Tuesday 14 April 1981 - Rio de Janeiro
Breakfast was nice, but the whole
flight was clouded a little by our reception at Brazilian Customs, who insisted
on examining every piece of everyone's luggage. (It was really quite amusing
in retrospect, because we wondered why everyone was going through the Red route
- we confidently went down the Green route, only to find that it wound it's way
back to the Red!)
I wanted to leave some bags at the airport and after some
poor directions had sent me right around the airport twice, I was really fed up
and grumpy. The Brazilian taxi driver soon put a stop to that. There is no
point in being crotchety if you are about to meet your Maker! And we certainly
thought that was a distinct possibility as he roared through the traffic, using
his hooter to clear a path. There seems to be a deal more traffic than when we
were last here.
We are staying at the Gloria Hotel,
which is very nice. I had a quick dip in the hotel pool when we arrived and we
then set off for Mesbla, Rua Branco and Ouvidor. We had a pretty grim meal for
lunch, but enjoyed our exploring. After another hair-raising taxi drive back to
the hotel, Matt and I had a lovely cooling swim and then we all set out for an
evening meal. We decide to go to Chale and our taxi driver was the best example
of Rio taxi drivers we have met yet. His
speciality was to flick his lights furiously to clear his way, but to spend
most of his time hurtling around with his lights off so that no-one could see
him coming! Chale was closed when we got there, so we decided to go down to
Copacabana. (Chale was a restaurant we
had visited on our first trip to Rio - read that to see why we wanted to return).
 |
| Matt and Rab with Sugar Loaf in the background |
The driver said he knew a good place
and took us to where an affable gent, who spoke a little English, welcomed us
to his restaurant. We had an enjoyable evening, watching the crowds drift by,
and if the food wasn't so good, at least it was cheap. Or so we thought until
the bill arrived for about R28 instead of about R15! It turned out that the
"English" menu we had ordered from was 1978 vintage and prices had
risen since then. Unfortunately the English speaking manager had disappeared so
communication was difficult.
A great (verbal) fight erupted, much to Matt's
embarrassment. I appealed to the gathering audience for anyone who spoke
English to help me. A smiling volunteer with a strong German accent stepped
forward. I explained what was going on and asked him to translate. “Oh, no’” he said, “ I cannot do that I do
not speak Portuguese.” Obviously a very logical man, or perhaps I should have
expressed my desire more adequately We would probably have been there still but
for the return of our friendly driver, who dragged a bilingual passerby into
the fray, who persuaded the proprietor to accept my very generous offer of R20
– all I had in my pocket, having taking the opportunity early on to transfer
any other funds into other pockets. One of our Rio
highlights!
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