During our stay in Rio, we stayed in a hostel in Santa Teresa, a neighborhood with a “bohemian” reputation. The area, located on a hill, is quite different from the most touristic neighborhoods such as Copacabana and Ipanema. It’s a lot greener, there are beautiful houses -a heritage of a past full of rich and famous people at the beginning of XX century- highly recommended bars and nice views to the rest of the city. Part of this identity is kept thanks to edil restrictions that avoid the construction of buildings higher than 11 meters in the area. Its streets are quite steep and serpented. Most taxi drivers aren’t even familiar with them. The result: you have to learn to guide them, and take as reference some more popular street names, such as Monte Alegre and Almirante Alexandrino.

A good part of Santa Teresa’s popularity comes from its most traditional transport media: the bondinho. It’s the last electric tramway functioning in Rio de Janeiro and it has been running along the steep streets of Santa Teresa since the ends of XIX century.

With the passing of the years, the bondinho has become a real symbol of the neighborhood, to the point that neighbors and tram’s employees have managed to stop all attempts to shut it down. Its detractors have enough reasons: the tram is in bad shape and its functioning in the middle of Santa Teresa’s narrow streets difficults the traffic of cars and buses that ride around in high speed. On top of it all, its electric feeding disconnects very often and the drivers have to get off the tram to put things back into place. But, at the same time, there’s something quite endearing in a transport running around since XIX century, despite all the attempts to remove it. Besides, the bondinho is a quite efficient way to get to the center of the city in just a few minutes for a low cost -only R$ 0,60, the cheapest transport fare in Rio- and with a great view of the rest of the city. The ride includes passing above the Lapa Archs, nowadays one of Rio’s most popular postcards.

With the passing of time, the bonde has become a touristic attraction, and in the mornings is full of people who don’t speak portuguese, camcorders in hand -which has caused that the tram always has a couple of policeman on board, since it rides around not so safe areas. At least for now, they don’t charge tourists more than they charge natives . But there’s also one interesting thing to remark: it’s not so hard to find empty seats in the bonde, even at peak hours. If you have the chance to ride it often, you’ll see there’s many people travelling on the train’s footboards, even women. When we approach the train, thinking “oh no, it’s full” we realize there’s many empty seats, and even standing up women let us pass and take a seat. The latin american perception that bond us quickly make us figure there has to be some sort of economic advantage of travelling standing up. Indeed, those who ride on the footboards don’t pay. Only when the bondinho leaves the center station, around Carioca metrô station, you have to pay inevitably. Of course, once you reach the second station, around Lapa Arches, there’s a group of people waiting …to jump up the footboards.

Currently, there’s two bondinho lines. Both depart from Carioca station, next to a Petrobras building and two blocks away from the metrô Carioca station. Look carefully, since the entrance is poorly signaled. One line goes to Paula Mattos, and the other one, to Dois Irmaos. Since they go separate ways on Largo de Guimaraes, where most of the bars are located, most tourists don’t care much to find out which line to take. There are departures every half hour, approximately. On rainy days, the service can be suspended -in fact, I found out this myself on a rainy day, where I had to go find a taxi and convince him to drive us by telling him he only had to go straight up by Monte Alegre…

Of course, there’s a series a bus lines that go up to Santa Teresa, and some of them do the integraçao thing with the metrô. One of them is the 206 line to Silvestre and the 214 to Paula Mattos, but there are others. You can take them on Largo de Machado metrô station.

We couldn’t resist to slip into some tourist behavior, and we bought a mini wooden replica of the bondinho at one of Santa Teresa’s crafts stores. See the picture below.

The most famous bar of the Largo de Guimaraes area in Santa Teresa is the Bar do Mineiro, located one block away from the tram’s stop. Its most famous dish is the traditional feijoada, which costs around R$ 28, the platter for two. It’s quite aboundant and you’ll surely be satisfied. Be aware that on weekends the bar fica lotado (is packed), and to get a table you’ll have to wait awhile. If you’re staying at Santa Teresa, our case, you’re better off going for lunch on a weekday, except on mondays, when they close.

Of course, the area has some other interesting bars and restaurants, such as Sobrenatural, specializing in seafood. It’s a little pricey, but worth it. The neighborhood has more tourists, anyways, which has interesting consequences -more pousadas and bars- and not so interesting ones -higher prices, particularly in bars. Around Esquina do Santa, at Monte Alegre and Rua Aurea, there’s another bar I liked a lot, Armazem de Thiago. They have an excellent black beer draft, in chope, that I emphatically recommend. And it’s not expensive at all.

A good source to read about Santa Teresa is to buy the Bairros do Rio title dedicated to Santa Teresa and Urca, easy to find in the city’s libraries. They cost around R$20. A little expensive considering its size, but worth it.

There are a few more things left to say about Santa Teresa, such as the place we stayed at, but I’m trying not to write mile long entries. So I’ll leave the rest for next monday.