MAS o Menos

Having ridden in a Tijuana cab, I was prepared for our taxi ride from the airport to the hotel. Lanes on a Latin American highway are merely suggestions. The shoulder of the road is a bonus lane. And I don’t believe that there exists a Spanish or Portuguese word for tailgating.

After arriving at our hotel, we took a walk of the Copacabana region and Ipanema Beach. I expected Ipanema would be Miami Beach nice. It wasn’t. Ipanema looked like it was frozen in time from the early 1980s.

There are great restaurants in Rio De Janeiro, but you may not stumble into them by accident. If you are a vegetarian, diabetic or on a carb-restrictive diet, take the time to research your food choices before coming to Brazil. If however you have a sweet tooth and believe dessert is the most important meal of the day, you will have no trouble running into tasty treats on every street corner.

Before meeting up with the group tour, we took a City Tour that took us to the Rio De Janeiro highlights of Sugarloaf Mountain and Christ the Redeemer of the Open Arms. We also got to drive by the ghetto. If you saw the movie City Of God, you’ll understand why we didn’t get out of the tour bus and walk around.

My last word on Rio de Janeiro is it has the best looking young people (under 30) I’ve ever seen. Even better looking than coastal Southern California.

Photo Gallery for Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Rio to Buenos Aires Overview
Day 1-2 - Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Day 3-6 - Ilha Grande, Brazil
Day 7 - Parati, Brazi
Day 9-10 - Iguassu Falls, Brazil/Argentina
Day 11 - Paraguay
Day 11 - Parque das Aves, Brazil
Day 12 - Salto, Uruguay
Day 13-14 - Montevideo, Uruguay
Day 15-16 - Colonia, Uruguay
Day 17-20 - Buenos Aires, Argentina

Tags: brazil, rio-de-janeiro, south-america