Rio Day 5 - February 25

Headed out to Ipanema beach early this morning for the Brazil vs USA women's 2s beach volleyball. As with everything else in Brazil, the information was incorrect, and the game wasn't going to take place until the following day. Also, we had to be back at the hostel early as the soccer game we bought tickets to attend wasn't at 6pm like they had said, but at 2pm. Brazillians have a very lax sense of timing.

The beach was nice, except that everyone got a burn. Even me! David turned into a lobster - this is no exaggeration...check out his colour in this photo:

Also, the ocean stole my favourite sunglasses. As it had already stolen my favourite sunhat in Copacabana 2 days previous, I took this to mean an all-out war between me and the Atlantic ocean. It did make an attempt at my bikini, but I won that particular battle, much to the relief of my beach-mates.

In the afternoon we went to the aforementioned futebal game, the regional championship match. Our bus was "late" picking us up (by this point we realize that this is par for the course when paying for excursions). Turns out "late" meant that our driver decided he'd rather go to the beach instead. After some kerfuffle, they sent us by cab. The game was great, a lot of fun. The crowd was loud and boisterous, it didn't even matter that we were in the gringo section. On the way home, they of course had to fit 11 extra people into the mini-vans (the 11 that got sent up by cab). The end result was about 17 people in an 11 (?) person van.