On the last day of our amazing 3 week trip, we had less than 12 hours to visit the remaining Rio sights, find a Neymar FC Santos jersey for my brother and eat at one of Anthony Bourdain’s recommendations. It was a busy day!
We started off our last day with a tour of one of Rio’s 500 favelas. Favela, the Portuguese term for slum, is often portrayed in the news as extremely dangerous (drug wars, shootings etc…) but we still wanted the local experience. Our local guide took us to Rocinha, Rio’s largest, most densely populated and urbanized favela.
We started with an exhilarating ride to the top on the back of a motorcycle! We then walked back down through the alleys to experience life in the favela.
This is where they filmed Fast 5!
Because of the upcoming World Cup, Rochina is becoming pacified and even has a police post (in the past, there was no law enforced in the favela).
I was kind of surprised that we didn’t see any action during the tour (no drug dealings, no shootings). It was like any normal neighbourhood… with extremely friendly people, kids playing soccer, neighbours watching television at a local convenience store…
These sweet girls wanted me to take a picture of them posing….so cute!
Afterwards, we headed to Sugarloaf and basically spent most of the 2 hours lining for the cable cars up and down the mountain.
So not worth it.. plus the weather was really foggy.
For lunch, we headed back to Ipanema beach to try the sandwich stand recommended by Anthony Bourdain!
Bourdain says he visits this stand every time he’s in Rio!
I ordered the chicken sandwich…. this was still in my pre-chickenphobic days..
the chicken meat was shredded from the chicken thigh so it was very tender. It tasted like the Cantonese soy sauce marinated chicken… but then the herbs and vinaigrette gave it a little something special…so happy to have had this lunch on our last day…. this is our only foodie meal of this trip!
This concludes the rather long blog series about my foodie experience in South America…. and this blog post is blogged a day short of 1 year post- trip! Even a year later, I still remember so much about this amazing trip made with the best of friends.
YOLO!
FAIM? OUI OUI!!!
Barraca do Uruguay
Ipanema Beach Posto 9, Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
faim? oui oui!!!!!! 