Day Seven – Rio

We woke to another gray day and had breakfast in the apartment. The kids took a liking to putting requeijão, a type of cream cheese, on their bread. Even with our meager pots and pans, the coffee was good! Before heading out, Lauren taught me and the kids how to play Rummy 500, so we had fun playing a few hands.

After we got tired of that, we headed to the beach. It was only in the 70s and still overcast, but the kids were undeterred and went right into the water. The surf was up and they had fun frolicking in the waves. Expecting the water to be cold, I reluctantly went in up to my thighs and found that it was not cold at all. This bode well for our time at the beach.

We got suckered into a few items from the roaming beach vendors on the way back to the apartment, showered quickly and headed to Djanira’s house for lunch. That meant, of course, that we had to take her all the things she asked us to get her (hair relaxers, Clinique products, etc.). Somehow we managed to get it all into one bag and off we went in one of the many buses speeding their way down the streets.

Ipanema and our friend Djanira
That shot to the left is a night-time still shot of Ipanema beach looking toward the Morro Dois Irmãos hill that I took with my non-digital film camera in 2007. The lights dotting the hillside to the left above the ocean is Vidigal, one of the city's numerous favelas (hillside slum). This is probably my favorite picture of Brazil.

Djanira lives in Ipanema, the beach and neighborhood made famous by the song “The Girl from Ipanema.” It is a small, sophisticated little strip of sand between the Atlantic Ocean and the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas (see picture to right), filled with shops, restaurants and very expensive real estate housing the who’s who of Brazil’s arts, music and entertainment industry. It’s quieter and more refined than its bawdy sister, Copacabana, and on Sundays it hosts the weekly “Feira Hippy” of arts and hand crafts. The beach-front Avenida Vieira Souto has a distinct mosaic pattern (see picture to the left).

How Djanira came to live in Ipanema is a story for another time, but she is a self-made woman with a good head for investment and has always been a saver. She has been one of my dearest friends since when I first met her as a student at PUC renting a room in her apartment.

Since it was Saturday, she made feijoada (black bean stew) for us. It's a Brazilian tradition to eat feijoada on Saturday, adding music and drinks and turning the meal into a party lasting until nightfall. Our feijoada with Djanira lasted until past nightfall and as we left, I talked her into going with us the next day to the feira hippy. That was a big, big deal because as long as I’ve known her (since 1985) she has professed to never having gone to the feira hippy, calling it a “programa de gringo” (something only a gringo would do). I now have the picture to prove that she's done it (see below)!

When we got back to the apartment, of course, it was not too late for some more Rummy 500.