Rio!

January 25-29

So for anyone keeping track, after Bogotá, we were going to fly down to Leticia and take an boat along the Amazon river to get into Brazil. This didn’t happen as you can see from our stint in Medellín. We ran into some scheduling issues and we’re going to have to do this adventure next time. There are a few things down here in South America that we just weren’t able to make time for – hiking the W, going to the Galápagos, and now visiting the Amazon. We just didn’t want to do the last two items unless we could do them properly, so we’re skipping for now. We don’t want to get into a habit of checking things off the list just to say we’ve done them without really experiencing them.

So after Medellín, we flew to Rio de Janeiro. A few things to remind you all: Rio is hot, Rio has beaches, and people in Brazil speak Portuguese. We were pumped about two of these three things. I kept hearing that Portuguese is so similar to Spanish and we have been doing pretty well with our Spanish at this point. Portuguese is nothing like Spanish – at least not to my pathetically untrained ear. Even when Brazilians try to speak with me in Spanish, I struggle big time. At least por favor is the same… and for the most part if I speak Spanish, they know what I’m saying even if I don’t understand them. So a big thank you to all of South America, but specifically Brazil, in putting up with us tourists who show up to your country without knowing your language. I hope that people in the US are as kind to visitors who don’t speak English.

After taking a nap to recover from our overnight flight, we went out to explore the area. We started by walking on the beach and then headed to Adega Perola where we had a ton of great seafood and our first caipirinhas. The place is set up with a counter that displays all of their fresh fish dishes:

Here were some delicious oysters and you can see that caipirinha (pronounced ky pee REE nyah) which is Brazil’s most popular cocktail – it has rum, sugar and lime in it. But the rum is Brazilian rum which apparently is different that other rum because it is made from fermented juice of sugarcane while most rum is made from molasses. Now you know.

After our meal, we took a gondola up to Sugarloaf mountain which is a great overlook for Christ the Redeemer.

We waited until sunset to try to get a shot that would make Michael instafamous… You can see Christ the Redeemer on the right hand side at the top of the peak.

After getting our fill of this incredible view, we headed to Santa Teresa which is an up and coming bohemian neighborhood to have dinner at Espirito Santa – it was our second choice after we got to the pizza place that was closed for the entire month of January.

Afterwards, we popped over to a really neat bar that had hill side seating, great lights and clever cocktails. I have zero pictures of any of that except for my tiki drink:

And this picture of a cab driving past some street art:

The next day was a beach day! Three things we learned from our beach day:

1. Ipanema which is just next to Cocacabana (where we are staying) is fancier.

2. Even if we are underneath an umbrella, and it is cloudy, we will get sunburnt.

3. We should have had more beach time in the past three months.

I have this picture of the beach, but I don’t remember when we took it – it is super empty and looks dreary… we need to get a few more pictures before leaving town.

We also spent some time in Ipanema’s beer bar (no surprise) which sells Brazilian craft beer. It was surprisingly delicious. Specifically, we had a stout that tasted like a really legit stout from the US. It was called Carvoeira and brewed by Lohn brewery. That night we ate at Amir which is a Lebanese restaurant. Super delicious food – plus we learned that Brazil has more Lebanese descendants (possibly 7 million) than the actual population of Lebanon (about 6 million). The number depends on how you look at it, but I thought that was super interesting regardless.

Saturday we woke up and went for runs along the beach. Mike ran 10 miles and I ran 5. That is a ton for me – and a decent run for Michael. So we grabbed some food and decided we should go for a grueling hike after that. We did a 2 hour hike straight up the 2330 foot Corcovado Mountain to view Christ the Redeemer. Corcovado is Portuguese for “hunchback” which is what the shape of the mountain looks like. The hike was tough! For one thing – it’s the jungle. Super hot and super humid.

Also that incline was tough!

Things were worse than this up hill hike. We had to scramble up some rocks. And look at this – climbing up some boulder with a chain and some “steps” to help:

And then this was towards the end of an uphill stretch that required us to grab onto roots to help us climb up the incline. To summarize, we were drenched in sweat, we were tired from our already taxing runs and we were struggling to get up some pretty tough inclines. That said, it was actually a lot of fun. It only took us an hour and a half (30 minutes sooner than per the internet – eat it!) to get to the top and although everyone else was clean and ready for their selfies, we were really satisfied with our accomplishment.

We bought our tickets to take the final climb up and was warned before buying our tickets that the visibility was bad. We knew it would be hard to see the city, but we weren’t planning on having difficulty seeing a statue that is 98 feet tall and 92 feet wide (outstretched arms).

Ridiculous. We were lucky in all the clouds to get one decent shot and one horrible selfie (note: Jesus looks great… the hike apparently took its toll on us).

Yes. Those are our “good” shots. Oh well! It was a great hike and we really enjoyed a huge meal after we got a few showers out of the way. After dinner, we found out that apparently Carnival has already started! We assumed it didn’t start until Fat Tuesday and what they had going on wasn’t as incredible as you see in the movies yet (no elaborate costumes or parades), but it was definitely the beginning of Carnival!

Mostly it was just a lot of young people standing around with beers wearing tutus and cat ears/halos/veils on their heads. There were also a ton of wonder woman costumes.

They knew Michael was taking their picture:

After we grabbed dinner, we saw that most of the party had moved from the center of Ipanema to the beach, so we headed there too. Same thing – mostly people standing around drinking beers and enjoying the scene.

Some delicious looking street meat:

Some brave people running into the water which had insane waves to navigate.

So us old people went home and let the kids stay out and have their fun. See how much quieter Copacabana Beach was in comparison on our walk home:

Our last full day in town was another beach day – here are the good pictures I wanted earlier in the post:

And a few videos of amazing soccer feats on the beach.

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_6283.trim_.mov

Sorry the shot is so bad in the first- I was trying to not be the creep on the beach videotaping random people.

And here you have soccer volleyball:

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/img_6290.mov

So that’s it for Rio for now. We had a wonderful time, ate a lot of great food, did a great hike, spent some time on its beautiful beaches and enjoyed mini Carnival. Today we’re off to São Paulo to check out the most populous city in Brazil, the Western Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere per the interwebs.