South American Dining Habits

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Hey everyone -

We are alive in Rio, and just learned that we´ll get a taste of Carnaval this Friday so we are very excited. The beaches are gorgeous and the people very nice, though we are surprised that the people know more English than they do Spanish, and even the English speakers are few and far between. We spent last night in Copacabana and ate at a Churrascaria that we stumbled upon while looking for an ATM - yes I (Holly) even had a taste of the red meat from Dan´s plate, though I stuck to chicken, pork, and side dishes of which were were millions. After dinner we never found an ATM that accepted our Wachovia cards, and none of the hotels had one that worked, and every ATM in the city closed at 10pm, so we were stuck with the task of getting home to our hotel with no Portuguese and no money.

We asked a hotel concierge in Copacabana to find a 24 hr bank machine, for which he only knew of one that was 8 blocks away and apparently not safe to walk to. We had him call our hotel in Leblon to find out if they would change some money for us when we got there. Turned out that out hotel had an ATM, so we got a cab with the help of the concierge in Copacabana, and when we arrived in our hotel, Dan agreed to leave me in the taxi as collateral for getting money at the machine to pay. So... the machine didn´t work of course, and Dan was super frustrated as he ran up to our room to get some American dollars because it was the only money we had. The cabbie agreed to accept the dollars, which was good for him because we didn´t have change and he made double the fare. Anyway, the cabbie gave us some info on where to go and when for Carnaval and Samba, so I guess we paid him for the helpful advice. He was also very patient with us, which I appreciated because Dan was already fuming. All in all, we made it and then slept for 11 hours, since we hadn´t slept for the 48 previous hours (due to connecting overnight flights and screaming children on ALL of them - hence the lack of patience and short temper at the ATM debacle).

As an update, today we talked to a girl who pointed us to a bank that accepted American debit cards, so now we have some Rials to spend. We already spent quite a few of them going to Sugarloaf mountain this afternoon. Apparently it´s the tallest spot in Rio - you have to take two separate cable cars (and pay 20 dollars) to get up there. We stayed up there to watch the sunset and I got some great photos from there of the Jesus the Redeemer statue poking above the clouds with my zoom lens. (Sorry that I can´t add them to this post because the hotel computer doesn´t allow thumb drives). At least now I don´t feel like I´ve been lugging it around for nothing! We also saw some very cute wild monkeys, which I mistook for squirrels when I saw them. I got a great shot of one as he looked at me, but my flash scared him away and then none of his friends would come visit.

Back to the subject of this email... usually, the healthy recommendation that we hear in the US is that you shouldn´t eat in front of the television because you aren´t thinking about how much you are eating and will eat too much. Apparently that advice is not promoted here, or if it is they ignore it, because every single restaurant we´ve been to has a TV in the dining area - sometimes more than one. At lunch in Lima, everyone´s eyes were glued to the telenovela playing (soap opera). At dinner in Brasil, it´s football that´s playing. Maybe they don´t have TiVo down here? Whatever it is, they don´t want to miss a minute, even when they go out to eat.

That´s all for now - we´ll update soon after Carnaval and samba tomorrow!
Holly and Dan

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