2-29-20 - The Churrascaria

We wake up on Leap Day on the overnight flight from Panama City to Brazil. Our scheduled transport takes us to Ipanema Beach where we have an AirBnb for the week.

We have spent most of South America in hotels and lodges with the last Airbnb having been in Buenos Aires two months ago. Throw in a couple of less than ideal places and / or incidents in other Airbnb’s (Munich’s upstairs neighbor being the worst), the clan is a little apprehensive. This one is only accessible by a small elevator that takes you to the fourth floor. Yes, reminiscent of the Buenos Aires Airbnb when the elevator broke down on New Year’s morning and we almost missed our flight. 

Yes, the elevator is that small.  We can’t even fit two people and two suitcases in thus resulting in us having to take 5 trips to get the 8 of us and luggage up to the 4th floor apartment.  Despite the elevator issue, the apartment is  cozy and nicely located across the street from a supermarket and next door to Domino’s pizza so it fits the bill that settles the clan down.

Our flight landed at 6:30am and luckily our Airbnb host, Vincent, has said he will go over and let us in early so that we can go from the airport straight to the apartment.  We meet up with Vincent who is originally from France, has been living here 5 years and speaks perfect English; the perfect Airbnb host.

Given the tough overnight flight and early hour of arrival, everyone grabs rooms and falls back into a deep sleep.  Just how deep you may be asking? Well deep enough that at 1pm, a good number of the crew are still zonked out. 

Leanne received tough news in Colombia about her mother’s health so we decided that Leanne, John and Ashley will return to the farm in New Jersey so Leanne can help with her medical care. Our kids know when they visit to the farm, they work on the farm to help with the many duties that need to be done each day.  Those three only have two days in Rio before flying out and so John wants to enjoy some authentic Brazilian cuisine while here.

John, Justin, Corey, Kyle and Leanne hit a nearby local restaurant for lunch.  The Brazilians speak Portuguese as a result of being colonized by Portugal.  So this is our first non-Spanish, non-English speaking country since Malaysia (Borneo) in November. Having been is Spanish-speaking countries for about two months now, it has been somewhat ingrained.  We start ordering in Spanish and the waiter has no idea what we are saying.  English does not fare any better.  Hmm…what did we do in Asia when they didn’t speak English?  Oh yeah, we resort to pointing to menus with pictures and holding up numbers of fingers.  The food - which keeps coming and coming - is local, authentic and quite good. We learn you can’t take anything onto your plate and NOT eat as that is a huge insult here in Brazil.

Corey heads back to the apartment and John, Justin, Kyle and Leanne manage to salvage a bit of the rest of the day by waking to the iconic Copacabana Beach and its defense fort.  The fort is actually across the bay from the actual beach where los touristos hang out. The fort is one of a pair with the other one across the bay so that both forts could serve to defend the harbor.

As we walk around Copacabana, we notice leftover people who might have missed the fact that Brazil’s world-famous Carnival was actually last week. By design, we purposely avoided that event. One young woman — could have been an American — is literally passed out on the street; three policemen hover nearby ensuring her safety we optimistically assume. In fact, we even notice several policemen on horseback readying for their evening paroles of the area. Its only 4 p.m. and we witness a dozen or so young people dressed up ready for the evening festivities — decked out in bright revealing costumes as they emerge from their cabs. Clearly, they seek the famous Rio nightlife even post Carnival. Rio is already giving us the vibe that partying is a high priority. Given we are with teens, we will surely seek more family fun/teen-friendly opportunities though.

Like exploring a historical fort.

After exploring the fort and taking our requisite 1,000 pictures, we visit the fort’s military history museum.  While the fort was built to defend Rio from external forces, it turns out that the only major action the fort saw was from Rio’s own military.  A group that manned the fort in the 1920’s turned into rebels and turned the fort’s gun system on Rio.  The government called in couple naval destroyers and the rebels surrounded in about 40 seconds. 

After a rest break back at the apartment we all head out to El Carrero, a churrascaria which is a Brazilian steak house.  It’s not just a restaurant, it’s an experience.  Waiters carry around a hunks of meat on a skewer and come up to the table and start slicing off the meat right onto your plate. There is every type of meat and cut known to mankind being offered. It’s a popular concept in Brazil and we learn after our stomachs nearly explode that you have a little card you have to turn over to red, before they stop giving you meat.

We stagger out of the restaurant and can barely waddle back to the apartment because we’ve eaten way too much meat.  Yes, vegetarians would surely be horrified at this concept and our lecherous indulgence.