greenatopia: Brazil

Showing posts with label Brazil. Show all posts

Monday, July 23, 2012

Jardim Botânico

Sunday we went to Jardim Botânico, which is incredibly beautiful. Rosa insisted it is the most beautiful in the world, but I've been to some incredible botanical gardens and I'm not ready to make that claim. It was definitely in the top five.

Founded by John VI of Portugal in 1808, it was opened to the public in 1822. Like many botanical gardens, it was originally designed to acclimatise spices to Brazil, namely nutmeg, pepper, and cinnamon (a desire I can understand). It now houses some 6,500 species and covers 140 hectares. There are 900 varieties of palm tree alone; the 750 meter Avenue of Royal Palms houses 134 palms that all descend from a single tree, the Palma Mater. Only 40% of the park is cultivated, the rest is the Atlantic Forest. The park is protected by the Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional and was designated as a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1992.

There are 140 species of bird in the park. My highlight (and a life bird, if I kept a list) was many, many, many sightings (but no good photograph to show for it) of the channel-billed toucan. And the non-human, primate population was also very visible due to visitors once again feeding them. I saw more tufted-eared marmosets and some rather small howler monkeys. An attendant actually came by and stopped guests from feeding the howlers, and he mentioned there are much larger ones who choose to stay away from the visitors.

The orchid room was really beautiful...

"Yes, I'm eating cookies, which I shouldn't have. Now give me more. If you don't I might bite you," said the howler monkey below.

"This is what I should be eating. And because I don't expect you to feed me, I won't bite you." This has been a public service announcement.

Wishes for the future from visitors to a special exhibit for Rio+20:

Avenue of Royal Palms...

The only quasi-nice photos of the toucans (I took hundreds!). They stayed way up in the tree tops and my 300 mm is woefully inadequate.

Cropped to give you a better view:

Saturday, July 14, 2012

The Sugar Loaf

Named after the molds they used to use to store sugar, The Sugar Loaf is now the second most popular tourist attraction in Rio. It is basically two cable car rides up two "mountains" so you can see the entire city from up high. It is supposed to be a better view than what you get at Cristos; I can't say if it is better, but it is impressive. And there are little marmosets up there, who are so cute. People feed them, which I'm very opposed to.

The original cable car and the guy who thought up what was considered a crazy idea to build the cables up the mountain.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Old Rio

Rio hit its most recent heyday at the beginning of the 20th century. The heyday before that was in the late 1700's early 1800's when the Portuguese Court moved to Brazil and the capital became Rio. What this means is that the architecture is a mix of art deco with rococo and baroque. Rio owes a lot to Napolean, who caused the Portuguese Court to leave Portugal. King Dom João VI spent a small fortune making Rio look European. Luckily he did this with quality materials (a great deal of which he brought over from Europe) so a lot of these buildings are still there. He built (or paid to build) the School of Medicine, the Bank of Brazil, the Law Courts, the Naval Academy, and the Royal Printing Works. He also gets credit for Rio's amazing botanical garden, but I'll talk about that later.

After Dom João VI's mother died in 1816 he became king and since he had already fallen in love with Brazil and couldn't tear himself away, he declared Brazil the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. This makes Brazil the only New World colony to have a European monarch ruling from its soil. King Dom João VI was only able to stay for five years, and then he returned to Portugal, leaving his son in charge. His son immediately declared himself king of the Brazilian Empire (using the word "empire" was inaccurate in that Brazil had no overseas colonies, but in fact was the overseas colony, which may say something about young Dom Pedro I's mental stability). And he only last 9 years, when he abdicated and left his five-year-old son in charge. The country suffered a bit until Dom Pedro II turned 14 and started to actually rule. Despite being so young, he was actually a pretty good ruler. Still, monarchies, no matter how good the ruler, are not always appreciated, and he was pushed from power 49 years later (1889). The Brazilian Republic was born.

Coffee brought a new boom to the city of Rio in the early 1900's. The mayor of Rio, Pereira Passos, continued the monarch's plans for a European City, and widened the boulevards in Rio. He also built the tunnel from Botafoga to Copacabana, beginning that beach area's heyday (already discussed here).

So now that you have the history, here are the images. Rose, tour guide extraordinaire, gave me a wonderful tour of the area.

Igreja de Nossa Senhora de Candelaria

These doors are inside all the old churches in Rio -- only the faithful could pass through them. Now they let anyone through, even a Lutheran.

Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil (originally the Bank of Brazil, but now a museum -- a lot of the old Portuguese government/commerce buildings are now museums).

Carmen Miranda's home:

This area was known as the old market area and has now been revitalized to its old use -- cafes.

I found this fascinating...the wealthy owner of this house realized his home would cut people off from moving between the Bay and the market area, so he build a tunnel through his house to allow access. Can you imagine someone doing that today!

The Bay's water used to come all the way up to this staircase -- this is how people got from their boat to the land. The little building was a fountain providing water to the town's people.