Flamengo vs Vasco

At 4:30 on Sunday, October 20th, Dylan and I caught the bus and subway to the world renown Maracana Stadium where we were to watch Flamengo play Vasco de Gama. We arrived with the masses, only to find everyone was giving ID with their money. We finally made it to the front of the ticket line, and tried explaining to the ticket lady that we were tourists and had no ID with us, she got someone who spoke English, and all was good, we got our tickets. The amount of police at the game would be approximately the size of the Regina City Police Force. The reason was because if Vasco got eliminated they would be out for the season. We made our way into the stadium which seats about 100,000, the pitch looked smaller than on TV, but the stadium was massive. We arrived about 10 minutes before gametime, and there were two giant sections of fans, one for Flamengo and one for Vasco...both are teams from Rio. Flamengo in red and Vasco in white, they traded chants back in forth, organized song, claps and whistles that would make North American sporting events embarassed with our attempts to emulate such fan devotion. Massive banners waved in the air and adults and children screamed obscenities at the players and referees throughout the match. Near the end of the first half, Flamengo scored and the fans went into pandemonium, appearing like they had just won the league championship...when in fact it was a regular season rivalry game. The score stayed 1-0 throughout the match as rain slowly drizzled and the field condition slowly detiorated. The game was fascinating, the chants and fans even more so. We left absolutely pumped up about having witnessed it.

We went out and bought pizza again, as we didnt feel like sitting down for dinner. After our pizza we headed out for to a small cafe and had some beers and called an early night around 12.

Today was Monday, October 20th and the crappy Spring rain continued. We woke up at about 9:30, wandered and found a bakery for some breakfast. Afterwards, we headed to Lagoa Rodrigo do Freitas for a walk around the lake, and from there into Leblon and its beach and eventually back to Ipanema. We had lunch in Ipánema, stopped for some coconut milk on the way and then headed to Copacabana for a beer and to relax at a stand along the beach, which was deserted because of the cloudy cool weather (20C is cool here).

For the evening, we went out to a nice restaraunt, where I had duck and some scalloped potatoes, and a bottle of wine.

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