And So Begins the Four Continent Tour

We realized shortly before we set off on our latest adventure, that by the time we returned home, would have touched down on four continents and therefore, this trip will be labeled thusly. For us – well, me anyway – the biggest deal about this trip is that we finally get south of the equator. Getting a taste of Brazil is a good start. So, on Saturday, March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day, if you weren’t paying attention – we flew with American Airlines to New York City’s JFK Airport. We’ve never been to this airport before, but in comparison with, say Schipol or OHare, it’s not the greatest place to hang out.

Our layover was less than three hours before we continued with American to Rio. I’m always happy to report when flights are uneventful and although it was a little like traveling on the rough surface of a Californian highway, it was a pretty quick ten hours. As we began our descent, we had some nice, albeit cloudy, overviews of Rio.

Our bags all arrived – breath a deep sigh of relief – and we quickly connected with our pre-arranged ground transportation to the hotel. Because we landed a little after 8:00 in the morning, we got to our hotel – the Arena Copacabana - way too early to find our room available. We were able to check in, left our bags and then headed out for a wee walkabout.

Almost immediately behind our hotel was a fresh Sunday market. I’ll tell you. We can find a market almost anywhere we travel. Of course, we were in no position to purchase much of anything but a few spices, but there were lots of produce we couldn’t identify and some rather unusual ways of displaying product, like the live crabs tied to the outside of a basket, below.

Following market we settled at a beach-front café for lunch and had fish. Dawn’s was fairly plain with vegetables, while mine had tons on mini shrimps in a mango sauce. Guess whose lunch won the prize?

The four-mile stretch of Copacabana beach is lined with juice joints, each one offering something a little different than the one before. Some of the juice may be of the alcoholic kind. C’est la vie!

Once we finally found a room available – and we did upgrade to a beach-view room - we got horizontal. We economy flyers dream of being horizontal. After a few down hours we awoke refreshed and ready to do some more exploring.

We first checked out the roof top pool and terrace. The pool is essentially a large kiddies pool, but I’m sure it will do the trick on those hotter, sticky Rio days. The remarkable feature here was the panoramic view of Copacabana. Wow! Plus, add in the fact that both major attractions in Rio, Sugarloaf Mt. and Corcovado with the Christ statue, are visible from the terrace.

As we strolled along the beachfront, we quickly noticed a couple of things. There are tons of dogs being walked, some like the one below that no longer have the use of hind legs.

It was a Sunday, so the beach was full of families and every woman was in a bikini, most with thong bottoms, despite the fact that the typical Brazilian woman appears to be fabulous from the waist up and a little round below that. Having said that, there were also lots of men and woman with serious guts obscuring the view of their footwear. They were still in bikinis and speedos!

The beach appears to have a sharp drop off into the water and as a result, the surfs come pounding in very close to the shore. Few swimmers ventured out into the breaking surfs, but just in case there was an extremely visible lifeguard presence that would make David Hasselhof proud. Sorry Pamela, they were all men.

There was a great variety of play going on as well, everything from beach volleyball and soccer to some kind of paddle ball and of course just old fashioned messing in the waves and sandcastle building.

Back at the hotel, we headed back to the rooftop terrace for cocktails, where, due to limited offerings, I opted for a mango frozen daiquiri – quite delicious. As we sipped our drinks, I began working on the day’s photos and we watched Copacabana Beach close up shop.

For dinner, we chose to eat at Fennel, the hotel’s restaurant, which ended up being an excellent choice. Dawn had seafood pasta and I had a Brazilian specialty with marinated chunks of beef topped by a poached egg. We had an Argentine red with dinner after discovering that it’s just too darn hot to make wine in Brazil. Apparently they do make excellent beer, which Dawn will attempt to confirm tomorrow.