The Real Rio

I got to experience the local flavor of Rio over the weekend, starting on Saturday night with a great dinner at this spot in my neighborhood. Open air restaurant, lots of people, great Brazilian food and good Brahma beer. I went with a friend of a friend who is from Rio and was very glad to see what the locals do on a Saturday night. We walked around for a bit after dinner then he drove me around, and we drove through Copacabana where I had two of the more interesting experiences that night. Copacabana is notoriously more dangerous than Ipanema and Leblon at night, and that was confirmed by a road block we had to drive through that my friend called ´the blitz´: two cop cars and about six cops were standing on the side of the road that they turned into a one-lane passage. As we approached, my friend turned the dome light on in our car so the cops could see in - and they were glaring at us and every car as we drove by, apparently checking for illegals, drunk people, or anything out of the ordinary. He said it was pretty standard. Oh also they had bulletproof vests and machine guns on their hips. Solid.

Literally five minutes later (was probably a little after midnight at that point) as we were turning around to drive back to Leblon, a car about 20 yards ahead of us ran a red light. As I was pointing this out to Bernardo he did the same thing. When I asked him why, he responded that in that area it´s safer to run a red light than to sit at one as you´re an easier target for robbery. Welcome to Copa.

Yesterday I saw Barra (pronounced like Baja) which is a beach town further south of where I am. Beautiful place, not surprising. Today I´ll be doing some tourist things though - hoping to head up to the Christ the Redeemer statue shortly. Leaving for Buenos Aires tomorrow so I´ll be trying to pack it in today. Hope everyone is well.