Day 82 - Rio de Janeiro

Beach day!  But first, we had to find money.  Yesterday we discovered that Rio de Janeiro’s ATM’s are very picky about which cards they take.  Many only take their own bank’s cards, and none take American Express (what I have).  We walked 20 minutes down a main street, turning down bank after bank that we had already tried the day before.  We finally found one (an HSBC) that took Nic’s card, and with that we set off for Copacabana.

At the beach we undressed in our, for the first time ever, relatively conservative beach wear.  We sunk our feet in the sand, which is unbelievably soft and fine and conforms perfectly to the shape of your foot better that any NASA memory foam ever could.  We dipped our feet in the ocean – but went no further; the water was freezing.  We retreated to our towels and lay out to tan.  Every few minutes, the gusts of wind would rise into a small dust storm, blowing sand into our bags, into our hair, and onto our bodies until it hurt.  We weren't even wet, but the sand found a way to stick to our bodies and wouldn’t let go.  Putting on sunscreen turned into intense exfoliation.  Instead of absorbing into our skin, it would just wad up into a little sunscreen-sand dirt ball.  We held out for as long as we could, but the heat and sandstorms compelled us to keep moving.

We got up and walked along the boardwalk, carrying a kilo of sand with us.  We bought more coconuts.  We struggled to find a place to eat.  While the boardwalk is littered with food stands, we were looking for a legit, indoor restaurant, which was nowhere to be found.  We had to walk far away from the beach into a different neighborhood to find a decent café.  At the café, I finally got to order a mate!  I had been reading that mate is the traditional drink in Argentina and Uruguay, but no place seems to serve it.  At last, in Rio, I saw mate on the menu – actually matte (pronounced mache) in Brazil.  It was served cold instead of hot, and we found it so delicious that we made our waiter laugh.

After lunch, I spent about ten futile minutes in the bathroom trying to shake off the sand from my face and neck and arms and ears and hair.

Afterward, we went in the direction of another beach (Rio is literally lined with them) and found a little – actually it was quite large – cove right off the urban center.  We walked all the way along the beach – it took us almost an hour.  Meanwhile, we watched the weather change to stormy, so when we reached the end of the beach, we took a cab home.

We took a break on the ship to eat dinner and shower the sand away, then set out for Rio nightlife!  Our friend met some locals who gave us the names of a couple places that would be fun on a Monday night.  The main bar district, Lapa, was not very far; we ran across it by accident while searching for a bank earlier.  Nonetheless, all the warnings in pre-port caught up to us and we didn’t want to be caught walking the streets at night.  There were taxis all over the terminal eager for our business, and one offered us a fixed price fair (not recommended).  We were about to get in, but at the last minute the cheapskate in me broke through, and I was determined to get a better price with a metered taxi.

So we found ourselves walking the streets at night.  Nic asked another taxi driver we ran across, who told us that the place we were looking for was actually very close, just down a couple streets and over there.  He pointed us toward the shadiest looking alleyways.  We cautiously followed his directions, on edge, constantly looking over our shoulders, and ready to turn back at any instant.  The walk down the creepy side streets seemed to take forever, but it must have really been about five minutes before we heard the loud music.  The place we found was actually a massive group of people spreading out into the streets with a live band in the center.  There were stands selling beer and shish kebabs and other foods.  No one was dancing, not even a little, but it was a really cool and chill environment.  Plus there were shish kebabs!

We took it all in and decided to explore some of the other places on our list.  Walking back the streets no longer scary, they were familiar.  We were having a chill night and walking in high spirits when BAM there was a loud noise, like thunder in gigantic proportions.  I thought it was the apocalypse or something or who knows what went through my mind. When the noise stopped, I found that I had been clutching Abby.  The men sitting in the café behind us were laughing.  It seems it was a controlled explosion from a nearby construction site.  We pulled ourselves together and carried on.

At some point, Nic stubbed his toe, and it was cut open pretty far and bleeding.  We were so close to the ship that we decided to take him back to get it cleaned up and pick up a Band-Aid.  We stopped in at the clinic right next to the gangway, and they insisted the cut was more severe and it needed to be bandaged and he had to go shower now because it couldn’t get wet after.  Nic still wanted to go out and kept insisting that he didn’t need a shower then a loud noise and everyone rushing and Nic was on the floor.  I felt so dumbstruck and stupid in that moment.  I had taken all these classes to build up a medical background and I couldn’t even figure out how to flip him over.  Within seconds he was awake, wide-eyed and confused.  The nurses insisted he fainted at the sight of blood, which was simply false.  The clinic detained him, but sent Abby and me away.  We were so jittery that any little thing fried our nerves.  Abby accidentally banged a mug against the railing and the sound it made was enough to make us jump.  We saw a friend of ours in the hall and she tripped over a partition between carpets and we thought everyone around us was doomed.  We ended up staying in and watched Friends for the night just for a little bit of normalcy.