Ipanema

Rio is a fascinating city, a real party city. It is divided into a number of neighbourhoods Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, Flamenco, Botafago to name but a few. It is not the cleanest city we have ever visited for it is not unusual to see cockroaches scurrying across the pavement. Early evening the locals put out their bags of rubbish to be collected overnight but this attracts the poorer people to scavenge through them, a sad sight. Contrary to the city the beaches are very clean. There is no plastic, no seaweed so it is a pleasure to walk along the beach or go in the water. Also you see people with large plastic bags collecting tin cans in order to keep the beach tidy.
Yesterday Monday, we went on a two hour boat trip with our boat man, Thiago. He was a great guy and took us all round the bay and inlets. It was too rough to go too far into the open sea. It really is a huge sprawling city.
For lunch we went to Ipanema which is the next neighbourhood along from Copacabana. We went to the Garota de Ipanema bar where the song Girl from Ipanema was written. The background to the song is that two friends Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes were admiring a 17 year old girl everyday as she went to the beach at Ipanema and they sat in this bar and wrote the song.
In the evening we returned to Ipanema for dinner at a restaurant we had read good reviews about, PICI and it was excellent.
So later today we fly home after a truly memorable four weeks where we have seen so much and done so much. South America sometimes gets a bad press - it’s dangerous, it’s corrupt, it’s dirty. We found it to be welcoming, dramatic, lovely people and inexpensive.Leggi altro