’ve been informed that Rio has two seasons: summer and hell. Temperatures can go into the high 40’s during Rio’s summer. Ed had the perfect surprise for us at the end of the hike, ice cold Antarctica beer, one of Rio’s local beers. A cool beer never tasted so good!

It feels weird to be leaving Rio already since we haven’t done that much yet. We checked out of the hostel this morning and flew to Iguazu Falls for the next few days. I can’t wait to experience the waterfalls tomorrow though and we’ll be back in Rio soon enough!

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to upload any photos to share, but they’ll all make it to Facebook when I get back!

With love from Brazil,
Maria

A Tribute to Winter

March 31, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

What does winter look like to you?

Growing up in Newfoundland, winter means lots of snow, chilly weather, and long months of dark, cloudy days. I picture driving to school in the morning after a fresh snow, when the roads are white and the snowflakes still cling to empty tree branches and weigh down the needles on the fir trees. The snow banks pile up until they’re towering over your head and small mountains are created in the mall and university parking lots. Downtown becomes an unmanageable maze of streets, where your worst fear is forgetting the overnight street parking ban and waking up to a fresh, new ticket on your windshield.

Winter is blizzards and blowing snow and wearing your pyjama’s inside out in hopes of a snow day. It’s waiting in anticipation to the closures on the radio and knowing that if only metrobus or the Avalon mall will shut down, then you’re home free for the rest of the day! Snow days are a rare time to bunker down for some quality time with your family or bundle up in your snowsuit to trudge up the street to visit your childhood friends.

Jasper Street Dec. 2013

Winter is back-breaking shoveling and kind neighbours who snow-blow your driveway for you. It’s waking up in the morning and cursing the snowplow for leaving a pile of wet-snow-turned-to-ice at the end of your driveway that you’ll have to chisel through to get to work. It’s edging your way to the corner of the road until you can just see around the snow bank and crossing your fingers that no one hits the nose of your car. If you’re a walker, it means putting your life in the hands of God each and every day as you attempt to navigate the sidewalk covered roads.

In St. John’s, winter can be long months of the rain-snow cycle which usually ends in piles of dirty, brown snow and slush. But it’s also the fun of going sliding down Pippy Park hill, building snow forts in the backyard, visiting the CONA Winter Carnival, and hitting the road for a weekend of skiing at White Hills or Marble Mountain. It’s the Christmas lights decorating the parkway, the signal hill star shining across the city, the childlike glee of waking up to an unanticipated school-free day, and snowy nights spent playing games and eating pizza with your family and friends.

If I could be in a relationship with winter on facebook, it would probably be ‘it’s complicated’, but it’s the winter I’ve grown up with and begrudgingly come to love.

This year I got to know a whole new side of winter. Nostalgia aside, it was pretty awesome!

It snowed once in Vancouver in November and I was sure winter was on the way. I came back after my Christmas break expecting to see snow covered mountains and feel that winter chill in the air, but it never came. I feel like I was waiting for winter to arrive and then I finally woke up one day and realized that it was spring and that evidently, winter had decided to skip over the west coast this year. I was a little nostaglic from all the epic pictures of snow in St. John’s, but I quickly realized that Vancouver’s mild winter has some definite benefits!

It’s officially spring and the temperature has been flirting around the 12-15 degree zone pretty regularly since February. The cherry blossums and magnolias have already come and gone and after a three week sun marathon in early March, Seth and I decided to trade in our snow boots for hiking boots. We’ve been out hiking around the lower mainland several times over the last month and love that the beautiful BC wilderness is just a short drive from the city.

Lynn Creek Trail

We started off our hiking season with a circuit around Burnaby Mountain – the highest point in Burnaby and home to Simon Fraser University. There’s a great view of Vancouver from Burnaby Mountain Park and we spent an afternoon hiking around the back of the mountain through second-growth forest looking out over Burrard Inlet. We had a great day out in the sun and finished with an exciting near-encounter with a black bear! Apparently they’ve been coming out of hibernation early this year on account of the warm weather.

We also did two hikes in the mountains of North Vancouver. The watershed and reservoirs for the lower mainland are located in North Van, so I spent a lot of time working up there over the summer and there are a ton of great hiking trails along some of the rivers. Karen and Grant joined us for one of the hikes and we ended up getting immediately lost. We’re not the most observant and missed a sign telling us that the bridge we were trying to cross to start our hike had been removed after a landslide upstream flooded the area (including the trail we were planning to hike). We ended up doing another hike, which I’m sure was just as nice, but it wasn’t until the following week when I tried to do the same hike again with my friends Amy and Steph that we finally noticed the sign informing us of the landslide. So I ended up doing two unintended hikes, but they both ended up being gorgeous!

Fisherman’s Trail

Seth and I had another little adventure in February when we decided to make a trek down to Washington to go on a camel safari! That’s right, I did say ‘camel safari’. Seth found one of the funnier groupons I’ve seen, advertising a ‘Camel Encounter and Segway Tour’ and purchased them on a limb. We decided to make a day of it and had a great time learning all about camels and how to ride a segway. They’re pretty intuitive and we had a good laugh driving them around the farm. We finished off the tour by bottle-feeding some of the younger camels!

The “babies”

In other news, I’ve been making some pretty good progress on my bucket list (see the right side of my blog for a full update). We went to see comedian Tig Nataro in January and we saw our first NHL game! The Canucks played the Jets and won in overtime, making for a pretty exciting first game. We caught our first concert of the year at the end of February when we saw Hey Rosetta! play at the Vogue Theatre. I also bought a new vegetarian cookbook, so I’ve been having some fun cooking as well. I tried out a few recipes and our favourites so far were a thai vegetable pizza, homemade samosa patties, a hearty edamame salad, and delicious spinch-baked manicotti.

Unfortunately, you can’t win at everything; the warm weather has resulted in the skiing around Vancouver being very bad this year. There’s three ski hills right outside Vancouver that have been closed almost all winter and Whistler has really been suffering on the bottom half of the mountain. We decided to try Whistler a few weeks ago since we didn’t think we’d have many more opportunities, but other then that, I haven’t accomplished any of my winter-related bucket list items. Whistler was pretty bare on the bottom, but it was completely covered in snow on the top and we still ended up having a pretty good day on the top half of the mountain. It’s a huge resort, so we stuck just to Whistler and didn’t even try to ski any of Blackcomb mountain, which will have to be a trip for next year.

Whistler

I decided to add a new item to my list and saw Vancouver’s soccer team, the White Caps, play this week. They played their rival, Portland, and didn’t let us down with a win in the last few seconds of play! It’s Easter this weekend, so we’re off to Ontario to spend some time with family. After that, my trip to Brazil will be less than three weeks away, so I’m looking forward to getting some international travelling in!

In conclusion, I didn’t get my traditional winter this year, but the warm, sunny weather in Vancouver more than made up for it! I know spring might still be a while away for my family on the East Coast, but I’m looking forward to more outdoor activities on this side of the country. Appreciate what you can about the snow my friends and come visit me if you’re looking for a little break!

Love Maria

A Year in British Columbia

January 31, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

It’s officially been a year since I moved to the West Coast!

It’s been a pretty eventful year and I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by! Looking back, I realized I’ve actually done very little writing about my time in BC over the past year and decided to reflect on some of the adventures I’ve had. Despite the lack of blog entries, I have been pretty busy and decided to make a list of some of my favourite things I’ve done in BC over the last year to share with you. Here are the top 12 highlights of my year on the West Coast:

12. Annual Festivals in the Lower Mainland

Enjoying hot cider at the Christmas Market

I’ve discovered there’s always something going on in and around Vancouver and there are tons of events and festivals to check out throughout the year. There’s the Celebration of Lights firework shows in July, the rotating Food Cart festivals around the city, the Pacific National Exhibition in August, Fright Night at Halloween, and the many Christmas light festivals and Christmas Market in December. We recently did Dine Out Vancouver as well, a 2 week festival in January where restaurants all over the city offer three course meals for $18, $28, or $38.

Skiing on Seth’s Birthday

11. Skiing Cypress

I have to admit that the ski weather isn’t always the best outside Vancouver, but I love having access to skiing so close to the city! I’ve been up to Cypress three times since I moved here; they do seem to struggle to get enough snow and to keep it on the mountain (although I’ve been told it’s been a bad season), but it’s a great size mountain and only 30 minutes away! I am hoping to get out to Whistler this year though!

10. Hiking in the Okanagan

HIking in Summerland

Over the Labour Day long weekend Seth and I drove out to the Okanagan and spent three days camping in Okanagan Lake Provincial Park. We spent our time swimming in the beautiful lake, visiting wineries in BC’s premier wine region, and hiking along the train tracks of an old steam train. It was a pretty relaxing weekend and we loved all the beautiful scenery in the Okanagan and along the drive.

Canadian Women’s Soccer

9. Sports and Concerts

Living near a city that actually attracts popular artists and has several home teams in multiple sports has been a real pleasure, although one that I still haven’t really taken full advantage of. We saw the women’s Canadian soccer team and the Vancouver Giants play this year and we’re planning to catch a Canucks game soon. Hopefully this summer we’ll also get a chance to see the Vancouver White Caps (soccer) and the Vancouver Canadians (baseball) play. I only went to one concert last year, Elton John, but there’s always someone putting off a concert downtown and I plan to pay closer attention to who else visits this year!

8. Hiking the Chief

View from the Chief

One of BC’s more popular hikes in the lower mainland is The Chief. We decided to hike it when my Dad visited in early June. As challenging as the hike proved to be (it’s about a 700m elevation gain in just a few kilometres), the view from the top was amazing! The Chief has three peaks that you can hike to, but we were so exhausted after the first one that we decided just to do one. Pretty much the entire hike is rock steps and near the top there’s a fair bit of climbing using chains attached to the rock, but it’s well worth the effort once you reach the top!

Cherry Blossoms in April

7. Spring weather

Spring is actually a real season in BC and this was the first year I’ve ever appreciated it! I couldn’t believe when the cherry blossoms starting budding in April and that it was 22 degrees outside when we had a team BBQ outside at work in early May. Sorry Newfoundland, but I do not miss snowy May 24 or Juneuary.

6. Kayaking the Sunshine Coast

A little starfish I found

My parents came to visit in September and we made a little journey over to the Sunshine Coast and ended up going kayaking in Porpoise Bay. It was probably one of my favourite times kayaking! Porpoise Bay is completely sheltered, so the water was super calm and we saw all kinds of interesting things, from starfish and sea cucumbers, to harbour seals and river otters! We didn’t even need a guide because it was so easy going, so we just spent the morning exploring several bays.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

5. Trips across the Border

Vancouver is so close to the US border and I love being able to hop across the border when it strikes my fancy! In April Emily came for a visit and we went down to Washington to see the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and to visit Seattle. Then in August, as you probably know from my previous blogs, my friends came from Newfoundland and we went on an epic road trip from Vancouver all the way down to San Francisco! We decided that Oregon is the undiscovered gem of the west coast.

4. Camping at Cultus Lake

Grilling burgers on our camping trip

Camping was my new discovery this year. We went camping for a weekend at Cultus Lake, but honestly, I don’t think it mattered where we went, I just loved it! My parents gave me their old tent from the 80’s and we bought little bit of camping gear and just had a great time soaking up the sun, swimming, having campfires, and cooking outside. It’s so nice to get out of the city, especially in a place like BC where there’s so much gorgeous landscape to explore!

Alouette Lake

3. Exploring Alouette Lake

We didn’t get a chance to go camping at Alouette Lake, which is located in Golden Ears Provincial Park, but we went there for a day trip in July and loved it. The lake is located right at the base of the mountains and just has the most beautiful backdrop! You can rent canoes there, which was tempting, but we opted instead to go for about a 5km hike along the river next to the lake up to a waterfall. It was a great day and we hope to go camping there this summer.

2. Adopting the Vancouver Lifestyle

My first race!

Don’t worry, I’ll never stop being a Newfoundlander, but one of the things I love about Vancouver is the active lifestyle that people try and live. I really took ownership over my health this year; I started running and hula hooping and made a big effort to adopt better eating habits. Like Newfoundland, everyone here loves the outdoors, but there’s a bit more of an opportunity to enjoy it (weather-wise), so I made every effort to get out and enjoy nature!

Trying some Ethiopian Food!

1. Trying all the restaurants!

Vancouver is so incredibly diverse and there are so many amazing places to eat here! One day I was just thinking about all the restaurants here and realized that I’ve barely eaten at any chain restaurants in the last year! I love trying new foods, especially those that are not easily available in St. John’s, and have been busy trying out as many new foods as possible. My favourites are probably Indian, Thai, and, of course, sushi, but I’ve tried a lot new foods since I’ve been here and love that most of the restaurants are locally owed and pretty authentic. I currently have a tie going for my favourite restaurant between this wonderful vegetarian mexican restaurant at Commercial-Broadway, Bandidos Taqueria, and a delicious sushi restaurant at Royal Oak that my friend introduced me to, Sushi Oyama.