My love is in Brazil visiting me. His name is Orien. He is a wildly creative artist and craftsman with a great sense for adventure and good tmies. We have a lot of fun and exploring planned here together in addition to the painting and planning I am doing for The Aces of Perception with my creative partner Perola Bonfanti. One of the things on our list was to scale the mountain behind the house at which we are staying. I heard rumors of a staircase cut into the rock, made long ago by slave laborers. 

So today a few hours before sunset, Orien and I set off up the mountain, first past the Hostel, Rio Nature where I used to stay with our crew when we were working on the FlutuArte project in 2012. We continue up a faded trail, overgrown with vines, fallen leaves and rotten, moldy Jack fruit. 

The path grows steeper and we cling onto branches and small trees to help us up. And then we arrive at the rock. The great massive rock jutting out from the top of the steep hill as giant rocks in Rio often do. Protruding out of the side of the stone are rusty metal steps, some broken away… they amble up the side of the mountain and we follow them.

Orien going up

After awhile the metal stairs cease and are replaced by steps carved out of the stone. With great excitement we climb them, up, up, up…

They seem to go on forever, certainly as far as our eyes can see.

We continue up, sweating and breathing heavily, gripping on to the rusty metal posts that stick out of the rock as we go. The mountain is very steep and there is the sense that the slightest slip of the Havianas (quintessential Brazilian flip flops) and you’d tumble down, down, down to your death. 

We arrive at what appears to be the top of the carved-out steps. Only a questionable rusty cable remains to lead us further up. We decide to chill there by a patch of bushes growing out of the rock. The view is remarkable. We can see all of Botafogo Bay, Urca, the Santa Marta favela the cemetery and Flamengo beach disappearing into the distance.

We look at the time. 6pm. “What time does the sun set?” We ask each other. “Hummmm… I think soon… we should probably head back down.” Orien says. And so we descend. And as mountains often are… it is much more perilous to go down than it was to come up. We take on several methods of descent. First, face first, holding onto the cable, then, ass first, gripping the rock in front of us, and finally, ass to the mountain, scooting down like a crab. It’s really steep and really sketchy. We take of our Havianas and go barefoot to reduce the chance of a wardrobe malfunction-caused plummet to our doom.

I fit our sandals together in a connected stack and throw them down the mountain. Eyebrows raised, we watch as they hop down the giant rock and then break apart, scattering in many directions and settling, unsettlingly on the face of the mountain, far from the steps. We look at each other with wide eyes. The overgrown path we hiked up on would be brutal to walk down without shoes.

It is getting dark at a rapid pace and soon were squinting in the dusk… still descending the stone steps. We pass our sandals, it’s much too dangerous to try to get them without some kind of long stick or branch. Now our main concern is getting down before it is completely dark… a very dangerous possibility.

We reach the metal stairs and they are barely visible. One by one, with bare feet, we grab each rusty stair and lower ourselves down onto the next, gripping the ridges of mountain to stable ourselves. Finally our feet find the ground and we make our way down the path we came, dodging (to the best of our ability) holes, drop offs, thorns, possible snakes… and stepping directly in all those rotten, moldy Jack fruit. 

Home again.

We vowed to return to retrieve our sandals and to explore the nearby cave that we heard rumors about. 

To be continued…