RioDeJaneiro Archives - Page 6 of 11

Articles tagged “RioDeJaneiro”

World’s worst places: Top 10 places you do not want to visit in 2012

by Dave Seminara on Jan 6, 2012

Update: Check out the World’s Worst Places of 2013 here

What comes to mind when you think of the world’s worst place? While it is easy to complain about rural Wal-marts, La Guardia, Applebee’s, and any government office with motor vehicle in its title, none of those places escalate the game from nuisance to immediate danger. All of them can be horrible, yes, but a threatened existence they do not pose.

The places on this list are the bad places. Some have run out of hope. Others have fought war for so long it is the new normal. Most are exceptionally dangerous and heartbreaking. And while none of them are fighting for write-ups by travel bloggers or inspiring travel with the NetJet set, some of these locations may someday be on the travel map. After all, it was not long ago that current hot-spots like Cambodia and Croatia would have made such a list.

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10. Harare, Zimbabwe
Recently voted by the Economist as the world’s worst city to live in, Harare is a unique study in failed fiscal policy. The once acceptable city fell into disrepair during Zimbabwe’s severe bouts with hyperinflation and corruption. The troubles began in the early 21st century when Zimbabwe’s inflation rate increased to 112.1%. Sounds terrible right? As it turns out, those were the sunny days. In 2008, the inflation rate peaked at 231,150,000% per annum. In U.S. terms, this means that if you deposited $10,000, it would be worth about 4 thousandths of a U.S. cent in one years time. That sucks. (For the record, 10,000USD = 46.720 quadrillion Zimbabwe dollars in 2009.)

This sort of economic arrangement allowed Harare to fail. There are not enough printers in Zimbabwe to print enough of its Z100 Billion notes, and when a loaf of bread costs trillions, doom is soon to follow. Unemployment grew to 80% and many services faltered. Today, foreign currencies have been adopted but the damage has been done. Much of Harare is in disrepair, and few foreign companies care to directly invest in the troubled city. That said, it is probably the safest place on this list to visit with flights direct from London on the national carrier – Air Zimbabwe.

9. Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea
The lone entry from Oceania is the ultra-diverse Port Moresby of Papua New Guinea. PNG is home to over 820 languages – more than any other country in the world. As such, its capital Port Moresby boasts a diverse crew of opportunists and island cultures. It was recently voted by the Economist as the 137th out of 140 places in the livable cities index, making it a tough place to get by.

Rapes, Murders, and HIV are just a few of the daily tragedies that befall this enclave at the edge of the map. Here, even riding in cars is a dangerous activity. Gangs called Raskols are known to rob vehicles transporting foreigners at gunpoint.

Port Moresby is best used as a temporary gateway to nearby dive sites and for flights to PNG’s jungle interior and its solitary treks. Reaching Port Moresby is easy from Australia on PNG’s national carrier Air Niugini.

8. Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
37 years ago, Ali and Foreman traded blows in one of boxing’s most historic matches. The match took place in Kinshasa. At the time, the country was known as Zaire, and the future looked hopeful for the mineral-rich nation. But as is common in 20th century African history, corruption at the top derailed the future. The country became a model for African kleptocracy as President Mobutu matched Zaire’s national debt with deposits into his personal bank account in Switzerland – to a tune of 4 billion (1980) U.S. dollars. He was forced to flee in the late nineties.

By 1998, the Congo region was engaged in the Second Congo War – the most deadly military conflict since World War II. In the end, over 5 million perished, and to this day the mineral-rich country has a per capita (nominal) GDP of about $186.

Chinese foreign direct investment has allowed Kinshasa to grow into a more reasonable place over the last decade, though it is not yet ready for its tourist close-up. Violence and political instability still ravage the second most populated city in Africa. It has come a long way from the time of Mr. Kurtz, but the heart of Africa is still an exceptionally complicated place. Just a month ago during the presidential election, thousands fled Kinshasa in anticipation of violence, and tanks rolled in to police the streets.

Tens of thousands of orphaned street children call the slums of Kinshasa home and are also routinely accused of witchcraft by locals. Carjackings are one of the more common types of tourist robbery, especially outside of the city center. And one more thing, photography is illegal.

Reaching Kinshasa is easy from Paris on Air France.

7. Rocinha favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rocinha is the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro. While its infrastructure exceeds that of lesser favelas and its view of Rio is truly breathtaking, it is also home to several hundred thousand Brazilians packed onto a steep hillside. It is a playground for modern day little Li’l Zes.

With one of the highest murder rates in the world, Brazil has been cracking down on violence in anticipation of hosting both the Olympics and World Cup. In fact, local authorities have effectively declared war on this slum in an effort to clean it up and push out the drug cartels, and just a few months ago, Rocinha was occupied by the military and police forces. Their aim is to restore government control in the sprawling favela. While progress has no doubt been made, when visiting Rio (which is generally safe), it is wise to avoid favelas unless accompanied by a local guide.

6. Sana’a, Yemen
“Just off the horn of Africa…” is a common statement that generally precedes a story about modern piracy. And just on the other side of the dangerous Gulf of Aden where such piracy goes down is treacherous Yemen – a land frozen in time.

It is a time machine to the modern edge of the Islamic dark ages. On one hand this brings old world Arabian architecture and cultures of antiquity, but on the other, it brings out Islamic fanaticism. It is a place of child brides and a training ground for Al Qaeda. Men walk around freely with weapons per their religious rights, and these weapons range from the ubiquitous Jambiya to battle-worn Kalashnikovs. Sana’a is old, dangerous, and has its share of political unrest. As a westerner, you can keep your travel plans safer by avoiding Yemen.

The tragic thing about Yemen is that it possesses such beautiful sights. It has unbelievable Red Sea beaches, Socotra Island (Similar to the Galapagos and on my own personal travel shortlist), and old forts amid craggy mountains.

Reaching Sana’a, Yemen is possible from Dubai, Doha, London, and Sharjah.

5. West Point, Monrovia, Liberia
Clean water, electricity, basic services – all things we take for granted in the West. In the West Point area of Monrovia, a city named for James Monroe, these are luxuries. West Point, a peninsular slum jutting out into the Atlantic, is home to a special breed of disgusting squalor. Home to 75,000 Monrovians, it is one of Africa’s most notorious and crowded slums. Cholera is at an epidemic level, drug use is rampant, teenage prostitution is a commonality, and toilets are scarce. In fact, since it costs money to use neighborhood toilets, many Monrovians in West Point just crap in the streets or on the beach.

Vice did a great series on Liberia a few years ago. In the series, they meet with with an ex-war leader known as General Butt Naked – the commander of a group of child soldiers called the Butt Naked Brigade. He earned this name by charging into battle wearing only sneakers and his AK-47. Aside from sacrificing humans and partaking in cannibalism, he also regularly communicated with the devil. Today, he is a minister.

Delta flies from Atlanta to Monrovia, Liberia.

4. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Just as turbulence occurs where hot and cold air meet, similarly a point of human turbulence occurs in this nasty city where Mexico meets the United States. Drug violence, government incompetence, and poverty mix to form what has been called the murder capital of the world (this dishonor has since been ceded to Honduras). As drug wars continue to rage, Juarez continues to be a dangerous place. The drug cartels continue to fight for one of the most valuable things in the world – access to the United States narcotics market.

Neighboring El Paso, oddly, has one of the lowest murder rates in the United States. In fact, among major cities, El Paso is tied with Lincoln, Nebraska for having the lowest murder rate in the United States. It is indeed strange to have such a dichotomy separated by a river.

Flying to Juarez from a number of cities is easy, but don’t do it. Go to Cancun and fist pump instead.

3. Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Take one of the most damned places on the planet, knock the hell out of it with an earthquake, and you get the worst of Haiti – Cite Soleil. Port-au-Prince is generally a place of ephemeral hope and naked truths, and at its most rotten corner is this heartbreaking slum.

Cite Soleil is one of the largest slums in the northern hemisphere. It is a place where what you see is what you get, and what you see is abject third world poverty. The slum is void of sewers, schools, electricity, or healthcare facilities. It is the kind of place where relief workers are swallowed whole by the earth. In 2007, UN peacekeepers attempted to access the neighborhood and were welcomed with gunfire.

On top of this, many dangerous gang members escaped prison during the earthquake of 2010 and have returned to this crumbling slum. Reach PAP, Haiti from Miami on Insel Air.

2. Kandahar, Afghanistan
Surrounded by gorgeous mountains, it is a tragedy that Kandahar is so awfully dangerous. A one time trading center and strategic foothold, Kandahar is a victim of its perfect location between the world’s of East and West. It has been a point of interest since Alexander the Great stumbled upon it in the 4th century BC. For centuries, traders passed through this city when traveling between Asia and Europe. As result, wars have also passed through and control has changed hands over its centuries of existence, from Mongols to Arabs to Brits and beyond.

Kidnappings, suicide bombings, and other criminal activities have turned it into an absolute monster of a destination. War has a way of creating this sort of general lawlessness. Having a 28% national literacy rate does not help matters.

As a weird footnote, Kandahar has an Armani Hotel, though it is not licensed by Giorgio. Its TGI Fridays, once a bastion of Americana and cheese sticks in Afghanistan, has allegedly been shut down. One can reach Kandahar from Dubai on Ariana Afghan Airlines. During Taliban rule, Osama bin Laden used this airline for Al Qaeda operations including the smuggling of guns, money, and opium. Today, sanctions have been lifted against the troubled national carrier.

1. Mogadishu, Somalia
Still crazy after all these years, “Mog” has perhaps the most terrifying disclaimer (ever) hovering above its entry on wikitravel. It states, “Mogadishu is regarded as the most lawless and dangerous city on Earth and is currently experiencing a major food and refugee crisis. It is not safe for leisure or tourism. If you are planning a visit for international aid work, etc, you will need expert advice and planning.”

Civil War has raged for decades, and the government controls only a few blocks of the city. It is a base for modern pirates, the backdrop for the true story surrounding Black Hawk Down, and it is said that machine guns are frequently used by drivers to negotiate through car traffic. It is a land without law, a soulless place at the edge of Africa. Much of it bears more resemblance to the last level in an especially difficult video game than to life on Earth. It is more modern warfare than modern world.

Oddly enough, several supermodels were born in Mogadishu including Iman and Yasmin Warsame – a footnote of beauty for an ugly place. Flights to Mog can be booked on Jubba Airways from Jeddah and Dubai. Good luck with that. Seriously though, if you decide to go, be sure to wear a bulletproof vest and hire a small army of Ethiopian soldiers.

Cockpit Chronicles: VideoâFood in the cockpit. How it’s prepared and what is served

by Kent Wien on Oct 12, 2011

“I’m getting kind of tired of these chicken Caesar salads.”

I said those words just a few months into my career at American. The statement resonated loudly after I was furloughed and flying for a freight airline with barely a bottle of water on board, so I vowed that I would never complain about a crew meal again.

In fact, when I came back to AA I nearly cried when a flight attendant entered the 727 cockpit and asked us what we wanted to drink.

Now, after ten years of international flying, mostly to Europe, I’ve enjoyed more crew meals than I probably should have. Warm dishes on an airline flight might be foreign to today’s passengers and even some of our domestic pilots, but on the international side we still enjoy food just as it was in the earlier days of airline flying.

The usual transatlantic daytime flight might include appetizers, such as nuts and cheese, salads, a main course with an overabundance of bread and a slice of cheesecake perhaps, followed later by a Sundae or cookies. Before landing in the afternoon, there’s often a cheese plate or fruit dish, followed by a pizza or steak sandwich.

Honestly, it’s too much. But if you’re paying for a business class experience, over indulging every now and then isn’t bad. For pilots however, these crew meals can add more pounds in the first year of international flying than during a freshman year in college.

I limit myself to just the nuts as a starter followed by the salad. Later, if there’s any fruit available, I’ll have some of that, or if it’s morning in Europe, the cold cereal is a good choice. Anything more and I begin to feel overly tired during the overnight flight across the pond. Since I’ve cut back I’ve noticed a definite slackening of my uniform pants.

Typically three meals are put on for the three-pilot cockpit crew, two items the same, often chicken or steak and the third perhaps being a pasta dish.

Most co-pilots give the choice of meal to the captain, and the captain often defers back to the co-pilot. It can become comical at times; neither pilot wanting to make what is probably the least important decision of the flight. Alas, it’s typically decided that whoever is flying the plane for that leg should choose.

I’ve enlisted the help of our flight attendant Susan, who made a brief appearance in my Boston to Paris video seven years ago, to appear again in front of the camera to show how she manages the cockpit and passenger meals for a 10½ hour flight from Rio to New York.

Notice just how busy Susan is before boarding. As the “number five” flight attendant out of nine aboard our 767, she’s ‘the cook’ up front, responsible for not only preparing and cooking the meals, but setting up the galley on the ground.

Passengers in the back also enjoy a hot meal, and there’s another flight attendant with three ovens getting ready to prepare that food as well.

Every month the meal types and even the kind of cheese in the appetizer change. Some plates are exceptional-a white chocolate glazed chicken dish sounded terrible but turned out to be fantastic-and some I’ve avoided after just one bite, such as the foie gras stuffed chicken.

The ‘insert’ shown in the video is mostly an international custom. It keeps the pilots from having to call back every time they’re ready for more water or soda. It’s brought to the cockpit only after takeoff to prevent anything loose from bouncing around the flight deck.

The sundaes and baked cookies aren’t normally part of our meals, but some of the nicer flight attendants will still offer them.

In the past, no two pilots could eat the same meal, and they had to be served at different times. At my airline, these restrictions have been relaxed, however.

For the past year or so, I’ve taken to capturing some of the crew meals with a camera. Apparently I fall into the crowd that likes taking food pictures. The gallery below shows some of my favorite crew meals of all time:

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Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in New York. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.

Photo of the day – Brazilian shopkeepers

by Alex Robertson Textor on Aug 18, 2011

Two Brazilian shopkeepers are the subject of today’s Photo of the Day, snapped by Flickr user jrodmanjr. This image grabbed my eye for many reasons: the intensity with which the two men are engaged in conversation; the grandness of the building itself; the sidewalk’s black and white tiles; the interior neon ceiling light fixtures; the back door, ajar and luminous. This is an evocative scene, and it captures a piece of Brazil.

Perhaps you have an image on your hard drive of another riveting human interaction. Perhaps you’d like to share it with a wide audience. Perhaps you should upload said image to the Gadling Group pool on Flickr. Perhaps, finally, it will in turn get chosen as a future Photo of the Day.

To everyone uploading photos to the Gadling Group pool on Flickr: For the umpteenth time, please make sure that your images can be downloaded. If we cannot download your images, they will not be chosen as future Photos of the Day. I am talking to many of you, but especially to baby_mongster, whose photos I love and am never able to select.

Cockpit Chronicles: There’s more behind the Air France 447 crash than pilot error

by Kent Wien on Aug 12, 2011

Recently a couple of pilots found themselves in a situation that was foreign and perplexing to them; a scenario the designers of the airplane hadn’t fully expected. They fought their way for 3 minutes and 30 seconds while trying to understand what was happening after a failure of one of the pitot static systems on their Airbus A330. At times the flying pilot’s inputs exacerbated the problem when he assumed they were flying too fast rather than too slow.

Because they hadn’t seen anything like this in the simulator, and the airplane was giving conflicting information, the recovery would have been all the more difficult.

Pilots are taught that an erroneous airspeed indicator can be countered by paying close attention to their pitch and power. It sounds so simple that many pilots wonder aloud, just how anyone in the situation could mess it up.

In the early morning hours of June 1st, 2009, the pilots of Air France flight 447 were working their way around thunderstorms while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in the widebody Airbus A330.

A faulty pitot tube created a situation where any changes in pressure resulted in fluctuations in the airspeed indicator. To understand how difficult it is to recognize this problem and then correct for it, let me use the following analogy:

Imagine you’re driving a car at night. You come down a hill and you feel the cruise control back off on the gas to prevent the car from going too fast. Just as you look down at your speed noticing that it is, in fact increasing, a siren and lights go off behind you. A police car has woken you up from your late night drive.

Instinctively you kick off the cruise control and apply the brakes. The speedometer indicates you’re still accelerating, so you press harder on the brakes. Your car has now decided that because you’re trying to slow so quickly, it will shut off the anti-skid braking system and allow you to use manual brakes. You then skid off the road and into a ditch.

Based on the released information about one of the most mysterious accidents in recent history, it appears the pilots of Air France 447 faced a set of circumstances similar to our driving example.When flying in turbulence, it’s important to watch your airspeed. Flying too fast will result in a situation called mach tuck, where the nose can slowly pitch over and the controls lose their effectiveness.

Flying too slow can result in a stall. Not an engine ‘stall’ as might be incorrectly reported by the press, but an aerodynamic stall where the wings aren’t developing enough lift, and an immediate increase in the airspeed is needed to recover. Here’s a tip for reporters. In aviation, the term ‘stall’ will never be used to describe engines that fail. Ever.

Up at altitude, the difference between flying too slow and too fast can be as little as 20 knots. It’s called the ‘coffin corner,’ a morbid term used to describe narrow band of airspeed that we need to maintain.

In this 767 example above, the airplane has a very safe margin between
too slow and too fast, as shown on the airspeed indicator on the left.

While working their way around clusters of cumulonimbus clouds in the inter-tropical convergence zone that night, our two first officers (the captain was in the back on his planned rest break) did their best to stay away from the weather.

A side note: whoever takes the second break is usually the pilot who made the takeoff and who will also make the landing. So the relief pilot (who’s a type-rated copilot) took over the flying related duties while the captain slept.

Back to the flight: During turbulence, maintaining that speed can be more difficult, much in the way it’s tough to hold the speed in a car going over hills. You may look down after studying the weather only to notice that the auto throttles aren’t holding the .80 mach speed you have selected and the airplane is now at mach .83 and accelerating. In a moment, the clacker goes off, indicating you’re now exceeding the normal cruise speed of the airplane, which certainly gets your attention, much like the sirens of the police car in our example.

In the case of Air France 447, the autopilot kicked off in response to the overspeed, and was followed by a warning Airbus calls a ‘cavalry charge’ sound which is designed to get your attention quickly. About 30 seconds later the auto throttles were turned off manually and the throttles were pulled back, but it takes an eternity to slow down such a slippery airplane, and it may have seemed to the flying pilot that he was still accelerating anyway. So he pulled the nose up, an effective way to slow down in a critical situation like this. (See last week’s post on the eight ways to slow a jet.)

Amazingly, as the airplane climbed from 35,000 feet to 38,000 feet the airspeed continued to increase, at least that’s what it looked like on the flying pilot’s side of the airplane. He must have been surprised then to hear the stall warning activate moments later, indicating that they were flying too slow.

The other pilot likely noticed the airspeed on his side was decreasing, and perhaps because he saw the difference between both airspeed indicators, he’s heard to say on the recording that “we’ve lost the speeds.”

They had slowed from 275 knots indicated to 60 knots, at which point the airplane went into a mode called ‘alternate law’ which meant the automatic protections that kept the airplane from stalling were removed.

To make matters worse, the stabilizer trim moved from 3 degrees to 13 degrees nose up, which meant the airplane may have needed almost full nose down inputs on the stick just to fly level.

And to further confuse and confound the pilots, it’s recently been reported that as the airplane slowed further, the stall warning stopped. When max power was applied and the nose was lowered at one point, the stall warning came back. This is opposite of what the pilots were looking for in a recovery.

The airplane ‘mushed’ in a 15 degree nose up attitude all the way to the water, at a rate of 11,000 feet per minute.

We occasionally train for unreliable airspeed indications, but it isn’t covered during every recurrent training period. Stall training is often limited to the low altitude variety, which is far less critical than one occurring at 35,000 feet. I’m certain training departments all over the world will soon be required to train for high altitude stall recoveries.

Since this will take some time to become a requirement, on a recent simulator session, I asked my instructor to give me a loss of airspeed scenario at altitude. I told him I’d prefer to have the failure at any random point during our four hours of simulator time that day.

When he eventually failed it, causing the airspeed to slowly increase, I immediately pulled the throttles back and raised the nose a bit. The non-flying pilot simply said ‘airspeed’ which I thought was obvious, as it appeared to me that the airplane was accelerating rapidly and I was doing my best to get it back under control.

But on his side, the airspeed was dropping rapidly. When he said “airspeed” he actually meant that the airspeed was slowing and that I needed to do something about it. I finally looked over at his side, and saw that his speed was actually decreasing while mine increased. This all occurred within ten to twenty seconds.

I immediately lowered the nose and told him that I suspected my airspeed indicator had malfunctioned. Since my indicator was useless, I offered the airplane to him.

It’s easy for pilots to harp that “pitch and power equals performance” but it’s not easy to ignore the instruments you’ve trusted for thousands of hours. For the pilots of Air France 447, the incorrect airspeed indications and confusing stall warning sounds that were caused by a failure of the pitot static system proved to be too much to handle.

Furthermore, the Airbus design reinforced ideas that counter everything a pilot is taught, Specifically, these pilots learned that pulling the stick full aft would not result in a stall when the airplane was operating under a condition known as “normal law.” Much of their careers had been flown in airplanes with this feature. That night, after the initial climb, they were operating under “alternate law” which allowed far greater changes to the flight envelope, and removed that protection.

I wouldn’t have wanted to be in their shoes.

Much of the focus of the accident in the press has been to blame the pilots for clearly stalling the plane. One strange headline read “Baby pilot at the controls of AF 447.“

The ‘baby pilot’ was actually 32 years-old and had previously flown an A320 for 4 years and the A330/340 for just over a year. He had 2,936 hours of flight time with 807 hours in the A330/340.

The other copilot, at age 37 had 6,547 hours with 4,479 of them in the A330/340. Sadly, his wife was also on board the aircraft as a passenger.

And the 58 year-old captain, who came to the cockpit from his break halfway through the event had 11,000 hours of which 1,747 were in the A330/340.

I’ve said it before; in the eyes of the media, pilots are either heroes or villains depending on the outcome of the flight. These pilots faced challenges few of us have ever come across. Given the mechanical failures that started the chain of events, there’s certainly plenty of blame to go around. Events like these have a profound impact on our training and help prevent future accidents. And at least that is something we can be thankful for.

In case you’re interested in even more details, AvHerald has an excellent summary of the BEA preliminary Air France 447 accident report.