Greetings from Rio de Janeiro!

Rio de Janeiro.  Suffice to say, we have never experienced a city like this.  Cloistered by colossal natural rock formations, you really do feel like you are not in Kansas anymore, with azure-blue beaches, yawning stretches of world class beaches, colonial buildings, verdant-green plant-life; and cormorants and even vultures everywhere.  What really stands out though, are the Carioca.  Rio locals are by far the most active people we have ever encountered:  each beach and plaza is inhabited by surfers, footballers (they love their football), beach volleyball, tightrope walkers, joggers, cyclists and guys and gals lifting weights.  It seems that the carioca place an enormous amount of importance on personal health.  They are friendly, respectful and passionate.

We have been staying in Ipanema, (yes, from that song) which is a beautiful part of the city, and has a huge beach that connects to the infamous Copacabana (yes, from that other song).  Emma and I had a couple of days chilling on these beaches, and swimming in the Atlantic waters, just watching the world roll by.

Visiting ‘Christ the Redeemer’ atop Corcovado was quite an experience – it is such an impressive and imposing monument, nearly always visible (at night it is floodlit) and the Carioca seem to draw pride and strength from its presence. 

For my birthday (which was great!), we went to a restaurant called Carretao, a Brazilian restaurant, which has a simple, yet brilliant system of ordering food.  You are seated and then shown the salad bar (including sushi, risotto, rices etc) and then given a card, one side red, the other green.  Lay your card on the table green side up, and at once you are surrounded by waiters wielding huge swords of all types and cuts of meat, fillet steak, ribs, sausage, ribeye, tenderloin of pork, belly of pork, you name it!  When you want to have a pause (believe us your stomach will need the breathers!) you turn your card over to red – fabulous!  Edmund Davari if you are reading this, Plymouth would love one of these places J

The weather brought to you by Jack & Emma - despite it being the Brazilian mid-winter, it is still in the comfortable 20s – yesterday was like a perfect English summer’s day.

Next stop, north-east to Salvador!

Chau a te logo!

NB - Ok, so this is actually the second attempt at writing this blog.  I tried a couple of days ago and the entry was magically wiped from the screen…