The Guys In Ipanema...

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Evening all

Friday night and I imagine a lot of you are getting ready for a night out. Well we´re getting over a big one last night so have had a very quiet day.

We left you all on Wednesday, having spent the afternoon on Copacabana beach. Well Wednesday night was relatively tame by standards so far and we just had a few beers at a hostel around the corner. One amusing event was quite possibly the most drunk woman ever who had a fit at being denied more booze and then promptly tripped over a pot plant and fell down the stairs. We´re considering trying to match her up with the drunken fool we came across in NY as they´d make a lovely (but awfully hungover) couple.

Thursday was all about Copacabana beach again and playing footy on the specially marked out pitches. We arrived at 2pm with a few more stragglers from our hostel, got the newly purchased footy out, slavered ourselves in suncream, did a few stretches, took our shoes off and nearly burnt our feet to cinders. Undeterred we thought the pain might subside but 5 mins and an awful lot of hopping later we gave up and decided to chill out in the sun until it got a bit cooler.

Down by the sea we had a little game of keepie ups (Andy was rubbish, everyone else was good) and then a funny little Peruvian drinks seller fella decided to join us and show us what keepie ups was all about. Him, Jamie and Steve had an epic game and Duca even managed a couple of overhead saves which the little fella applauded. After about an hour, and with bleeding and red feet we bought a few bottle of water from him and left him to go back to his lonely sales pitch.

Steve and Joff both decided to purchase sarongs from beach sellers, Steve´s in the style of the Brazilian flag. Joff liked them so much he bought two, but finally got a Brazilian flag one which was different to Steve´s. Another attempt to play on the footy pitches was unsuccesfful due to the sheer effort needed to run. Steve, Joff and Jamie must have known this as they left Andy to attempt a little game of World Cup Doubles which was a total write off.

The plan for Thursday night was a Pre Carnavale party at a bar owned by the hostel in Ipanema. When we finally arrived it was packed of drunken tourists and Steve managed to get started on by a drunk Scotsman with a bad suntan and even worse attitude. Still we decided to stick it out for a bit before heading off to a club with our new friends Marie and Tobias (Marie knew Jamie before we came away and was staying at our hostel).

We finally found a club, which was called Bombar, and had a totally brilliant time. A mixture of tourists and locals were dancing away to hip-hop, dance, brazilian funk and R&B music and some real classics were played. Joff managed to take about a hundred photos (most featuring Steve in various stages of drunkeness and with a stream of girls) and worked out the Brazilian equivalent of a high five hich he managed to do with most of the bouncers (it´s pushing each other´s fists together apparently) and we crawled home via a late night McDonalds at about 5:45am.

Today´s planned trip to Sugar Loaf and The Redeemer was cancelled again because of bad weather. It´s been raining since early yesterday evening and everything is flooded, including most of Andy´s luggage. Still we´ve got tickets to the Rio derby at the Maracana tomorrow which has offered more than sufficient consolation.

Carnavale starts tonight and to be honest we don´t know what to expect. On the evidence of Rio so far, we doubt that it will disappoint!

AC

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