"Cold Cape" is a picture postcard coastal city three hours by road and 25 minutes by plane from Rio de Janeiro. It has in its colorful past the distinction of having been "discovered" by Italian navigator Americo Vespucio and afterwards, via Portuguese colonization, changing its name to Santa Helena de Cabo Frio. Currently it is the sixth largest city in the state of Rio de Janeiro and with petroleum surrounding it, the city has indeed a promising future: witness the growing constructions of shopping malls, cinemas, boutiques, hotels and even an international airport (inaugurated in 2000).
The city's initial growth was due to the so-called "salt crisis" from 1650 to 1660 in Portugal resulting in Portuguese colonizers exploiting the riches of nearby Arauama Lake for the extraction of salt. As a result, a new urban center was inaugurated next to Praça Porto Rocha (Porto Rocha Square) and the Nossa Senhora da Assuncão Church and the Town Council and city jail were constructed in the Largo da Martriz (main Square) near the Pelourinho (Whipping post).
Thirty years later or in 1690, the Franciscans founded the Nossa Senhora dos Anjos (Our Lady of Angels) Church, near the Itajuru water station, which supplied the necessities of city of "Cape."
In the 20th century, Cabo Frio first became a tourist destination in the 1940s when the rich and famous of Rio flocked there for aquatic sports as well as to frequent its crystalline, unpolluted beaches. The inauguration of the Rio-Niterói Bridge and subsequent highways to the Lagos or Lakes region resulted in a further increase of tourism to the region. Today this region has summer homes, hotels, inns, lodges, camping grounds and other tourism facilities open all year round.
On the surface, Cabo Frio is not as sophisticated and luxurious as its neighboring and better-known rival sister Búzios. But on a closer look, if Búzios is supposedly Brigitte Bardot's St. Tropez of Brazil, then Cabo Frio is the local equivalent of Spain's Costa Brava. At least that was my personal viewpoint as I drank Argentine red wine with an authentic and delicious paella at the newly inaugurated El Toro restaurant (Av. Asuncão 334, center, tel. 2643-5935). Flamenco dancers stamped their feet and Spanish chanting singers entertained me as a lovely ocean breeze adorned the scenery bringing back fond memories of a summer month way back and long ago which I spent on Spain's Golden Coast. Our gracious host Fabio Pillis Vieira, a Brazilian originally from Campos who has resided and owned a restaurant in Spain, with this international-level restaurant has found a way to "matar saudades," or keep alive Spanish cuisine and culture which he obviously loves and cherishes.
Cabo Frio is full of exiles from the pressures and ills of rat races in other parts of Brazil or abroad. They are seeking what has been termed by sociologists "alternative life styles." Meaning they have fled the growing crime and violence of the big city to seek a new life style near the ocean, a home rather than a crowded apartment, and a beach buggy rather than a crowded bus or metro to ride to and from work.
They also enjoy what Rio de Janeiro and other big cities of the world no longer take for granted: clean streets, which are safe to walk without criminals attacking you. (This correspondent should know because one day before I headed to the Cape, two shirtless street kamikazes on bicycles robbed my mobile phone from my belt in plain daylight on Avenida Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. They were eventually arrested and your correspondent spent a "lovely" three hours pressing charges at a local police station.)
Among these people seeking this alternative way of living whom we had the pleasure to meet was the gracious host and manager of our Hotel Acapulco José Martins Pintor. A Paulista whose distinguished career has taken him to Aguas Quentes, Goiana and Porto Seguro, Bahia, among other places, Senhor Martins and his gracious wife Maria José seem comfortably at home at this Spanish colonial hotel in front of the sand dunes. But despite the so-called easier way of life in Cabo Frio, the hotel manager is at his desk every morning before most subway commuters reach their work cubicles and computers.
Hotel Acapulco (Rua João Antonio Rocha 373, tel. 2647-1212) has three swimming pools, including one for the children, two game rooms, a sauna, playground, bar and palm trees and a garden which could take a visitor to the real Acapulco without ever departing Brazil. With its Convention Center, I was surprised that more meetings and conventions don't drop in. The restaurant's cuisine, including the fresh seafood which only a coastal city can provide, was exemplary.
Other alternative style lifers we encountered where Uruguayan Alfredo and his wife belly dance teacher Katia Abreu. Five years ago the couple and their two sons departed the big city and the cramped quarters of Copacabana to reside in a home in Cabo which they have converted into a center for the study and promotion of belly dancing. Called Maktub (Rua Barbacena no. 88-Palmeiras, tel. 2643-3731) or "It's Written..." this center is a gathering center for young and older women to dance what has become popular across Brazil these days due to a recent telenovela called "The Clone."
Katia, who calls herself Professor Khawala Qamar, started out in 1997 with two students and today her cultural center is overcrowded with enthusiastic followers.
Yet another alternative life-styler who graced my visit to the Cape was Ernesto Galioto. This dynamo has his own wine collection, deals in real estate professionally, has constructed the local cultural center and in his "spare time" photographs from airborne helicopters, ecological points throughout the state of Rio.
Born in the state of Rio Grande de Sul, Senhor Galioto is indeed a busy man whose cell phone rings throughout the day and evening. He’s set to launch a book of some 600-800 aerial photographs entitled "Natureza intacta e agredida" (Nature, intact and destroyed).
Over a working cafe de manhã, or breakfast, he tells a visitor: "the causes of Brazil's recent energy crisis stem from the destruction of nature. The result of this destruction was a lack of water, an increased temperature of the atmosphere and a lack of energy."
Using his own financial resources, Galiotti - who is also a producer of classical musical events in his "spare time" - goes after what he calls "ecological bandits." Brazilian newspapers have reported on his 26 lawsuits against the "bandidos. "Most recently he and a local posse caught 14 "bandits of nature” in the act as they were about to destroy the wonders of nature locally."
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