Rio-Manaus: Carioca fiesta and opera myth

Everything separates Rio, with its trendy beaches and incredible fervour, from Manaus, the capital of Amazonia, with its sublime late 19th-century opera house and tropical languor. But these opposites are united under the sign of green. The deep green of an omnipresent forest.

By The Editor -

Published on 20/12/2011

There are some customs that nobody wants to complain about. Take this one, for example. Ever since Vice-Admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon had his ships moored in Guanabara Bay on 10 November 1555, it has become something of a tradition: French travellers arriving in Brazil start by putting down their bags in Rio. And, even if their discovery of the country can't be limited to its tourist capital, they often stay there until the end of their stay. It's a fact that Rio is a destination that stands on its own. The beauty of the site, the warmth of the rhythm and the carnival of the senses: the cidade maravilhosathe "marvellous city", is a concentrate of the dream au riverde. To understand what attracted more than one and a half million foreign visitors here in 2010, all you have to do is stop for a moment in front of the postcard turnstile.

Shot number 1: Corcovado and its Cristo Redentor perched at an altitude of over 700 metres, with arms wide open to take in one of the world's most enchanting urban landscapes. Recognised as one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World" by the New Seven Wonders foundation, it's obviously a compulsory stop-off, but it's anything but pensive. Lemust: climb at dusk to catch the last glimpses of sunlight, then the lights of the city.

Plate number 2: Pain de Sucre, that strange granite block overlooking the bay. A natural oddity, it benefited from a complete renovation of its access routes in 2008. You can now admire the landscape through the windows of the new cable cars. The must here too: a stopover at Morro da Urca, the hill just before the Pao de Acucar on the way to the cable car. It's the ideal spot for night-time shows with a view over the city.

Plate number 3: Copacabana. Or Ipanema, or Leme, or Leblon... In short, the beach. Not the soulless seaside resorts, but the eminently vibrant public open-air spaces. Kids committed to their pelada de futebol To the incessant ballet of undines in minimal textile, the expected parade is well in place. But there's even more to see on these miles of sand, which are the best observatory of Carioca's social life, with weekend barbecues and fresh coconut juice in the kiosks lining the Avenida Atlantica.

Rio's postcard is also carnival, which you can experience in real time in the days leading up to Mardi Gras, or in its early stages by attending a rehearsal of one of the twelve great samba schools, from B for Beija-Flor to V for Viradouro. Last but not least, there's football, in a city where the big local football clubs - Botafogo, Fluminense, Flamengo, Vasco - seem to be engaged in a never-ending round of 'crucial' competitions, the purpose of which is sometimes difficult for foreigners to grasp...

Corcovado, Sugarloaf, the beach, football, samba: the trip is more than justified by just these five clichés. But there are still plenty of pleasant surprises. All you have to do is look behind the sandbanks, turn towards the land, and a new colour is added to the palette. You may not realise it, but almost a third of Rio's surface area is taken up by the green of the mata atlânticathe Atlantic Forest. The lungs of Rio have a heart: the 3,200 hectares of Tijuca National Park, declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1991. Waterfalls, astonishing views, exotic flora and fauna and a few historical curiosities: this is what you'll find during a walk or cycle in this national institution, or in its little sisters, the parks da Prainha, Chico Mendes, Marapendi, Catacumba, Mendanha or Darke de Mattos.

Adventure sports in Rio: who would have thought?

Water, trees and relief: that's enough to turn a town into an adventure sports paradise, with climbing, surfing and hang-gliding at the top of the list. And the opportunities don't stop at the town's doorstep. "Of course, with Tijuca, the forest is in the city, but there are many other alternatives within two or three hours' drive, and in wilder landscapes. I'm thinking of the Serra Verde or the Vale do Café, for example. Abseiling, rafting: you can do it all there. These are areas that we're starting to develop in terms of ecotourism and adventure tourism".says Ronald Azaro, Secretary of Tourism for the State of Rio de Janeiro. More generally, it's worth taking a close look at the eclectic opportunities on offer in this state of 44,000 km2, which has something for everyone, from the coastal delights of Buzios or Cabo Frio to the splendour of historic towns like Paraty, by the sea, or Petropolis, in the hills.

But as long as we're plunging headlong into green and eco-responsibility, we might as well immerse ourselves in the great green, the real, the immense; that of the world's largest forest, which stretches to the north of the country, just a few hours by plane from Rio, and immerse ourselves, for two or three days and in addition to a festive cariocaultra programme, in the heart of the Amazon jungle. So off to Manaus.

Melancholic Symphony in Green Major

Manaus-on-Rio Negro, Manaus-on-Amazon, and most certainly Manaus-on-Opera... With its totally surreal location, the Teatro Amazonas, planted in 1896 in the middle of nowhere, in the dampness of a forest isolating it from all the other major urban centres of Brazil. Rio, São Paulo and Brasilia are all just over three hours' flight away. But that's precisely why people come to Manaus, for its unique atmosphere, its location at the heart of ultra-trendy ecotourism and, for some, above all for its opera. Because attending a performance in this very house, in evening gowns and black clothes, in the heart of the green immensity... It's simply impossible to do anything more chic. Choosing the evening in question is no easy task, however, as several times a week ballet, theatre and opera performances are given here, with one of the best philharmonic orchestras in the whole of Brazil. Of course, a visit is not enough: from the first balcony, the 800-seat Italian-style auditorium is absolutely sublime.

It really is. The opera, then. An intact icon of the fabulous era around the turn of the 20th century, when Manaus was one of the richest cities in the world. Gold and banknotes from rubber production flowed here as abundantly as the sap from the rubber trees. Some of the tycoons were so wealthy, it is said, that they had their laundry laundered in Paris... So, to thumb their noses at the old world, the big planters bought themselves an opera house. A real, beautiful building, inspired by the best that was being done on the other side of the Atlantic. In fact, all the materials - with the exception of wood, of which there is plenty in the area - were imported from Europe. Marquetry, cupolas, tiles and painted ceilings were all shipped in from France. The stage curtain was made in Paris; the wood - from Brazil, in other words - was transported back and forth to be worked in Portugal; the mirrors and chandeliers were bought in Venice; the ironwork was done in England... The greatest international artists performed here, even abandoning Rio for the prodigious Amazonian city. Except for Sarah Bernhardt, who, contrary to popular belief, never set foot here.

Tour on muffled skates

Today, after a period when it was left in a state of virtual neglect, the House of Lyric Arts has been restored to its former glory and is once again shining in all its gilded glory. It is pampered to the point of giving tours of the sumptuous ballroom exclusively on enormous skates. Just like the grandmothers of yesteryear... This room, with its Murano chandeliers, painted ceilings and parquet floors assembled from twelve thousand pieces of precious wood, is extended by a gigantic balcony overlooking a cobbled square, the Praça de Sao Sebastiao, where waves of stone are drawn in black and white. Just like everywhere else in Brazil, but also in Lisbon. An extreme sophistication, the stone of these cobblestones used to be mixed with rubber, muffling the noise of the horses driving the carriages of latecomers. Today, there's no need to carry out any kind of test: they're made of stone, full stop.

A number of perfectly preserved colonial houses line the square, some of divine proportions. The golden ratio is not far off... Almost all of them are beautifully coloured and stand out from the painted plastic of the rest of the town. "Not only can we privatise the opera housesays Raul Sampaio, Sales Director of Fontur, but also some historic buildings, such as the Palace of Justice or the Palacio Rio Negro, the former home of the German Waldemar Scholz, one of the masters of rubber".

Like an air of saudade

Just a stone's throw from the legendary opera house are the port and the market, Manaus's other two landmarks. And it's by passing through shopping streets - fashionable souks - that you'll discover Manaus. auriverde - where kilometres of fabric, cheap clothes and discount electronics are sold, you can see here and there remnants of the former good life of Manaus.

Sometimes with surprising, almost touching things, like this "Bon Marché", in French if you please, a shop that was undoubtedly once snobbish. Well, once.

The days of the latex princes are long gone. How long ago were the years 1844 and 1888, when Charles Goodyear discovered the vulcanisation of rubber and John Boyd Dunlop invented the tyre... It's as if light years separated today's city from the era of the absolute monopoly of "soft gold".

Deep down, these strange streets exude a hint of Portuguese saudade, unless it's the remnants of a spleen directly linked to the poetry of the 19th century. There's nothing sad about it, but on the contrary something deliciously nostalgic. In any case, the label 'exuberance', which fits the Cariocas so well, is hardly appropriate in Manaus. Here, things are more in the direction of a certain languor, a touch of restraint; including in the port, which is nevertheless extremely colourful.

First of all, the docks. Built by an English engineer in 1906, they are floating. Why are they floating? Because the waters of the Rio Negro, like those of the Amazon, which is formed when the 'Black River' meets the Solimoes a few kilometres downstream from the city, rise and fall with the seasons - there are only two of them at Equator level - at a rate of around twelve metres. As a result, the quays are also subject to this ebb and flow. The ingenious system means that the boats - delightful little white boats with coloured accents - can dock all year round. And fortunately so. After all, the Amazon is practically the only land-based communication route, and it's thanks to it that you can travel from city to city. And are there really any cities at all? More like improbable ports with quays thrown into a nowhere engulfed in green. Once you've boarded one of these wooden buildings with one or two decks that are completely open to the outside world - like little toys rolled up on themselves - you stretch out your hammock wherever you can, as the boat-bus is so busy. And off you go... Lying down, you travel up or down the longest river in the world (6992 km), dozing off, lulled to sleep by the hum of the boat's engine as it stops at unfamiliar names smelling of adventure: Oriximina, Maués, Alênquer, Tabatinga...

In the meantime, the port of Manaus is bustling with shops selling rice snacks and tapioca, hammocks and medicinal herbs. Above is the Adolpho Lisboa municipal market, and it's all the same. It's colourful, noisy and crowded with deliverymen... Set up in different halls, one of which, built in 1882, is loosely based on the Baltard pavilions, busy traders sell seeds and fruit that are totally unknown in our latitudes. The record for this is the fish market, where tonnes of freshly caught pirarucu, surubim, tambaqui, tucunaré and matrinxa are lined up... In any case, grilled or prepared in the local sauce, almost always accompanied by tapioca, they are the talk of the town's best restaurants.

But it's from the air, aboard one of the seaplanes that take off from the beaches of the Park Suites and Tropical Manaus hotels, that you really get to grips with the geography of the region. First you fly over the Rio Negro, which, under the sun, gives the lie to its name with its infinite shades of blue; then the jungle, which loses itself in its shades of green... Then come the white beaches and islands - including, in the distance, the first of the Archipelago de Anavilhanas, one of the largest river archipelagos in the world - where the locals traditionally gather on Sundays. Then a few lodges appear, piercing the canopy, and above all, the extraordinary phenomenon of the meeting of the waters.

Difficult marriages

What exactly is Manaus all about? Manaus lies at the confluence of two rivers, the Rio Negro and the Solimoes. Two rivers that, when they meet in any case, seem to like each other so little that they find a way of running side by side for six kilometres. The result is the blue-brown waters of the Rio Negro on one side and the rather yellow waters of the Solimoes on the other. Between the two, an almost perfect dividing line... Why? Because the Rio Negro flows at 2 km/h and the Solimoes at between 4 and 6 km/h. And also because the waters of the former are at 28° and those of the latter at 22°... Little by little, however, they end up mixing to become one and give birth to... the Amazon.

But if we have left the glitter of the Carioca party to climb to the top of this country-continent, it is not primarily for the beautiful eyes of the opera divas, nor for the beauty of the Amazon River, whose immense waters produce an almost Durassian slowness. In fact, the main reason for going up there is to get a taste of adventure, of the jungle, even if it is marked out and heavily supervised. It's a very safe way to discover the jungle, either from Manaus or, better still, from one of the ecolodges set up a few kilometres from the city.

"Cn terms of tourism, the Amazon is Brazil's tenth most popular tourist destination, explains Oreni Braga, President of Amazonastur, the official tourism body for the state of Amazonas.. And of course we're counting on the spotlight brought by the football World Cup, which will take place partly here, to improve our score. This is already accelerating our marketing plans. We have 101 hotels with a capacity of 11,000 beds, with a strong business connotation due to the presence here of almost 600 international industries. In 2014, we will be offering 17,000 beds. However, we don't want to repeat the mistakes that have been made in other countries and build hotels all over the place. During the World Cup, we will be mooring cruise ships along the Rio Negro. However, we are working mainly on the post-World Cup period, based on several key arguments. Although the cultural capital of Manaus should not be overlooked, the Amazon is first and foremost an ecotourism destination that is socially just and economically sound. The Amazon is the only state to offer 54 lodges.

Sophistication in the jungle

The lodges, to be precise. Lost in clearings pierced by the immensity of the world's largest jungle, each distilling in its own style, at least for the very top-of-the-range units, a sophistication in a 'forest' tone - stilts, raw wood and green roofs - that is nonetheless hyper-sophisticated. All the more sophisticated because their surroundings are full of preconceived ideas, fantasies of man-eating animals and giant insects ready to bite off the slightest unprotected patch of skin. As you will see, there is none of this; not even mosquitoes - they hate the acidic waters of the Rio Negro - on the well-marked paths where the groups are taken. These lodges are all different. One is beautifully perched on the banks of a crystal-clear lake; another is scattered along a pontoon overlooking the white sands of a Rio Negro beach; and yet another floats on a tributary of the Amazon. Just like the docks in the port of Manaus. "The Amazon Jungle Palace floats on the river to compensate for variations in the level of the Amazon, says Karen Medeiros, the hotel's Marketing Manager. In addition to the swimming pool, restaurant and communal areas, our establishment has an 800-seat conference room. We have organised major international events here, including one on the environment and technology. Among the participants from all over the world was a large group of French people.

These lodges are all very comfortable, with bars, lounges, restaurants and swimming pools all very welcome in the tropical heat. From Manaus, almost all of them can be reached in around an hour by speedboat. Or, in the case of the Amazon Jungle Palace, by luxury private yacht, as the lodge has a dozen in all. One of these resorts, the Tiwa Amazonas Eco Resort, even has the luxury of being located on the right bank of the Rio Negro, just opposite the port of the Amazonian capital, exactly 7 km from the boat. Groups in a hurry can go there for just one day, just long enough to have lunch and, above all, to enjoy a change of scenery. Go in the morning, return in the evening, with the added bonus of a mini-cruise on the river...

Above all, an atmosphere, a mood

More or less, these establishments all offer the same activities, all excellently supervised: cruises to the place where the waters meet, observation of pink dolphins - really pink dolphins -, piranha fishing, night-time observation of caimans, of which there are many in the area, mini trekking in the jungle; but also a glimpse of Indian culture, with dances that are actually a little too staged during visits to local villages.

In spite of everything, it's fair to say that the jungle walk is the most popular. Alas, the animals - with the exception of the birds, who make a real racket up there - don't wait for visitors. They are fearful and flee at the slightest sound of footsteps... Besides, you can't say that the virgin forest offers great depth of field. The tallest trees are no less than 40 metres high... They shelter smaller ones, which shelter even smaller ones. And so it goes on. Everything is dark in such undergrowth; everything is jumbled, tangled, entangled. Almost a mess. So, in single file behind an ultra-cautious guide - you never know - you valiantly climb up and down small hills, skirting torrents that run all the way to the Rio Negro and plunging with delight into the clear waters of pools carved out by waterfalls. The jungle is all about atmosphere and ambience.