Channelling the Cane Spirits

Sunday 08/07/07

The day after Live Earth, i had to work for 10 hours straight from 8am. When I finally finished, we hit Lapa for pizza, and then went searching for more fun. On a street corner up a hill, almost in the shadow of the Arcos, we found a place overflowing with locals and live samba. Drinking, dancing and the odd beer or two spilled out all over the place, yielding to nothing but the occasional taxi or police call filled with M16-wielding cops. After midnight, we browsed the district for an open venue, and during the course of not finding one, encountered a brood of penis-flashing shemales walking the streets. This not being the type of entertainment we were looking for, we left them to their own devices for Copacabana Beach for more liquor and laughs.

The Brasilian health system is itself a little ill, with the cost of seeing a doctor prohibitively expensive for most. Those that can afford private health insurance can even expect to be misdiagnosed or sometimes have needless tests performed such as MRI's. There is widespread corruption amongst doctors in this regard, and now insurance companies have leagues of doctors employed to investigate misdiagnosis issues, sending the private health insurance premiums to somewhere past the moon. This has resulted in many little clinics, called Centros de Saúde, springing up to offer advice and recommend medication cheaply for sick people.

Our destination on Thursday was the world-famous Selaron Stairway, possibly the biggest sculpture in the world made by a single individual. 215 tiled steps stretch skyward, the result of 17 years hard work and over 2000 different tiles, many from other parts of the world. The dedication Selaron has put into his masterpiece earned him world-wide respect, and his work features in commercials, magazines and the music videos of U2 and Snoop Dogg. Later that night, we headed to Fosfobox, a club in Copacabana. The speakers blasted an organ-rearranging mix of acid and electro, and equally damaging were the cocktails, containing Cognac, Whiskey, Vodka, Contreau and passion fruit juice. Now arms begin waving in the air, dancing becomes a blur dispersed amongst crazy photo shoots and other mad events and the night closes with the eventual (and almost unrecallable) stumbling home at a time unknown.