Misto - February 19-21 2019: Vibrant Rio de Janeiro

We flew from Salvador to Rio on February 18 for three nights in Rio, arranged by Bahia travel in Salvador, who did a really great job. It was Howard’s first time to Rio but Ros had been to the world congress of psychiatry there in 1993. We stayed at a hotel on Copacabana beach with a beautiful view from our room up and down the coast. The first night it rained but we took an Uber to a local steak restaurant where we had a great meal. The next day we enjoyed a private tour to Christ The Redeemer and Sugar Loaf. Our guide, Patricia was really good and tried her best to help us avoid the lines, as two cruise ships were in town. The Christ the Redeemer statue is as Impressive as Ros remembered with great views over Rio. But it was the views from Sugar Loaf that were really stunning. Unfortunately parts of Rio’s harbour are really polluted and the clean up that was promised as part of the Olympics never materialized. In between we enjoyed a traditional steak buffet lunch where the different cuts of meat just keep being brought to your table, and the array of side dishes was really outstanding.

The next day we had two tours. In the morning we went to downtown Rio and visited the historic areas which was really informative as we knew little about Brazil’s history and in the evening we went on a pub crawl to enjoy some real Rio nightlife, ending in a Salsa bar. What was really great about going on a private tour with a local guide was that we were able to go to areas and places where we would not have ventured alone.

In between all of this we explored Copacabana and Ipanema, the next beach along the coast, which is a little more up market, and enjoyed walking on the beach in the early morning before it was too hot. This was a wonderful break before continuing to sail up the coast to Cabadello and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.