Flying Up to Rio (without Fred & Ginger)

Sugar Loaf from Corcovado, Rio
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Our`good hotel room karma` prevailed at the Arpoador Inn which we`d booked over the internet from home.  It`s positioned ideally at the north end of Ipanema beach with Copacabana beach on the other side.  The Arpoador has a small restaurant on the beach side with outdoor tables where we spent many of our evenings sipping our cervezas and watching the surf and the endless stream of people walk by.  Lots of `girls from Ipenema` walked by but not all were tall, tan, young and lovely!  The beaches are lovely however, just like in the photos.

Corcovado
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We actually had dinner our first night in Rio, at Garota de Ipanema, unawarethat it is in fact, the place where Anthony Carlos Jobim co-wrote the song `Girl From Ipanema`.  I saw some framed news clippings of Frank Sinatra on the wall but we didn`t realize where we`d been until a traveler we met mentioned it the next day.

We picked our second day in Rio to do the tour up to Corcovado, the world famous viewpoint high above Rio, which is one of the most familiar images of the city.  With some help from Portugese speaking locals we were able to finally find the right bus stop for the Metro bus which took us to the metro which then took us to the  Cosmo Velho, the cog-wheel train that goes up Corcovado.  Some British women we met at our hotel had recommended paying a little more for a private driver in an SUV instead of the train, which didn`t stop at the mid-point, one of the best places for photo op`s.  I was glad we chose the driver, who turned out to be a Brazilian woman named Dagmar!  She was great, giving us plenty of time for photos along the way, and not being jammed like sardines into a train was the right choice as far as I was concerned.

Ipanema Beach
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The view from Corcovado looks down on Sugar Loaf mountain, all of Rio and it`s beaches and that view is breathtaking.  Standing on the top of Corcovado is the Christ Redentor statue, part of the familiar image seen in photos of Rio.  We were there on a Saturday with perfect weather and the crowds started arriving.  We got our photos, gloried in the views, and then fled back to the beach.  Well, on hot beautiful weekend days most of the city population escapes to the beaches.  We found a small patch of sand in front of the hotel and settled in for more people watching and a few brief swims.  Brief because even though the beaches look like Hawaii, the water temperature is nothing like the Pacific.  A touch to chilly for us to spend much time in the water.

Ipanema sand castles
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We did the other major tourist attraction a few days later, taking the telepherique up Sugar Loaf, or Pao de Azucar.  A cloud layer was hanging over Rio on that day but we went anyway and had to wait for the clouds to temporarily part to take photos.  Earlier, on the way to Sugar Loaf, we stopped at the Rio de Janeiro Yacht Club and Bob used his superior persuasion powers to get us into the heavily gated & guarded club to look around.  He showed our RCYC membership card and even though RCYC doesn`t have reciprocals with Rio YC, they graciously let us in for a look.  It`s an upscale place as you would imagine but in my mind not that impressive.  Rio has a kind of seedy edge to it that`s evident even at a place like the YC.

We walked every day along the Ipanema beach esplanade, getting our exercise, along with hundreds of other tourists as well as locals.  It`s one of the best shows in Rio.  We mostly relaxed, hung-out and sipped cervezas in the evenings, and the evenings were the best at our beachfront table at the Arpoador.  We had wanted to see a Samba show but it just didn`t work out.  We`ll have to watch a video!  We did hit the Ipanema Hippie Fair on Sunday, in the main plaza.  Great fun seeing the hundreds of artesanios` and their wares and really fun shopping!

The Portugese languge of Brazil was quite a change after hearing Spanish for the previous month.  Just as we were beginning to catch on to what people were saying to us it was time to leave.  We caught our late plane out of Rio back to Santiago, Chile, our starting point on the trip and made plans for the next leg of the journey, the bus ride over the Andes to Mendoza, Argentina.