Sometimes when all you have is a few hours (through no fault of your own) you manage to cram in a pretty excellent day.
Amras and I are old hats at making the best out of the time we have, I mean after all we did Barcelona in 4 or 5 hours a few years ago! But the big difference was that then we could use the local Metro. Here however, it’s Carnaval season, and there were strict warnings issued to all crew members and guests to avoid using any form of public transport other than authorized taxis. Amras would have been willing to brave the subway, I however, put my foot down and refused – if only because I am really not that great around crowds in tight spaces.
So taxi it was. Now, there’s only one taxi pick-up station at the terminal, and there was a long line, so for about 40 minutes we sweltered in the near-suffocating Brazilian heat, feeling the sunscreen and insect repellent start to melt off our skin, and waited for a taxi to come free.
When we got one? We lucked out. And it is probably one of the more hilarious taxi rides I’ve had in a while. Useful note: When in Rio and attempting to ask where there is a nice restaurant that serves chicken when one does not speak Portuguese, make a noise like a chicken. After the taxi driver has stopped laughing uproariously, he will drop you at one of the better restaurants along the world famous Copacabana Beach.
Despite the fact that we had originally intended to go to Ipanema Beach not Copacabana, this restaurant was amazing. Even though the food may not have been the most amazing in the world (although it was pretty yummy!), I have rarely had better service. After a while, we started to wonder if there might be something significant to the location, because dozens of people kept piling into take pictures. Occasionally of us, which felt strange, as we were far from the only tourists in the area (Copa is, after all, the tourist destination as far as beaches go). Since I hadn’t eaten since the previous day’s lunch (unless you count a few snacks and an ice cream at Carnaval), I cleared my plate rather quickly, probably ate better than I had in weeks. Then they brought out the dessert menu, which wasn’t actually a menu! As in it wasn’t on paper, instead they brought out a tray with sample sizes of all the deserts they had on offer, described what each one was and then you just pointed to the one you want.
Ooh what’s that one?
That one? Strawberries and cream miss.
Yes! Definitely want that!
Nothing tastes as amazing as fresh strawberries when you haven’t even looked at something that fresh in weeks. Oh, and when they brought out the plates? They had perfectly formed writing in chocolate and strawberry sauce spelling out “Thank you” and “Welcome to Rio, Carnaval 2016”.
Once we figured out the bill (and neither one of us had a calculator to figure out the conversation from local to US, which is all we were carrying because no banks or money changers are open during Carnaval) we headed back out into the sunshine to start ambling from Copacabana towards Ipanema.
I do not know what spurred this obsession to make a pilgrimage to Ipanema, but it got lodged in our brains and once it was there we couldn’t get rid of it. But that said, we weren’t in a particular hurry to get there. We stopped along the way to take pictures of the amazing sandcastles that had been constructed for Carnaval, to ogle over souvenirs we didn’t need, and to take pictures wearing crazy hats and wigs just to prove we were here! And to buy the seemingly required coconut with a straw, which had rum in it, but you have to add the rum yourself and by the time you pour it in and figure out how not to spill it you end up with just enough to add flavour to the deliciousness of the coconut water. Which is not a bad thing, I wasn’t , after all, looking to get tipsy.
For once, the heat didn’t fry me as badly as it usually does, even though I could feel the glow running down the back of my neck, and miraculously I came away without a sunburn. Only I could go to Rio for three days and not come back with even a smidge of colour! Good grief!
We eventually did make our slow, sun-soaked way to Ipanema, and were stunned at what we saw! If Copacabana is the tourist beach, Ipanema is the local hangout; apparently anyone who had the day off and nothing else to do piled onto the sand there. Let me tell you this, if ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ went walking during Carnaval season? She would have difficulty finding a clear path! It was really pretty amazing to see, this constantly shifting sea of humanity doing nothing but enjoying themselves. Although I was not about to wade into the masses just for the sake of getting my toes into the water, I was very glad we had made the trip.
Eventually we realized that the sun was pretty much melting off our sunblock, and everything was sticky, so we sought out the air-conditioned relief of a taxi to shuttle us back to the ship.
In the terminal I even found the perfect souvenior t-shirt (I had been unable to spot a nice one anywhere in my size), and a mask for the carnaval party tomorrow night.
And then of course I checked my email…
And well, that’s a whole other entry…