A breath of hot air

A bit of personal reflection

In general, I enjoy hot weather and anyone who knows me can attest that I far prefer hot temperatures to cold. I can’t say with certainty that I carry my heat tolerance proudly but when people ask me why I wear long sleeves and long pants year-round – even on the most oppressively hot of my hometown’s summer days – I usually provide a standard twofold reply. First, I note that I am easily chilled and with the ubiquitous presence of air conditioning my long clothes protect against any potential chill and that while I can always transform a long sleeved shirt into a short sleeved shirt, I’ve yet to discover a method of making my sleeves grow in the opposite direction. The second part of my standard reply (and this might be where the prideful element appears) is that I generally feel hot somewhere around Dante’s Third Circle of Hell. (Of course, this is purely metaphorical since Dante delineates the various Circles by particular sins not by their spot on the Kelvin scale.) Well, on my first day in Rio de Janeiro, I might have discovered my personal limit.

When I left Baltimore on 5 March the local temperature was between 28 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit or between minus one and minus two Celsius. Wearing a flannel shirt and sweatshirt under my travel vest and a light jacket over it, I was dressed appropriately for the local weather. When I arrived in Rio at 06:30 on 6 March, the temperature was 26 degrees Celsius or about 78 Fahrenheit and, as you can see from this photo taken in front of my hotel in the neighborhood called Copacabana,

I was no longer dressed appropriately even had the temperature remained at or near 26 which it didn’t. It got hotter and it did so quickly. (Note that from this point forward, as has been my convention, I will conform to local standards and use the metric system exclusively. Those needing to convert to Imperial must do so on their own.)

As one would expect at that hour of the morning, my room wasn’t ready. I was able to shed the jacket and sweatshirt and store my luggage but, perhaps arrogantly, didn’t change my shirt. Since I needed to occupy myself until 14:00 when I could officially check in, I set out to explore the neighborhood.

I wandered about for a bit before settling into the Magú Bistro for a light breakfast. Because my route had been circular, I’d walked a much greater distance than the few blocks from the hotel to the café and had already started to feel the heat. I nibbled my eggs and sipped my tea for as long as I could and watched as the manager made a kind gesture by giving a croissant or two to a scruffy looking couple who’d made a pleading request. It could have been no later than 10:00 when I set out again.

I’d eaten breakfast not much more than 100 meters from the beach and since the trip would take me across the continent from ocean to ocean, I thought the early photographic documentation should  begin with a picture of the Atlantic.

This angle also captures some of the geology for which Rio is famous. As I continued walking along the beach and Avenida Atlântica, the temperature and humidity continued to rise. By noon, the temperature had passed 30 and I realized that I needed to negotiate my personal Third Circle of Hell for yet two hours longer. I conceded to the heat at about 13:30. I had no mirror but I’m confident I looked as bedraggled as I felt when I stumbled into the lobby and thankfully found my room was available. I opened the door, turned on the air conditioner and collapsed fully clothed onto the bed where I remained until I was to meet the rest of the group for dinner at 19:00.

(The group consisted of our Peruvian guide Berner whom I’d met at the airport in the morning, Jill from London whose room was on the same floor as mine and whom I’d encountered briefly in the afternoon, and Jan from Yorkshire whom I’d meet that evening.)

True Confessions 

Recently, I came out of the metaphorical closet and openly acknowledged my atheism. No longer would I avoid the topic of religion or use veiled language to avoid possibly offending theists of any belief. In fact, I would willingly engage with those who were interested in as reasoned a discussion as we could manage. While I am firmly convinced that an atheist’s life is, in many ways the most fulfilling and self-reliant life possible and that I am rooted in a desire to, as Matt Dillahunty says, “believe as many true things and as few false things as possible” my arrival in Rio pointed to one aspect of atheism that left me a bit impoverished.

Because I hew to no religious belief, I live with little to no knowledge or awareness of any religious or ecclesiastical calendar. Had I possessed such awareness, I would have certainly planned to arrive in Rio 24 to 48 hours before I did. Why? Take a look at the calendar and note that I arrived at 06:30 on Wednesday, 6 March or, for Catholics, Ash Wednesday. Of course, this means the day before was Fat Tuesday or as they call it in New Orleans Mardi Gras. In Rio, they call it Carnival.

Jill, clearly a wiser traveler than I, had arrived in Rio several days earlier and had procured tickets and transportation to Rio’s famous Sambadrome where she saw displays of floats like this:

And schools of dance like this:

You can see a few more of the photos she was kind enough to share here. And, any reader who wishes to do so, is now free to administer a dope slap to me the next time we meet.

Note: In keeping with my 2022-2023 reformation of the blog into shorter entries, backdated to maintain their sequence, any comments on this post might pertain to its new configuration. See the explanation in the post Conventions and Conversions.