… Rio again!

We thought we’d be ready to move on by Sunday evening. But, between checking the weather report for the surrounding areas, and realizing there were plenty of other things we wanted to do in Rio, we decided to stay one more day. And we were so excited to wake up to sunny bonus day in Rio on Monday morning.

We found the right bus and made it to our first stop at Lago Rodrigo de Freitas to rent bikes for a cycle around the lake. Only once we had arrived did we realize that neither of us had brought along an ID to leave as a deposit – hilarious, considering Wolf has a bit of experience with the whole how-to-rent-bikes kind of thing. We haggled with the guy for a while, mostly through a translation app on his phone (which was actually kind of fun), eventually figured out a solution and away we went.

The day was perfect – warm and sunny but not too hot yet – and since we’ve done tons and tons of walking every day, a bit of cycling was a nice change. We stopped for coconuts and photo ops as well as an undocumented push-up and pull-up competition (unsurprisingly, Wolf beat me) at the lakefront workout station :)

After returning the bikes we searched for lunch supplies, ending up with a banana and cheese sandwich for Wolf (confusing combination) a fried egg sandwich for me, fresh squeezed juice, and a huge brigadeiro, a bonbon-type dessert made from condensed milk and lots of chocolate. Armed with perfect beach food, we walked down to Ipanema beach and set up shop under an umbrella in the sand, taking turns jumping in the water and watching the locals selling everything from shrimp on a stick (a bit stomach-churning in the blazing sun) to bathing suits (why? every potential customer is already wearing one?) to iced mate drinks.

Eventually the ominous clouds on the horizon made their way towards us and we packed up, walking home again along Ipanema and Copacabana, ending the night with a beer on the beach followed by dinner at the apartment and a skype session with our potential wedding caterer before packing up for an early start the next morning on our way to the next stop…