Rio de Janeiro - Day 4

Today, like most others in Rio, was slow and great. We started off relatively late (mainly due to the cancelled Favela tour we had planned), I got dressed and then we headed out at around 10:30-11:00 and caught a taxi (possibly walking distance) to Leblon, another part of Rio still in Ipanema Bay. There, we first walked a couple of blocks to a very nice, fresh, healthy “fast food” place where they sold sucos (juice) and fried dishes like we had last night for dinner, it took us a while before we had to go around the corner to order, get a receipt and give it to the guy behind the counter. We had three deep-fried empanada type dishes: meat, banana and cheese (interesting I know) and shrimp with queso (cheese). With this lunch, we had acai juice (again pronounced ass-eye-eee) and acerola juice, for lunch I got a cheeseburger with bacon (boring I know, but after the food I had yesterday I needed something bland) which actually turned out to have great beef. Here are the photos.

Food shop place. Called "Lanches" I think.

Pastries in the cabinet.

Me savouring the beef.

Quick gelato stop.

All of these are on our way to the mall.

All fried pastries went down well, even the banana one according to dad, and after an approximately 20-minute walk we reached Rio Sul, a 5-level shopping mall with brands like Zara, Samsung, Nike etc. Still NO APPLE! I can’t believe my bad luck. We (dad and I) waited and waited (as the cliché goes) for mum to finish her shopping, afterwards we left, went to the metro, found out it was impossible to work the ticket machines, headed up to sea level and then walked to the block of our hotel, stopped, walked to the Havaianas’ shop, got some jandals and then walked back to the hotel (soooo exciting). 

From the hotel, we put on our togs and finally went down to the Ipanema beach (about a minutes-walk if that) and laid down our complimentary hotel beach towels. After lying in the sun for a while, beefing up my strong tan of course, we got a coconut with very little juice/milk/water/whatever and then me and dad got in the water. 

It was so much fun in the water, the sand was very fine under our feet, and the waves were quite big which was only improved by the fact that the water wasn’t cold at all. I love going to the beach and just standing under a crashing wave or just being swept off my feet by the push of it. While we were out there we saw, the sun setting over the hills (or mountains?) which was very pretty, also on the beach were many groups of 20-somethings playing foot-volley or volley-foot (in English – keepy-upsys) on the beach which was just made for a really cool, chilled vibe. When the sun was about to completely disappear, we decided to go so I ran under my final massive (ish let’s be honest) wave that completely through me off balance, rolled me over, pushed me down etc. (it was great!) and walked back to the hotel ready for a shower. Photos!

View from where we were sitting.

Same again.

Selling ice-blocks and drinks in coolers.

Corn vender.

Selling drinks in cooled barrels. 

Selling bikinis (you'd think they wouldn't get many customers).

More drinks and ice-blocks.

Looking back at the hotels in the bay.

Enjoying the coconut.

The volley-foot or foot-volley I was talking about.

The beach and all its inhabitants.

The big waves.

Waiting for the waves to crash.

Falling over thanks to the waves.

Sunset over the landscape.

Looking back at the beach.

Since then it was just relaxing until dinner (downstairs at Quiteria again). Dinner was great, we (dad and I) had filet steaks medium-rare and were very good, mum had prawn linguini which she liked and we all shared a chocolate brownie. After we’d finished dessert there was a mess on the table of broken brownie (caused by mum’s mishandling of said brownie), mum looked at me and said, “Look at the piggy mess you’ve made.”, we all started laughing and I just didn’t know where to start haha. Later, the waitress came over and looked at the mess, dad said, “There’s nothing over here.”, and the waitress then said something like, “It’s all over here.” (standing next to mum), and mum said “Hey!” this was all followed by a defensive discussion on my part as I’m sure you can imagine. 

Even later up in the room more tomfoolery ensued, when I’d turned the TV on with some weird motion sensor magic dad went to turn it off, after a minute of him trying to use the sensor like I did he tried unplugging and then re-plugging in the TV. To no avail, the TV turned back on so he said, “Stuff it!” and took out the chord haha! Good times. Anyway… Later on tonight (really the morning), 1:30, we have a 7 1/2 hour flight to Panama for a one day stopover before it’s off to CUBA! Until then, goodbye.

Joseph Hewson