Wednesday 6 March 2013

Cocktails on Copacabana Beach

It's only day three of our travels and we've tried to fill our days with the sights of Rio. This included hiring a set of bikes and riding to Copacabana beach from Ipanema as well as going around the lake. The bike paths along the beach are excellent and unlike in Sydney, people are a lot more bike friendly. Like everything in Rio, there's a go-with-the-flow  theory to it. There are no rules here, no one stares at you or cares if you're on the footpath. It's wonderful.




We locked our bikes up at Copacobana and hired a beach umbrella for 10 Reas and spent the afternooon  in the water. The water temperature is perfect, you could stay in there all afternoon and never feel cold. Kevin got us the national cocktail - a caipirinha and I must admit, I was drunk on the beach at 2pm. The waves were strong so most of the afternoon involved long naps under our umbrella with the occasional dip in the ocean to cool down. There was a constant stream of people walking by selling food, drinks, bikinis, oysters and snacks. I felt sorry for them as I can imagine walking up and down the beach holding an esky of drinks can be pretty tiring, but then again, there could be worse workplaces then Copacabana beach. 




We also visited the botanical gardens. Now this is a great idea but what wasn't a great idea was walking an hour to get there rather than taking the bus in the sweltering heat and then making a wrong turn and getting completely lost. But getting lost seems to be the theme of the day so let's just go with the flow. Back to the gardens, there were a lot of trees. Not a lot of flowers. But there were monkeys! Howler monkeys that would pose for us.  And brightly coloured Channel-billed Toucans. That made it worth the trip. But we were exhausted from the walk so it was back to the beach for us. 






But the best thing so far has been making new friends and finding out their background. We met Chris, from Chile who's here on a short holiday. He showed us his favourite food joints (thank god beacuse the food we found ourselves has not been that great) which thankfully included a frozen yogurt joint where they blended yogurt with fruits in this crazy looking drill machine. The result - delicious.

Blended frozen yogurt = yummo

Sharing cat photos.

3 comments:

  1. I love your blog - it looks beautiful. Judy

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  2. Ok... so how many photos of Amelie did you show Chilean Chris? ;o) Jill

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  3. Thanks Judy, I'm glad you like it. Soon you'll probably be in it too!

    At least 4 Jill, but you know I could have set up a whole powerpoint presentation on the subject.

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