Monday Oct 8thToday was spent walking around the neighbourhood of Santa Teresa. It was a walking tour in a group of 6 people & a local guide that I booked with Urban Adventures on Viator. This suburb is on the Hill up from the centre of Rio, its famous for narrow winding streets and a favourite spot for artists and tourists, it could be called a bohemian / hippy place. The locality first emerged in 1750's based around Santa Teresa Convent, by the end of the 1900's it was quite an upper-class suburb. In the 1960's there was a large land slide and Santa Teresa was badly affected which drop the house prices, this is when many artists began moving in.

Our tour began by catching the Rio metro which is very clean and quite easy (made user friendly during the Olympics), then a short walk up to catch the Santa Teresa Tram. The tram line was constructed in 1872 to connect with downtown Rio. It crosses an aqueduct that was initially built to carry water from the forest hills to the city centre. The tram was originally pulled by 4 donkeys, then engines, and it was electrified in 1896. The trams cars are very open air as they trundled along the tracks and one can imagine that OSH would not allow it in Australia! Getting on & off was not for the faint hearted either.

As you wonder around Santa Teresa there are many paintings on walls that artists paint just for the people. The buildings are heritage listed therefore the outside is not to be altered but inside you will find bars and cafes in many styles. We dropped into a couple of artisan shops with typical art and craft works done in the area.

A highlight of the walk was a visit to the iconic Santa Teresa Steps "Escadaria Selaron". A Chilean born artist Jorge Selaron began renovating the dilapidated steps at the front of his house and it soon became an obsession covering the entire set of steps. There are 215 steps in total which are covered with over 2000 tiles collected from more than 60 countries, I even found a couple from Australia. He considered the work of art never complete and claimed "this crazy and unique dream will only end on the day of my death." He also had a weird obsession of painting pregnant African women, sometimes portraying himself as the women, he would never explain why only to say it was a "personal problem from my past" He died January 10th 2013.

From the steps we continued down town to Rio Centro which is mainly office buildings and banks, most big cities do look the same with skyscrapers, pigeons and homeless. This is where our guide left us to our own devices. It was a great way to see the area and hear the history and feel safe, once again I really recommend it. We bought a bite to eat and sat on a bench to watch the city go by before catching the metro back to Copacabana. Back in Copacabana, quite by accident we stopped at "Dantes Café & Bar" for a coffee. The coffee in Brazil is particular nice, the day has again turned into a wet drizzly afternoon, hopefully we will get some sunshine over the next two days.