Sunday, February 28, 2010

Carnival! (Part II)

Sorry again for the delay.  This weekend has been a fun roller coaster packed with 3 concerts including Coldplay and Paul Van Dyk, getting punched for the 1st time in my life, shopping for clothes (which I do about 2x a year) and a lot of running/walking around with new friends.  I will elaborate on it soon, but for now I am keeping this Rio party going. 

One of my initial nights in Rio, I escaped the area I was staying to finally meet up with Dominic, my ex KBC coworker from 6 years ago whose apartment I've been staying in this whole time in Rio.  We met for dinner at a churrascaria in Copacabana with his lovely fiancee Fabiana.  Brazil and especially Rio are known for their churrascarias and if you live in a major city and like meat I highly recommend finding one near you.  While they have a buffet with salads and fish/sushi the main attraction is the waiters coming by with huge skewers of many types of meat every 2 minutes.

I know I needed flash on that one but you get the idea.  They give you a circle that is green on one side (more meat!) and red on the other (I've had enough).


Dom and Fabi.  The ones making my BA adventures possible.  

I went to two such places in my 5 days in Rio with strogonoff on other nights.  Like Buenos Aires, Rio is not exactly a vegetarian's dream but the meat is plentiful, delicious and a fraction of what you'd pay for similar in the US. 

Of course one of the most popular things about Rio is the beach.  The 3 most famous ones are Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon.  They stretch for miles and around Carnival time they are intensely packed with locals and tourists alike. 

This is Leblon beach, one of the fancier ones.  It's hard to make out but those guys are playing soccer volleyball with the dense beach goers behind.  On the long list of sports I would be terrible at, this one is near the top.  They are basically playing volleyball rules, on a volleyball size court and net only you can't use your arms or hands for anything (but can pass to your teammate 2x like volleyball).  There's a lot of games like this up and down the beach and they are all super impressive.  For the record, I like Brazil's chances to win the World Cup this summer.


View of Leblon and Ipanema beaches from the tip of Leblon.  

Between the parades, beaches, tennis, carnivorous diet and excessive temperatures, it's no wonder my body started breaking down after the 3rd day (the beers didn't help either). Age catches up to everyone, and according to my older friends, it doesn't get any better the older you get.  As always, the key is sleep and that was hard to come by with drum intensive parades going off around the apartment most mornings.

One nice thing about Rio and most cites I've been to down here, is that women are cool with drinking beer.  Since I love beer and don't drink too much else I found that refreshing.  What I did not find nearly as invigorating was the male behavior towards women down here.  Granted, everyone is in different states of sobriety throughout the day, but the men were very aggressive, grabbing strange women as they passed by and generally being almost frat boyish.  Of course, this is nothing new but what was interesting was how the women were willing to put up with it. They would talk nicely to guys who chased them down the street whistling at them.  One friend in our group one night talked to a guy who she had no interest in for 1.5 hours. I think she looked at him once the whole time, but he was massively persistent.  In the US, women are more vocal when they are not interested or their friends will rescue them. I also think American men will give up after a few minutes if the body language is not there, but in Rio the men are relentless.  The interplay between the sexes and how it changes from country to country is always fascinating to me. 

All in all, I had a fabulous time at Carnival and I highly recommend it to everyone at least once in their life.  Just make sure you can find a quiet room where the morning drums can't find you and get lots of sleep.....

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