Amazonas

Best budget lodging in Rio

If you are looking for inexpensive and distinctive lodging in Rio de Janeiro, try The Maze Inn. This small pension is located in the favela of Tavares Bastos, but it is very safe: Tavares Bastos is also the home for the training center of Special Police Operation Battalion, Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE).

Tavares Bastos is a true working class neighborhood, with plenty of small kiosks, bars and restaurants. And like all favelas, it offers supreme scenery over the city "proper".

The 60-something artist and former BBC correspondent Bob Nadkarni owns and runs the inn. He is able to curse like a sailor in many languages (including Finnish). The rooms are modest, but stylish. On the first Friday of every month the joint is taken over by a very bohemian jazz club.

jazzrio.info
Address: Rua Tavares Bastos 414, casa 66

Street party, Rio-style

At the Largo das Neves square there is a bacchanal going on every weekend. Even if you travel outside the carnival season, this place is your chance to enjoy a true Rio-style street party. At night, all sorts of sound systems are erected; six packs are opened; and even impromptu orchestras strike out with their instruments. Everybody's dancing, partying and perhaps looking for that someone special.

Largo das Neves is located on top of the Santa Teresa hill. The Santa Teresa neighbourhood is known for its artists and bohemians, where the faded exteriors of the buildings don't keep the shindig scene from flourishing.

Address: The end of Rua Progreso, the final stop of the Paula Matos streetcar line.

Ayahuasca ceremony

Ayahuasca is the sacred medicine of the Amazon Indians. The indigenous people of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia use this psychoactive plant extract in order to reach the world of vision and mythology filled with revelation and healing. A shaman or curandero prepares the potion and it is ingested in a ritual where icaros, ancient remedial songs, are sung.

In Brazil you can acquaint yourself with the Ayahuasca ritual in Tabatinga, where eminent curandero Francisco Bezerra Pinto arranges them at his homestead. Don Francisco is over 90 years old and has studied the ways of natural healing in the jungles of Amazon since the 1920s. You might want to ask the locals to help with the translation, if you don't speak Portuguese or the languages of the Amazonas indigenous people.

Contact info:
Rua Amazonino Mendes, Bairro - Vila Verde (no number), abatinga. Puhelin
+55-97-81799404