RIO !!!!! 

Our 5 nights of recovery in Rio flew by so fast.  Who knew that “leisure time” could pass by in the blink of an eye even when you’re paying US$300 a night!! 

That’s right, forget cheap holiday destination in Rio people – we think we spent about the same in spending money on the rest of our trip as we paid for the 5 nights, meals, tips, souvenirs, doctors bills (more on that in a moment) on our 5 nights in Rio.  But it was worth every cent.  We were very relaxed and ready to come home after the wind down.

Our hotel was very nice – Ipanema Plaza.  It’s one of the better known hotels in Rio, only one block from the Ipanema beach.  We stayed on their suit floor called the Ipanema Floor so we had a little more space to spread out during our stay.  Just the luxury of not having to unpack, repack for 5 nights was pure bliss.  Meal times in the hotel was a funny affair.  In true Aussie style we’d turn up in boardies and t-shirts (but with our very stylish Teva trekking sandals) and everyone else all dressed up.  When you’re limited with packing space for trekking holidays you’re lucky to have one or two shirts with collars so a collared shirt with jeans was dressed up for us.  Our dressed down casual air paid off as the staff thought we were great and there was lots of hand shaking and farewells on our last night with “sorry to see you go” and “see you next time” remarks.

We spent a small amount of time on the beach in Ipanema, mostly walking up and down the beach.  We are both not really into sunbaking (we were already sunburnt thanks to anti malaria medication – effectiveness of suncreme is reduced when on anti malaria medication – we both have classic trukkie t-shirt tans) and the water was freezing!  The air temperature was nice (mid twenties) and we should have realised the water was freezing as no suntanned beauties were in the water – only the stupido turisto’s.  We braved the water on the morning we were leaving so we could say we went in – I went in first and my lips and finger nails turned blue in about 1 minute.  Brian only stayed in for about 2 minutes and when he came back out asked me why I didn’t tell him he’d have to push the penguins out the way first!   Our hotel had a tent where we could get towels and sun lounges and stare into the Atlantic Ocean and wonder what the poor people were doing.  There was a little bit of beach eye candy but most of the eye candy was best for man on man viewing.  After all, Rio is well known for it’s gay community and it was abundant on the beach, lots of swollen bodies in short-shorts.  But as expected we were very overdressed for the beach – boardies for Brian and tankinie for me – most bikinies were just enough to cover the important parts and not quite g-string but almost.  The guys were mostly in lycra style boxers.

At night time you’re entertained by the street musicians and local capoeira enthusiasts.  That was a funny site to see as they would block the traffic on a one way street, some one else would be playing a drum and/or tamborine and then others would be doing backflips, jumps and kicks up and down the road.  Cars would be blasting their horns to get them to stop so they could drive through.  An amazing symphony of sounds, excitement and entertainment.

On our second day in Rio we did a city tour called Rio by Jeep.  It took us all over the city (down town, Corcovado, Tijuca Forest, favelas and finishing with a drive along the beach fronts).  It was nice to go and see the Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado but it was very busy with tourists.  Rio is a city that has large gaps between it’s wealthy and poor.  On the drive too and from the airport you see a lot of poor housing areas and pollution.

Of course we went to Copacabana beach too, well I did.  Brian spent this day in a doctors/hospital.  Nothing too serious but he had not been well for a couple of days and after he had a fever we thought it’s time to get to the doctor so he would be well for the flight home.  They did some tests and declared he was dehydrated so he had 4 litres of fluids and medicine intravenously.  All up the doctors visit took the best part of 5 hours.  The surgery was at Copacabana so once Brian was onto his second litre I ducked out to take some snaps of Copacabana beach, pick up some souvenirs and have some lunch.  On my “all by myself Copacabana adventure” I even managed to get kicked out of a bank!  Went into to a bank to use their ATM and I think the message in Portuguese was “sorry you cannot use our ATM unless you are a customer”.  Showed them my credit card and told no again and guided to the door.  Was very funny as the white tourist was escorted from the Bank of Brazil.

In all, Rio was fun and the ice cream was to die for.  No gluten in their ice cream (that’s right in Australia, most ice creams have gluten) so I made the most of it and had ice cream every day.  We also enjoyed a few glasses of the local cocktail (as had become our tradition in every country we visited) called caipirinha.  Very refreshing drink - white rum served with lime and sugar on ice.

The main adventure in Rio was the language.  Having been in Spanish speaking countries for the rest of our trip and arriving in Brazil where our Portuguese was non existent was very interesting.  Few spoke broken English but in the end we managed through grunts, hand signals and “Spanlishguese” … a combination of all three. 

Adeus Rio !