In Brazil, Favela Tourism Rising
Travel Blog • Ben Keene • 02.08.07 | 5:45 PM ET
For every cruise ship full of pleasure-seekers tempted to travel by spa treatments, gourmet cuisine, and the occasional shore excursion, there is a tougher sort of tourist in search of a little hardship. Some people go for the controlled experience, forking over $18 for a simulated illegal border-crossing at Parque EcoAlberto in Mexico. Others, as the Christian Science Monitor reported earlier this week, prefer a more authentic kind of cultural exposure. Describing a small but growing trend among Americans and Europeans visiting Rio de Janeiro, Andrew Downie writes: “To many Brazilians, favelas are dirty, violent, frightening places. But to many foreigners, they are exciting, interesting, and romantic. More and more outsiders are coming from overseas to live, work, and just visit favelas, observers say. In doing so they are highlighting the difference between Brazilians who regard favelas with fear, rejection, and even disgust, and foreigners who embrace them as vibrant crucibles of modern Brazilian culture.”
Downie interviews several individuals who have relocated to favelas as well as the owner of a company that runs tours to two sprawling shanty towns. And he cites rising prices as well as an increased interest in Brazilian culture as explanations for this phenomenon.
Related on World Hum:
* Rio de Janeiro: The Little Slum Inn
* Tourism Official Insists ‘It’s Not Whatever Goes in Brazil’
* From Ipanema to Copacabana: What Rio de Janeiro’s Beaches Say About Brazil
Photo by beija, via flickr. (License: Creative Commons.)