Day 44

This morning we are heading back to Rio! We’ve liked Foz do Iguacu, it has a nice vibe but definitely just a gateway stop over to Iguacu falls. The flight back to Rio was a bit of a mess. They had overbooked baggage space and everyone had suitcases they wanted to take on the flight so everyone had to check their bags but it was entirely disorganised. At one point she said everyone from our group had to check their bags and we only had two small rucksacks, we pointed this out and she let us take them on the plane. All a bit of a faff but eventually we took off about an hour late.

Arriving in Rio we headed back to the apartment to quickly call home and then we headed to Ipanema beach. This is THE picture perfect beach on Rio so we were super excited. We arrived in glorious sunshine and walked down the beach for a while until we found an area that we felt was more families and young people. We grabbed some chairs and settled in for what we thought would be a lovely few hours with a sunset.

Ipanema felt a bit safer, less pushy vendors who actually took no for an answer. We both tried some food from the vendors, Keira getting some shrimps and I got a barbecued stick of chicken wrapped in Bacon. They both went down very well they were excellent.

We were throughly enjoying our time until completely out of no where, the sun went in, and the wind picked up. When I say picked up it was awful. Umbrellas flying down the beach and tables and chairs became lethal objects to avoid and the Brazilians flooded off the beach running carrying their belongings. Feeling very nervous we got off the beach and tried to order an uber, but struggling to walk against the wind with whipping sand we headed further away trying to find some shelter. We also moved quickly away from a building which was being constructed that looked like something was about to fly off it. We managed to get an uber and felt much better about the situation. Using google translate we listened to the radio in the uber. Gusts of wind up to 100 km/h and large power cuts across the city had brought the city more to a stand still. The metro had completely stopped and lots of the traffic lights were out. As a result we sat in traffic with horns blaring making very little progress. It took us 2 hours to get back to our apartment this is normally a 25 min drive.

Feeling pretty tired we made a quick dinner and chilled out. The weather warning ends at midnight tonight so hopefully tomorrow it’s all cleared up but a pretty dramatic afternoon!!Read more