The weather refused to cooperate with us on Saturday, so Fernando quickly juggled the plans. It would have been a futile effort to go to Sugar Loaf with a low cloud cover. So Fernando took the boys who wanted to go to the beach for more futbol, and had his niece, Teresa, and Xinho/Mineko take the others to “The Mall.” Teresa is a 30-year old journalist who wants to continue her career in the online magazine industry. This shopping complex is like being at Bell Square. Upscale and fun.
Again, there were not that many people there when we first arrived so we could divide and conquer by breaking into smaller groups. The boys all wanted to look for “authentic” jerseys and the moms wanted Havianas. Mission Accomplished on both accounts. Even the mall store will negotiate a bit in price, so Teresa, Mineko and Xinho were critical toward getting us all through.
The weather was still bad in the afternoon, so we did an impromptu bus tour of “The Beaches of Rio!” There are at least five. It was fascinating to learn the history of each and how they developed. The bus driver, Dale Earnhardt, jerry-rigged a microphone for Fernando to use as he toured us around. One interesting tidbit is the different mosaic patterns on the sidewalks for each different beach. Another note is how much the favelas have infiltrated the use of the beaches. Several 5-star hotels have had to close because they are located too close to the exploding sprawl of the favelas, so the crime has skyrocketed and tourists wouldn’t stay there anymore.
After the tour, we headed directly to the Flamengo vs. Ceara game at Maracana Stadium. The pre-game warm-up was watching Fernando negotiate (aka bribe) our way into parking the bus of American’s inside the stadium gates. Between his persuasiveness, a few Reals, and the size of our bus – he was successful of parking us where he wanted.
During the game, we met Lorenzo Barros! This is Fernando’s nephew (brother of Teresa) – who spent the day before buying the 34 tickets we needed. They only sell tickets at a time so he had to go thru the line 11 times and it took four hours. He is a 26-year old patent attorney in Rio who speaks French, Portuguese, English and Spanish fluently. And he’s hysterical to boot.
We chose our seats 2 hours before game time to avoid any unruly crowds, and stayed seated until pretty much the entire stadium cleared. Easy, peasy. Finished out the night at our same local Churrscaria Palace.
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