Rio: Day One

Having had the smoothest journey to Rio ever (no hold ups, access to all the lounges, bags arrived safely, taxi diver there as promised), it's probably no surprise that things didn't go entirely to plan today. Having had a caprihina (on the house - sign of a good hostel, surely?) to end our journey last night, we woke up around 9am today, downed a quick breakfast and decided, seeing as the sun was out today and forecasts for the rest of the week don't look to promising, we'd give ourselves a relaxing day at the beach.

So far, so good. Ok, so we needed to hunt for an adaptor (we both bought South American ones...Brazil is, however, different. Obviously.), which we failed miserably at, but hey, our hostel isn't in a touristy part of town, what can you expect. We discovered a fantastic market on our fruitless adaptor search though, stuffed to the brim with fruit, veg, fish, meat and the like. The most fascinating thing, aside from the sheer variety, was that most of the stall holders accepted credit card to pay for purchases. Credit cards. Market stalls. This really tickled me.

Next stop: catching the bus. The helpful guy at reception reassures us there's no way this can go wrong; it's simply a one way street, just hop on the 157. Once we go round the lake, go over bridge and press the bell. Easy.

We dutifully wave the 157 bus down, get comfy, admire what we assume to be the Lago...and while it veers off a little we assume this must be traffic calming or similar... Until the bus stops at a terminus. Centro terminus to be exact. The opposite direction to where we want to be, and, according to the Dutch girls we met last night, not the most salubrious area for two peely wally backpackers to find themselves in. (As an aside: can you believe that? First people we meet are Dutch. Oh the irony.)

Anyway, to cut what is evidently becoming a long and dull story short: we were miles away from where we wanted to be, completely lost and with the bare minimum grasp of Portuguese. A fifteen minute subway journey later and we were back on track, and walked out to Copacabana Beach...wow.

The landscape looks like some crazed video game designer has gone a little wild - there are peaks and island mountains all over the place. I spent a good while playing in the waves, which were huge, with a belligerent current to match. And by belligerent, I mean 'hang on to your bottoms' sort of waves. I saw two bums today, and the first, an extremely paunched man closer to 60 than 50, was not a pretty picture. The second was riding his bike commando along the promenade. As you do.

We wandered along to Ipanema, another equally picturesque beach. It's an interesting place just to people watch. There are beach gyms where puffed up guys do pull ups, people jog along or play volleyball with a real competitive edge. All shapes and sizes peacock about, from wrinkled nut brown pensioners to young guys and girls with year-round tans and tiny swimwear. My bikini felt very British and tent-like in comparison.  There's vendors selling coconuts with straws for coconut water, freshly cooked corn on the cob, bikinis, something that looks suspiciously like Frazzles and almost everything else in between.

Most envious of people bodyboarding and paddleboarding - incredible to think this is how you'd spend your weekends living here. My camera has been playing up unfortunately, but even if my photos turn out ok, it's so hard to do it all justice. Maybe I'll have to just buy some postcards instead.

A final observation: they love little fuzzy dogs here. Each one I've seen is adorned with little trinkets: bootees to protect their paws, pink clips and sparkly clasps in their fur.

Tonight we'll have a few drinks in the hostel bar and hopefully see if anyone's keen to go to Lapa, which is the best area to go out, but preferably not on your own. Friday night is the big party night apparently, so we've just missed it, but hopefully this should be just as fun.

We have until Wednesday here, so we're looking to tick off Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf and possibly a favelas tour before we go. Embarrassingly I have a little red nose from today's sun...I blame 9 months of vitamin D deficiency in my old windowless office...clearly skin as translucent as mine needs higher than factor 30. Lesson learned!