A quick video of street celebrations in Rio during Brazil’s victory over Colombia in the quarterfinals.
A short video of our journey up one of Rio’s most dramatic peaks.
Music:
Sonida del Sol ft. Ryan Herr & Saqi by The Polish Ambassador.
We hiked Dois Irmãos yesterday. It is one thing to dream of heaven. It is another to walk above the clouds and live in it. It is an experience that will awaken an incredible sensation in your soul. When you stand at the edge of a precipice that seems to hover above the earth. When you are suspended in flight, and below you the world is glowing with the artificial orange light cast by tall steel street lights numbering in the thousands. Dogs bark to one another across the favela. They share secrets, and you are secretly listen in on every little story that is told. The sheer number of sounds shrinks your being into a small blue dot on a large black sheet.
Two hundred thousand souls survive in the streets below me. Two hundred thousand mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, aunts, and uncles. The list goes on with every generation, and this was a neighborhood as old as Rio itself.
I sat upon the edge of the world and was swallowed into it’s gaping maw. My mind was a pebble rolling down the mountain; there was nothing I could do to stop the momentum of my curiosity about the world below me. What lives in such a place? What culture grows in a crammed community, that never slept, and never ceased to make noise, for no reason other than for the sake of sound.
When we passed the summit, the glorious, and legendary beach of Ipanema stretched before us The majestic lake of Lagoa was basking in her glory, spoiled with attention from hotel towers who surrounded her form; peddling a view of her for a ridiculous sum to the only the wealthiest patrons of society. The silence was deafening.
There is beauty in Ipanema, but there is no music. Money does not sing in Ipanema, not like the people who dance in Rocinha do. There is Samba creeping through the trees from the largest favela in Latin America into your body. The sounds reach in and grab you from your place on the mountain and thrust you into a whole new world. They shatter your perspective on life by showing you something you never thought existed.
Lost in our moment of grand exposure to a new world, we forgot to keep track of time. The sun had set, and the sky was pitch black, and the air was thick. With no moon in sight, we began hiking through the trees; enveloped by jungle, and a thick shroud of darkness. We had lost sight of the trail, but had found our place in a paradox lost.
THE HOUSE
After only 24 hours of living in our new pad in Rio’s Zona Norte it was already abundantly clear that we had picked the perfect place to spend the next six weeks. The house where we are staying is located in a gated hillside community less than a 10 minute walk from Maracanã Stadium far removed from the tourist hotspots of Copacabana and Lapa.
Our room is on the second floor of a two story flat overlooking a middle class neighborhood and a favela nestled in the hillside across 
from us. Patrick Granja, our host, lives with his girlfriend on the first floor. The second floor is essentially a mini hostel, with Danny, another Brazilian filmmaker, in one room, two Swedish English teachers in across the hall and us three in the biggest room. The final resident is an inquisitive little cat named Maasai.
The living room is decked out with surf boards and guitars, and a breakfast of bread, ham, cheese, fresh pineapple and very strong coffee awaits us every morning if we get up in time.
OUR HOST, PATRICK GRANJA
The primary reason we decided to stay with Patrick was because he was a local filmmaker. We thought he would be a great connection to have in South America and living with him, as opposed to in a hostel, would offer us a unique opportunity to see the city from the perspective of a local human rights advocate.
He grew up across the street from Maracanã stadium in a “rundown penthouse”. His mom still lives there, but right now she is renting it out to CNN so that it can be used as their command center overlooking the stadium during the World Cup. She also received five tickets to the World Cup final, which she intends to sell for thousands of dollars each and use the money to remodel the penthouse.
Patrick watched his favorite team, Fluminense, play over a thousand times growing up, but hasn’t attended a game since it was renovated for the World Cup. The pitch was rotated so he can no longer remember where he was when the most important goals were scored. He is not excited about the World Cup at all because of the problems that came with it, like the pacification of the favelas, the ensuing violence, and the rising cost of living in Rio.
Patrick’s interest and involvement in Rio’s inequality epidemic didn’t start with the World Cup. He has been editing and contributing to the weekly Maoist journal A Nova Democracia for the last 12 years. He is also a enthusiastic videographer, filming all the major protest over the last decade with the best cameras, as well as the most prominent archiver of locally produced films and footage.
His dedication to being in the midst of the action and getting the best shots has come at a cost to his health and safety. He lost a chunk of his leg when a flash bang grenade exploded at his feet, has inhaled lots of expired tear gas and got shot at recently while in the front lines of a protest in a nearby favela, because the cops unexpectedly opened fire with real 9mm bullets.
This passion and proclivity to filming protest has been noticed by news agencies around the world. He has sold his footage to Al Jazeera and most recently to Vice for their upcoming documentary on the World Cup in Rio. I’m stoked to be living with him. Hopefully we can all learn from him and start selling the footage we get in South America to keep funding our travels.
Check back soon to read all about our adventures with Patrick in Rio.
Peace
