Every time I travel I like to go see how people live; I have done township bike tours in Windhoek and livingstone, I did an amazing one in Johannesburg and I always find it safe and educational so when I heard about the favela tour I didn't even think twice about saying yes to it!
The favela visited was Rosinha, which apparently is one of the safest in Rio.
I started the tour by being yelled at by the guide! Haha
The tour was going very fast and I, of course, wanted to take pictures so I would stop and then run. Once Kate and I took "too" long (literally we were 15 seconds behind the group) and I said to Kate "hurry, we will get in trouble" so we started running and the guide just looked at me and told me in front of everybody that I should stick to the group blah blah blah I felt horrible!!! He totally put me on the spot! The little kid in me was saying "it wasn't only me, Kate was there too" but I took the blame and kept moving WITH the group!
The conditions in the bad parts of the favelas are heart breaking. The whole place is dirty and smelly! The halls are so narrow, no cars or even motorcycles can travel through them. People do not have a water system running so they have big tanks on top of their houses that gather rain water. I believe that energy is stollen from the street so pretty much the people living there pay no energy bill nor water.
(Look at the moldy roof)
The guide took us to the roof top of a house with an incredible view of Rio... In the back! (The surrounding are pretty sad to look at)
After the studio we stopped by some stands where ladies were making and selling jewelry/ crafts.
Some kids were following us with buckets and after we were done shopping the performed a samba dance while playing the drum buckets (no pictures, only a video) and were joined by some of the grown ups down the hill.
After the terrific performance we headed into a bakery full with yummy treats
As always, I ate my treat in no time and reached for the door to see what Kate and Jamini were up to. I stood by the door and saw police men dressed up in scary suits and carrying HUGE guns! All of a sudden they kneeled down and pointed their guns, I freaked out, went back in and started to scream "guns, guns" and then the shooting started!!!!!
It freaked most of us out! We didn't know what was happening and it was scary. After a couple of mins a mom came into the shop looking for her daughter, she seemed very worried and when she saw her daughter in the bakery she started crying and hugged her. It completely broke my heart! I can't imagine what must have gone through that mother's head listening to the gun shots and knowing that her little girl was out there... Scary!
The tour guide told us not to be scared that police there was standard procedure and we shouldn't be alarmed! We all believed him and calmed down.
After about 10 mins we kept moving down thinking it was standard (scary) procedure and that everything was going to be alright.
We saw some cute kids and the cutest Brazilian old lady.
After some time going down the hill and taking our sweet time taking pictures (in group) we once again heard shots! This time, closer to us!
People from the favela started closing their doors and windows and the people who live right were we stopped opened the doors for us so we had a place to hide.
At first I thought we were overreacting a little bit! Come on! I grew up in the middle of a war so a couple of gun shots weren't going to scare me! As always I was saying "it's ok, we are fine, everything will be fine!" We hid in somebody's porch for about 15 mins and when we though it was clear the guide said "let's go", we stood up, he went out and a second later we saw him throw himself back into the porch and hide under the stairs, shots started once again! This time they fell as if they were right in top of our heads, we all threw ourselves on the floor.
Up until then I kept my cool and was fine! I'm from El Salvador! I'm tough... I'm right, right?!?
Well, no! Hearing those shots so close and literally throwing myself down on the floor hit a cord! I started to cry and the first thought that came to my mind were the kids in all the school massacres and feeling so scared and vulnerable. It is unexplainable, it's a kind of fear that I had never felt before and tears just started poring down my face. I was scared!
We made our way inside this guys house and probably 10 of us hid in this tiny room, some of us were crying, others were consoling other people... It was a mess!
I calmed down and started laughing. Then I just kept thinking that everything was going to be alright and telling others that, I even said that a couple of hours later we would be laughing about the whole experience (we didn't, we talked about for the next 4 days!)
Finally it was safe to leave and we just ran down the tiny slippery favela streets until we reached the Main Street. Down there life was normal, nobody knew what had happened inside the favela that day, we were safe, and I was relieved we were out of there!
