In early November, I went with my family to Rio de
Janeiro.

Rio is definitely a gorgeous city sent by the gods to
make the rest of us suffer in less aesthetically and
spiritually pleasing places. The city is nestled in
cliffs and hills and bordered by the Atlantic ocean. I
was ecstatic to be there. The people seem much more
natural and healthier than the Argentines. On every
street in Copacabana (a formerly rich area of the city
with the world’s most famous beach) there was a
drugstore selling extremely huge bottles of nutrient
supplements. The containers looked like the big one
gallon (approx. 4 liters) jugs of apple juice. Being
in shape is a huge priority for many Brazilians. There
are fruit juice stands everywhere with about every
fruit you can imagine. The even make avocado juice!
(It tastes like a milkshake.) Since the beach is free,
anyone who can afford a bus ticket can get to the sand
and enjoy the view. From the early hours in the
morning to nightfall, there are groups of boys and men
playing soccer, as well as joggers, bikers, roller bladers,
surfers and swimmers on the beach. There is a bike
path which goes around the coastline and laguna. I
also saw the exercise bars one uses to do pull-ups and
other arm strengthening exercises on the beach. I
wondered how on a weekday, there could be so many
natives spending all of their days on the beach. Do
they work? With their sunny weather, easy access to
the water and free exercise areas, the Brazilians had
such a different glow than there Spanish speaking
neighbors. Argentines are highly image conscious, but
their carnivorous diet and proclivities to anorexia
and obsession with psychoanalysts and Freudianism do
not make them a “healthy nation”. Though I was only
there for five days, I came back with the strong
impression that the Brazilians I saw were much happier
and healthier than Argentines.

The ethnic mixes make for gorgeous people. My father
and I were strolling on the beach one day talking
about how beautiful the people are. With the mixture
of native, African, European, Middle Eastern and Asian
blood, many Brazilians just have beautiful and
striking looks. The first time I had seen someone of
mixed African and white descent with dark skin and
blue eyes was in California, so I wasn’t surprised
when I saw the same look in Brazil.

With some people I met in Rio, I went to the world´s
largest stadium, Maracaná, to see a soccer game
between a Sao Paulo team (where the famous Pelé was a
star) and a Rio de Janeiro team. What an
experience!!!! At full capacity the stadium holds
200,000 people. I bet there were about 100,000 or so
when I went. It was absolutely incredible to hear more
than half of the stadium chant various team chants in
unison. There was a group of hard core fans leading
the songs and then the rest of fans in the stadium
joined to cheer their team to victory. Even I got goose
bumps. Brazilians are world famous for being soccer
enthusiasts, but this was really something. The guy
next to me was yelling and going nuts every time the
Rio team missed a kick or good chance to score. Grown men were
crying at the sight of their team losing. In the
second half, when the Rio team was losing, people
didn’t even wait to see the rest of the game, they
just stop supporting their team and left.

The trip to Rio was so all consuming that I forgot
about my life in Buenos Aires completely, as though I
were actually living in Rio de Janeiro. This was the
second time in all of my travels that a trip had
stunned me so much that I had totally forgotten about
my real life.

Unfortunately, there is a very sad and startling
economic reality in the world’s eighth largest economy;
Brazil has the worst income distribution in the world.
The gap between rich and poor is big and growing. On
my last day in Rio, I went to a juice bar to get a
raspberry juice and tuna sandwich and was met with a
huge surprise. I was in Leme, a well off beachfront
area of the city. When I told the girl behind the
counter what I wanted to order, she looked in the box
of pre-made sandwiches with stickers marking the
contents and was unable to figure out which one had
tuna. She gave me the box and I read the stickers and
saw the one that said “Atum” and took it. Then she
told me the price of the sandwich 2.30 real and I said
that she had made a mistake because the price on the
sign was 2.20 real. The girl looked at the sign and
she couldn’t find the line for the tuna sandwich. At
that point, I figure out what was wrong: she was
illiterate and couldn’t read the sticker or the sign
with the prices and had incorrectly memorized the
prices of the items. Then, she tried to calculate out
loud the cost of the sandwich and raspberry juice
(2.20 reais plus 1.80 reais) and couldn’t do the
simple calculation and had to ask a coworker for help.
This was the first time in my life that I had met
someone who was illiterate and incompetent at very
basic math. I have been to markets in poor areas in
developing countries and the merchants count and
calculate faster than I can. It was surprising to me that someone could
survive working in a very chic area without being able
to read or count.

My aunt, who is a doctor, told us that by looking at
peoples’ hands and feet, she could tell that they had
polio. The vaccine for polio is widely available in
the industrialized world, but lacking in the
developing world where most of the world’s population
resides.
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