Mon-Wed, Sept 20-22 Getting to Brasil!!

W started our latest adventure on Monday evening as we grabbed a delicious dinner at Los Agaves in SB - Chiles en Nogada- a wonderful dish from Puebla, Mexico, that I’ve been looking for forevah: a poblano chile stuffed with meat, spices, and raisins in a pool of ground walnut sauce and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds - in honor of the 200^th anniversary of El Grito - the start of the Mexican Revolution. Great way to start a trip to Latin America! We returned home to finally finish packing, set off for LAX, and got a room at the Sheraton where we can park our car for two week at a one night charge.

We got up at 5:45 AM on Tuesday and took the shuttle to LAX where Bob had a full body scan and pat-down, almost starting the trip off on the wrong foot! (Definitely the wrong foot! RRZ.) We grabbed breakfast, got on our flight to Miami arriving at 5 PM and managed to amuse ourselves for six hours with a good Cuban dinner at the famous La Carreta restaurant and riding the new Sky Train atop American Airlines‘ nicely revamped Concourse D.

Finally we climbed aboard our 767 to Rio de Janeiro at eleven which wasn’t full so we moved around and both sat next to empty seats! I popped an Ambien and immediately went to sleep while Bob had a pasta dinner and only got a couple hours of shut eye. On Wednesday at 9:45AM we finally landed in Rio, got through immigration, and out to the crowd of waiting people and there was our driver and guide, Delores, holding a “Katy” sign!

She was recommended by our B & B host and is an exuberant booster of the “Marvelous City”!
We hopped into her little red car and she took off driving south, confidently and aggressively, on a freeway into the very large city of Rio de Janeiro. Downtown she bullied her way onto the surface streets and into the neighborhood of Santa Teresa, which lies a mile inland from the harbor on a steep hill lined with cobblestone streets, picturesque old houses, art galleries, restaurants, and bars. She climbed up an almost sheer face of limestone with houses literally stacked on top of each other until she came to Um Meia Tres, our B&B!

We climbed a flight of steps and were greeted by one of the English owners, Bill, who showed us the honor bar (always a pleasant surprise!) and took us out on the breakfast terrace to feed chunks of banana to several tiny (¾ lb.), adorable monkeys , Tufted-Marmosets - a new mammal, apparently doing well in an urban setting!! Then he led us up two more flights of stairs to the top floor and a terrace room with an amazing view of Rio to the NE. Since we really are on the face of a cliff, the swimming pool, is, yet, another flight of steps above our room!

Bill showed us the complex system of keys to the house, gate, room safe which we tried to memorize, but our brains were getting addled by then. And it was already 1 pm and we needed some fuel so we packed up and walked down to the street, warning each other of irregular steps and trying not to make any major mistakes. We were going to walk down the steep hill to an area of bars and cafes for lunch, but we found right across the street from our B&B is one of the best restaurants in Rio, Aprazivel, and the gate was open so we said What the Hell..why walk any further?? So we climbed down very steep and narrow steps to lovely, leafy, small restaurant of many different levels and corners and were seated at a table surrounded by ferns and trees with more chirping marmosets tearing around, and had one of the best lunches of our lives!!

The food had all the classic Latin American ingredients; shredded beef, manioc, shrimp, bananas, tapioca, rice, cheese, etc, except it was some of the most original and delicious cooking we’ve ever had! We ordered four appetizers so we could try a lot of different things which worked out well. We started with an “ecologically”-harvested fresh roasted heart of palm presented in a 15” split piece of bamboo and served with a pesto of olive oil and cashews - just amazing! A casserole of sweet potato puree with dried beef and melted cheese - chipped beef never tasted so good!! This was followed by herbed crab meat presented in a ceramic crab shell and another casserole of puree of manioc, shrimp and cheese.

We asked for beer and got a bucket of ice holding four beer bottles which were replaced as we drank…who knows how many we consumed? Had to have dessert: tapioca ice cream with acai fruit topping. After espresso we rolled upstairs and back to our room for a nap and decided that after that we would just stay in for the rest of the day and recover from the travel and eating binge!