Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – December 17

Ipanema beach

Weather…cloudy, 26 degrees, muggy, humid, sticky, could have used more of what little breeze there was…I see that it is 26 degrees on the other side of zero at home…BRUTAL!

Well…another disappointing-ish day in the tour department. We were supposed to have another morning visiting some of Rio’s “traditional” neighborhoods. That was not to be. After another hotel breakfast where the fruit selection was a bit more interesting (the most enormous passion fruit I’ve ever seen) we headed to the lobby to meet our guide…an hour later and still no guide, we gave up and made our own tour. We were annoyed, but not completely disappointed. Not sure if we should blame this on covid’s lack of staff, or on a screw up, or on who-knows-what.

World Cup lunch

We used this opportunity to venture to Ipanema beach. Our hotel is located right
on Copacabana beach, a 4 km stretch along the Atlantic and where we’ve become familiar with. Ipanema is about 2.5km long and not so much connected  but adjacent to Copacabana. Rio’s geography is like no other city’s I’ve visited. It surrounds a giant bay and the Atlantic with mountains dotting its coast – Sugar Loaf Mountain is at the mouth of the bay, our hotel room faces Sugar Loaf, and the Atlantic. Plus, the vegetation all over the city is lush, lush, lush. So, although close to Copacabana, we have to walk through some neighborhoods to get to Ipanema because of a mountain – we probably could have walked along the beach, but we weren’t sure, so we stuck to what we knew. Half way to Ipanema we were getting a bit thirsty, so found a beach bar for 2 beers (2.50 CAN.)

beach bar

Ipanema is supposed to be less commercial, with less in-your-face hawkers, but we didn’t think so. There were just as many opportunities to relieve beach goers of their R$ (Brazilian Reals are about 4 to 1 Canadian dollar) as are on Copacabana. Ipanema beach was a bit shallower and maybe had a few less beach bars, but all in all very similar.

Once we felt we had sufficiently checked out Ipanema we headed back to home base. This morning seemed to have more beach activity on the go like groups of paddle boarders, swimmers, volleyball players etc. Maybe I just didn’t notice this yesterday, or maybe it’s because today is Saturday.

beer for 2

Lunch was at the hotel pool restaurant where we caught the second half of the
third place World Cup Match. We tried a couple of Brazilian snacks washed down with a bottle of wine.

The rest of the afternoon was spent napping and blogging. Around 8:30 we decided to go for a stroll. We wandered our hotel neighborhood, checked out a grocery store looking for Brazilian chips…nope…all they had were the usual suspects…sour cream and onion, pizza, BBQ, nothing blog-worthy. We ended up at a beach bar for a couple of beers – these 600mL bottles (15$R/4$CAN each) come in a foam cooler. We shared one and then another.. This place was pretty hopping with a DJ, a couple of big parties and a few dogs!

Not what we planned for the day, but a pretty good recovery.