It’s easy for your brain to pick up scattered images of Rio from afar: the insanity of Carnival, the serenity of Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer), the beaches, and the oddly shaped hills that seem to pop out of nowhere in aerial views of the city. It’s hard to build a coherent picture out of those images, though.
But after four days there, I have a much stronger sense of things: Rio is Yosemite. The same processes that built the giant granite domes in the US national park (minus the glaciers) have created dramatic spires that seemingly erupt out of the ground all around the city. Rio is Yosemite dragged to the coastline, covered in tropical foliage, and with a city squeezed into every bit of flat ground available. It’s absolutely spectacular.
I was there in the Southern Hemisphere’s equivalent of December, and the city was more lush and green than New York in the summer. Part of the reason is that there’s simply more greenery. Nearly every street was lined with trees, and each hill that was too sheer to build on was topped by a toupee of plant life. There’s also a profusion of parks and protected areas within the city (many of them encompassing these hills). And the trees were covered in the thick, intensely green leaves that only grow in the tropics, where they’re not lost and regrown each year. Even at this time of year, a few species were bursting out in flowers.
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