Our first clue should have been that the trolley wasn't running anymore. Apparantly there was an accident that killed 7 people and also led to the bondinho's demise. So, we unknowingly had a taxi drive us up to Santa Teresa where we (naively) thought we'd wander down through the neighborhoods until we reached the Arcos da Lapa and the Escalera de Selaron.
I think the taxi driver thought we were nuts when we asked him to drop us off in the middle of nowhere. Little did he know that our map told us that we should have been in the middle of quite the happening place! It was drizzly that morning, so I thought by the looks of things that maybe we would have to work a little harder to find what we were looking for. It MUST have just been hiding!
We started walking. I saw this amazing shop. It looked like it was selling mostly fruit, but it had this amazing blue and white tiled store front. I HAD to take a picture... that is, until the lady inside the shop started yelling/screaming at me to put the camera away. No pictures. We were also being followed by a transvestite-type person trying to sell me "hand-made" jewelry. I was nervous. It also seemed like she was following us. Double nervous. But he/she was the closest thing we saw to a "shop" in the area.
We started wandering down the street looking for shops and the famous Escalera. The place was mostly a dump, most likely went downhill after the trolley stopped bringing the tourists up. However, there were some cool looking buildings I would have liked to take pictures of. I actually had to wait around about 5 minutes until the coast was clear to snap this photo.
The point at which we took this picture, was the last "decent" memory I have of this place. We were not far from the Arcos de Lapa and the Escalera, but we had to walk a little further. We started down... we weren't sure which way to go. We turned the corner and decided that if we wanted to keep ANYTHING we had with us, we needed to turn around immediately and go back the other way. Because around the corner, we saw a street that had a reasonable number of threatening-looking people and there was NO WAY we could blend in... especially with my "yellow" hair (what the Brazilians referred to blonde hair). It even made Dave nervous. We turned around and I started praying for a bus, a taxi, whatever... I didn't care, I just wanted out of there!
About 10 minutes later a bus came by and we stopped it and hopped on. Everyone on board staring at us like we were crazy... and that we definitely weren't from there! Less than 5 minutes on the bus we were at the Arcos. I refused to go back to the area looking for the Escalera and we continued on to the Metropolitan Cathedral & Bell Tower.
Arcos da Lapa
Metropolitan Cathedral
Bell Tower
This ultimately led us to meet our "tour guide" and taxi driver Luiz. He was absolutely amazing. So amazing, that I have to save that for next time... But here's a sneak preview- he brought us to the Escalera de Selaron that I was too nervous to go back searching for.
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