Day 69 – Marmosets?

First thing in the morning I went to fix my tooth that was ready to fall out. Thank God, I can always rely on Renata’s parents here in Brazil. Although I emailed them about my tooth misfortune only last night when I finally got my hands on the internet connection, they came through almost immediately with a name of a dentist right around the corner from our hotel. It turns out that Brazilian dentistry is world famous (I guess, it goes along with all the plastic surgery they are also so big on), so having this trouble in Brazil is actually not a bad thing. At least, I’ll be fixing my crowns in the best possible place, at a very competitive price (compared to NYC and Russia). Of course, it is a tad inconvenient to be going to the dentist almost every day for a week of my stay alone in Rio, when my friends leave back to NYC, but it needs to be done, so I’ll just have to tough it out. Life keeps reminding me that I’m not really on vacation during this trip.

We walked A LOT today. Almost all day long. We started with a stroll along the beautiful shore of Ipanema and Copacabana. The sea produced incredible waves, and if I didn’t see all the surfers with my own two eyes, I would never believe that surfing is possible in such rough conditions. But they seem to really enjoy it.

The sea here is really beautiful. Almost fully surrounded by the hills in the distance, it feels much safer to me than the open sea of Cozumel, less intimidating, cozier. By contrast, the buildings along the shore are flat-out ugly. Built or re-built in the 1960s, they all have this unbearable air of almost Soviet architectural uniformity about them. In my opinion, a pretty depressing view. Nobody else in our group seems to mind though.

We had lunch in a pretty cool local eatery that we picked out by ourselves. Without Marcela, ordering food is always an adventure: you almost never know what you will get. Of course, you have the general idea, but never all the details. Fun.

On any trips, I’m always responsible for reading the guide book and providing the group with the information on points of interest and various facts about the city we are in (Tanya is always responsible for mapping the optimal route for the sightseeing selection that I make). So during lunch our guide book came up with the exciting piece of information about the Sugar Loaf Hill that we were headed to in search of one of the best vistas in town. A short hike at the base of the hill goes through a dense forest that supposedly has all sorts of wild life, including famous Brazilian marmosets (what a funny word, especially if you pronounce it with the exaggerated Russian accent!) – little monkeys that weight only 250 grams! How can any animal weight only 250 grams, seriously?

When we reached the end of Copa, it started… yep, pouring. Seriously, enough already! We got the point – nature is super powerful and we all are nothing but helpless little puppies that can be easily swirled away from Kansas to Emerald City at any moment. So can we now just relax a bit and enjoy our stay in Brazil, please?

Melanie truly had enough of this water nonsense, and at the first sight of the raindrops, flagged a taxi and went back to the hotel. We, however, endured. Strangely, up till now even in all this rain, we have managed to not acquire any umbrellas, so for about an hour we had to simply stand under some building’s awning, trying to figure out the plan of actions and if it made any sense to continue our quest to Sugar Loaf or we would not see anything anyway because of the rain fog. When the rain subsided a bit, we decided to take our chances and took a bus to the base of the hill.

An interesting fact: apparently, overweight people in Brazil have priority seating, as seen on all the signs featuring bus etiquette rules, they even come before pregnant women or persons with babies… The rule is not supported by the Rio bus design though: we decided that it would be completely impossible for an obese person to even get on the bus here, because at the very front of the vehicle, they have a turnstile operated by a conductor collecting fare, and this turnstile is really narrow.

Disappointingly, we did not see one single marmoset on the truly gorgeous walk featured in the book. And I think I was more excited about those little monkeys than I was about the whole view of Rio from the top of the mountain… Oh well.

The view from Sugar Loaf though was not disappointing one bit! We got there on an air-tram built in 1912 (apparently, at that time it was only the 3rd such vehicle in the entire world), and by the time we ascended to the top it was already pitch black. The night Rio looks spectacular. The lights of the city don’t really illuminate the bays and the hills around it, but rather create a certain magical obscurity that makes the whole picture magnificently serene. In other words, it was totally worth all the rainy trouble to get here.

In the meantime, Melanie was going nuts all alone in the hotel room waiting for us for hours, so when we finally showed up (around 9PM), she immediately dragged us out to a great dinner place called Jobi Bar (located in Leblon, a walking distance from Ipanema). After such a full day, we really enjoyed relaxing into the yummy food experience, chasing it with our mandatory maracuja (passion fruit) caipirinhas. Life is good.