Our first full day in Rio started after nowhere near enough sleep, but a lot of excitement to check out the beaches.

The view from our Hotel room features a great view of a favela, some buildings and a bunch of trees. It is a very green city, loads of plants and trees around. And air-con units outside, which makes me wonder what sort of hell it was like before they existed. It is warm and muggy, and it isn’t near summer yet. Humidity is not as bad as New York on a bad day from memory, but it gets worse.

Breakfast at the hotel is a huge array of different types of bread, buns, cakes, savoury nibble things, fresh tropical fruit, cheese, cold sliced meats, different juices and absolutely fantastic coffee. I have now had freshly squeezed mango juice, cashew juice and discovered a taste for cream cheese on bread for breakfast. Oh, and apple jam.
Better photos of the breakfast stuff in the next post.

We headed out to the beach with lots of barely formed plans to see sights, forts, get power adaptors, phone SIM cards and water. We did some of that. Rio’s hills are absolutely unique and stunning, the photos don’t do justice to how big they are and dominate the skyline. The beaches are full of lunatics sitting in the sun, guys hauling around drinks, umbrellas and coconuts to sell, police of various types and every shape of human being you can think of. Mostly with most of their skin on display. I decided that I won’t be blinding everyone with my shirtless form, and avoiding the associated sunburn in to the bargain. It’s bloody hot here, around 34c today.

There is a big rock area between Ipanema and Copacabana we walked around, and surprisingly I managed to make it without falling or slipping over, falling into a cactus or passing away from the exertion. It did smell strongly of wee so we didn’t stick around here for long. And it was fucking hot, did I mention that?

We crossed over to Copacabana to visit the fort, and was faced with a huge queue to get in. The day after a public holiday seems to have bought many tourists to the area. Damn gringos. We added it to the list of places we will get to later and carried along the beach. A lot of people tried to sell me stuff, but I have no idea what it was because it was all offered in Portuguese. No need for the abruptness from the airport encounter, they didn’t get past the opening offer before I had gone past without reaction.

We headed away from the beach towards somewhere else, I’m not sure we had a plan really. The footpaths of Rio are made up with Portuguese stone, in a mosaic pattern all over the place. While hard wearing it isn’t very even and the risk of tripping over is constant. It is massively impressive having so many footpaths like this but hell on the feet and mental fortitude.

We did end up getting phone SIM cards and subway cards. This being Brazil where nothing is easy, there was a period of utter frustration in getting them both to work. We had some help with the Subway card from a fantastic guard who showed us how to make the demonic machine give us our cards with credit on it. We then tried to get the SIM cards working which was utter insanity. To get it working you need a Brazilian tax number, photos of your identification papers and of your face and a whole bunch of info. Thankfully Louie still has his, so he could set his up with a huge amount of fucking about. The crappy website just didn’t work most of the time, took so long for it to take a photo and just refused to recognise anything it was told. This while the insane canned music in the subway was playing on an endless loop. We only got one phone working before we gave up and went to get lunch somewhere. With our fresh subway cards we went to get through the turnstiles and… the cards didn’t work. There was a second screen / scanning area which was just as good and failing to do it’s job. Eventually a ticket guy said we had to use the third screen, placed nowhere near the other two. Only in Brazil do you have three separate cards to ride public transport and three separate ways of using each.

We got off in Leblon and looked for lunch, ending up in a Brazilian restaurant, Alvaro’s of Leblon. It seemed a bit more up-market than we were dressed for and I swear the head waiter looked at us with disgust as we walked past. As it turns out he just looks like that, he expression didn’t change no matter who he looked at.

I asked Louie to do the ordering, since the Portuguese menu translated into English offered delights such as “crayons” and “cod handjob”. I later worked out why the crayons mis-translation happened but the handjob remains a mystery.

After lunch we tried some Italian Ice-cream, possibly the only Italian thing was the name but it was a loving relief from both the walking and the heat. Everything here is different, from the road signs, the traffic lights, the road markings, the buildings and the people.

After a walk around a shopping mall we found a supermarket to get some water and snacks. There is a fantastic range of fruits here, and most things are so much cheaper than at home.

On the final leg back to the hotel, absolutely knackered we realised we must be in the largest subway station in Rio. It went on for miles, luckily some of it had moving walkways. There were a few escalators that were out of order leading up to the street, but it was a huge sense of relief to see the one we had to use working. No way was I going to be able to get up those steps, and no happy rainbow colours were going to make me want to even think about it.

After some repairs to the feet and a good nap at the hotel we were ready to head out for dinner. We got to the place just after 10pm, and were again amazed that they were still serving food. I’m loving this late eating style.

We ordered pizzas and again the Brazilians absolutely blow NZ out of the water for customer service. See the pizza above? The slice missing? That’s because the waiter who brought it to us used those two spoons to put the slice onto my plate. This was a sports bar type place, not some flash restaurant, and they treat you like a customer! If you order a canned drink, it arrives with a glass with ice, they open the can in front of you and pour it into the glass.

I had a handle of beer, and thought the price was typical for a restaurant in a big city, $11.90 – then remembered it was in reals. It was $3.49 NZD for a beer! If I wasn’t so full of pizza, I would have had many.

Louie’s desert at top was a flan with prunes, he loved it but wasn’t for me. I asked for a mini gateau and got a cross between a lava cake and a brownie – either way it was bloody good. For two (bloody good) pizzas, a bunch of drinks and two deserts, it was $90 NZD. Possibly half the price we’d pay back home.

We walked back to the hotel along Copacabana Beach, which is lit up like this all night. It was weird seeing it like this, given it was so full and busy just hours (and around 12,000 steps) earlier. On the walk home I did scream like a small child as a couple of large, dark insect things scuttled across my path into the darkness. I wasn’t quite ready for the full Rio experience.

A successful first day, we didn’t get mugged, run over or kill each other in the chaos.