Last days in Rio

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

We began the day on a boat chartered for our group, touring Guanabara Bay.  As you can see from this map:

the city is located on the inlet to this very large bay, with the beaches on the Atlantic due south of downtown.  We are staying on Copacabana Beach which is just east of Ipanema Beach, but the bulk of the city is at the mouth of the bay and there is a nine-mile long bridge spanning the mouth of the bay.  Here’s a view of downtown as we left. 

A word about guarana.  This is the berry of a local plant which must be magic, as it apparently cures anything which is wrong with you.  As a result, it is made into a soft drink, named Guarana Antarctica, and distributed, according to the label on the can, by Anheuser-Busch!  Quite popular here, Joyce tried it on the boat:

 Nothing bad happened to her, but a little research shows there’s a very large caffeine content.  The flavor must be an acquired taste.

Views from the water are wonderful!  Here’s Sugarloaf: 

And here’s the castle of Emperor Peter II of Brazil, built in 1889.  Yes, Brazil has had emperors as well as revolutions, military dictatorships, and versions of democracy—the history is fascinating.  Peter II was overthrown just one week after this castle was opened.  

There were also great views of the Museum of Tomorrow we saw adjacent to the Olympic site yesterday: 

There is some interesting architecture.  Here, the horizontal and vertical lines are just slightly off, giving a sense of something slightly disquieting: 

Well, I haven’t mentioned food too much, but we have been eating as if we needed to put on weight.  Badly.  Today was the topper, however.  For lunch, after the boat tour, we went to a locally popular churrascaria.  We started at the giant salad bar, and then came the waiters, each with a skewer of chicken, fish, and beef, beef, and more beef.  Apparently everyone here knows and understands the many cuts of beef, and each has its own characteristics of flavor, texture, tenderness, and palatability.  We barely know a t-bone from a filet mignon from a strip steak, but here there are many cuts, many of which are unfamiliar to us.  So a piece from each skewer as the waiters came around, and soon it felt like we had eaten a whole side of beef.  Of course, then came the ribs waiter with a trolley instead of a skewer: 

After lunch we needed a nap, but they kept us going, this time on a two-section cable car up to the top of Sugarloaf where there were more spectacular views:

 Here's Copacabana Beach from Sugarloaf:

We came across some amusing marmosets making a meal out of a breadfruit:

 Finally, we got back to our rooms and washed up for our final dinner together, at Restaurant Lasai, newly awarded a Michelin star, and run by Chef Rafael Costa e Silva, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America!  We had the restaurant to ourselves, and as we were having cocktails and wine, we were treated to a wonderful bit of Latin dancing by an extremely talented pair who danced to live music by a wonderful trio.

 Many of us then joined in with a sort-of conga-line developing.  We didn’t look like the pros.

Our flight home on Thursday was in the evening (arriving Rochester at noon on Friday via Atlanta) so in the morning Joyce and I took a tour of the H. Stern jewelry factory which was fascinating, and did some shopping there, too. It’s in the Ipanema Beach portion of the coast, which seemed somewhat more upscale than Copacabana.  The beach itself, is glorious: 

In the afternoon, we walked with two other Rochesterians, Carol and Dick Crossed, deep into Copacabana town to a large mall which contained a surprising number of very large antique stores (which Carol had learned about).  We bought nothing but had a good time looking.  Our flights home were uneventful, and so ends the story of our South American odyssey.