Packed Brazilian Heat

A reggaeton bomba just detonated and set the favela ablaze! Driven by a wall of speakers throbbing my insides, the music is accompanied by hollers, hops and gun shots, yet it somehow feels like the safest place in Brazil. “Tic”, the resident graffiti artist informs me that I am under a single ordinance: no matter the extent of the gyration and the resultant temptation, I am not to make any physical contact with any lady for they are invariably property of a gang member. The problem is that here in one of the world's most overpopulated DIY projects you are almost constantly touching those around you.
Above the crowd a mist of sweat pulsates in the yellow street light. A red pistol with a cartoonishly large, and seemingly unnecessary, scope bounces inches from my face to the beat of the obligatory pit-bull track. On the handle, the rhinestone encrusted inscription “Jorge” is emblazoned shamelessly. The security at the favela parties is exclusively pre-pubescent boys, as nobody would trust a drunken hormoaning teenager with an M16, and the grown-ups have serious partying to do. However, three hours prior, at midnight, I myself was certainly in no mood to party.

Landing in sweltering Sao Paulo two weeks earlier, I was instantly enveloped by the thick, sweet fertility of the land; the blooming flowers, succulent fruit and the seemingly endless pageant of pregnant or nursing women surrounded by a clamorous brood of grasping children. From the big city, a quick trip to the island of Ilha Grande, with a single motorized vehicle (doubling as both firetruck and police car), immediately dissolved the tinnitic din of the urban millions. That is where I met the girl from Copacabana whom I would end up spending New Year’s Eve with.

After a week in Rio, we decided to spend New Year’s with 2 million others on Copacabana beach. By day the beach is a throng of thongs and sculpted eight-packs, but tonight, the crowd wears all white. Under the auspicious gaze of Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf Mountain, the revelry matched the colorful intensity of the fireworks launched from barges in the ocean. It was then and there that my host revealed to me that any romantic illusions I had, were just that. Kicking up sand I reluctantly tromped back to my hostel. Worst New Year’s, ever. And in Rio at that.

At the front door of my hostel, after a long walk of self-pity, I was startled by a smoking stir in the shadows which inquired,

“Hey man, wanna go to a party?”