What Happens in Rio Does Not Stay in Rio

Well my life is almost fulfilled. I rocked the Kasba in Tunisia (yes a real place). I sang "Copacabana" while driving along the Copacabana Beach in Rio. Now all I need to do is rock down to Electric Avenue. But can anybody tell me where that is?

People have asked me what Rio was like. Weelll, it reminded me of parts of London with not as nice buildings. Maybe a lot like Chicago. Well except for palm trees. And maybe street parking. And maybe really nice beaches with really nice sand. Okay and maybe with really beautiful, tall, thin volleyball players that wear Brazilian bikinis and you just want to rip their heads off and pound them into the sand and use their head as the ball and.... But I digress. Rio reminded me a lot of Chicago. Being able to walk around and enjoy the city and not have to take taxis everywhere you want to go and eat at outdoor cafes. It was really very nice.

What did we see? Well, besides the volleyball players, a lot of butts. Yes, butts. Or butt cracks. These Brazilian bathing suits are no joke. My young impressionable boys really enjoyed the Rio beaches! I think they saw the waves. Anyway, it did not matter if they were big butts or small butts, the suits seemed to be the same size. Tiny. There was actually an Australian couple next to us. The over-sized lady actually asked her husband if her bikini made her look fat. All I could think of was YES! And the Twix commercial where the over-sized girl asks her boyfriend if the jeans she was trying on made her butt look big and the guys didn't say anything and just shoved the Twix bar into his mouth? Yeah, like that. There is really nothing to say that would not hurt her feelings. I did not hear what her husband said, but she talked with another lady the rest of the time we were there, so maybe he was not too smart with his comment. The beaches also had huge waves. We watched several guys try to surf or bodysurf. They were having a hard time at it. But the butts always distracted us. That or all of the beach vendors. They were everywhere! Selling pop, ice cream, sandwiches, fried cheese (this guy walked around with a small grill too), sarongs, beach cover ups and even bikinis. Yep. They had a small umbrella with sarongs around the side so you can't see in if you wanted to try one on. There was a bunch of them but they were very polite if you said "No Thank You".

Not a good picture, butt you get the idea, literally.


We also saw Jesus. He says hello. Well we said hello to him and said a prayer or two. Both at the statue and going up and down the mountain. That was and experience in and of itself. Picture this (in a Rod Serling voice) you are in a bus going up a mountain with a 45 or 50 degree incline doing 20 miles an hour. (Keep reading, this is not a math problem.) There are switchbacks about every 100 yards or so. Then you come down the mountain going about 40 or 50 mph and riding the break. Our bus almost collided with another while going down. I am not exaggerating this because the bumper of the up bus was almost kissing the side of our bus right at my seat. Very nice. And so were the other driver's eyes behind his sunglasses. Yes, I was that close.

We also went to Sugar loaf, or Pao de Azucar, Mountain. You take a cable car up across the water several hundred feet in the air to this mountain. You can see like forever. And no butts anywhere. It was truly beautiful. You could see the regional airport with the very short runway that planes have to take off almost at an angle in the air to get the altitude. City planners did not put it in a good place. You could see most of the beaches. Everything. Very amazing. To quote Ferris Bueller "I highly recommend it."

One other thing that is very beautiful about Rio is the rocks jutting out of the ocean out from the shore a mile or so. There are several out there. They have shear cliffs and trees on top. One I think has an old fort tower or something like that on it. When you see them from the shore they have a unique appearence. There are white stripes down the sides. Very interesting. So you ask a local. What makes the stripes in the rocks? Is it salt, or some sort of calcification? Why no, they would answer. We call that guano. Come again? Guano. In other words, bird pooh. No kidding. The birds, the animals not the musical group, hang out on the rocks. They pooh and then the rain washes it down the side. Hence the stripes - it runs. On the side that does not see as much sun, the pooh stripes are green with algae. And to quote Alicia Silverstone in Clueless, "It's a full on Monet. From far away it's okay, but up close, it's a big old mess."

On the way back to the airport the road just about met the lagoon or inlet or whatever you call it. It reminded me of US1 going down to the Keys. Very pretty. There were even guys fishing off the side of the road or bridges. Only thing was a stretch of the road did not have any lines. Was it two lanes, three, four? Don't know and not anyone cared. It was well paved though so that was a plus. Turned out to be a two laner with emergency side lanes. But hey, who needs painted lines?

Rio was actually very beautiful. We are interested to see what they do to it for the Olympics in 2016.