Saying goodbye to Rio

We enjoyed a fabulous last day in Rio, with beautiful sunny skies and perfect temps.  Got to spend the morning at Ipanema Beach, with perfect brown-sugar sand.  The people watching was excellent.  Brazilians are really, really fit - and love to show off those amazing bodies in teeny tiny swimsuits.  A bit of culture shock for us prudish Americans who aren't comfortable with wearing thongs and speedos to the beach.  Brazilians also love to be very active on the beach - from running to footvolley (a hybrid of volleyball and soccer that is fascinating to watch but I would be terrible at playing) to beach tennis to volleyball to soccer to slacklining - there was always a fun sport to watch from our perch on Ipanema beach.  There were seemingly a million beach vendors too, peddling everything from food/water to hats/sarongs to sunscreen (IMO the smartest vendor out there).  Those folks were working hard, for sure.

After lunch we headed on a jeep tour of nearby Tijuaca National Park, a rejuvenated rainforest located in the middle of Rio.  The other tour group members didn't show so we ended up with a private tour.  Win! According to our friendly tour guide, the area used to be tobacco, coffee, sugarcane and tea farms, but after Rio ran out of water due to the rivers being used for irrigation, the government turned the farmland into second growth rainforest.  The area is beautiful, with yet another amazing overlook of Rio (major kudos to Rio for making so many of its overlooks so easily accessible to us tourists without having to rock climb or hike).  Our favorite part of the tour may have been when our tour guide started singing Sugar Ray and Sublime for us, and getting us all singing along. Gotta love bonding over cheesy 90s music.  Sadly, no monkey sightings, but hopefully we will see some in the Amazon rainforest.  We also got a tour of some Rio neighborhoods that we hadn't yet seen, from the swanky (Leblon and Jardin Botanico) to the outskirts of a militarized favela (David Beckham has supposedly just bought a home in the favela for $1 million dollars, due to its amazing sea views).  The Argentina team is staying at the Sheraton across from this favela, so it must be fairly safe.  I was content to view it from our coastal road though.  No desire for a favela tour for this group. We all agree it just doesn't feel quite right.

Dinner our last night in Rio was delicious and authentic.  We went to a restaurant that Erin's Brazilian friend had recommended called Casa da Feijoada, and that's all they served.  No menus, other than a wine list.  As soon we sat down, they started bringing us courses of food: bean soup, followed by random sausage, then finally the feijoada itself: various cuts of pork and lamb cooked in rich sauce, black beans, rice, sautéed greens of some sort, pork rinds, cassava, and orange slices.  We still aren't exactly sure what everything was (or the proper way to eat it) since our waiter didn't speak english and we most definitely don't speak portuguese.  Didn't matter since everything was absolutely delicious and we could eat until we were full (they'd keep refilling any dish that was empty).  It felt like we were eating at a brazilian friend's house instead of a restaurant. Two thumbs up for the food and the experience.

Sad to say goodbye to Rio but excited for the next stage of our adventures: USA matches!