“I rushed to Copacabana earlier this morning to take a picture,” Feng told me when I woke up. “Then I walked to Ipanema as well. The sky is blue! It’s not raining! Not going to last, though.”
“Let me guess—a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon?”
Go ahead, check out Rio de Janeiro’s weather forecast. It’s a copy-and-paste job. Every day is “a mix of sun and clouds” with “chance of scattered thunderstorms.” Hourly weather is the same, apparently consensus was reached—50% chance of rain at 1 p.m., 50% chance of rain at 2 p.m., etc.
Seriously, this wouldn’t fly in Canada. The weather forecast team would have been fired a long time ago. Canadians expect accuracy. You can be sent to the Arctic circle weather station for underestimating precipitations by one millimetre. But apparently, Cariocas just look out of the window, rush to the beach if it’s sunny, still rush to the beach if it’s rainy, and it’s good enough.
Meanwhile, since it did look like a beach day, we took the subway to Barra da Tijuca, the famous zona oeste neighbourhood. This is where you’ll find condos (including Bolsonaro’s), golf courses, football player mansions, 2016 Summer Olympic venues, surfers, malls and zero favelas.
This is also where you’ll find Rio’s longest beach, 18-kilometre-long Praia da Barra da Tijuca. We stare at the unmissable long stretch of sand and green water every time we land in Rio or leave the city —“we really should check it out, one day…”
But we’re always too lazy to take the subway to Jardim Oceânico, the terminus of linha 4.
Turns out it’s not a long ride from Ipanema—20 minutes at most. And despite being an upper-class neighbourhood, “Barra” actually feels pretty low key. Just like ats any other Brazilian beach, there’s a long avenue with quiosques along the beach and people doing regular beach stuff—drinking beer, surfing, chatting, hanging out, drinking beer, drinking beer…
Mark found a coconut on the beach so we introduced him to água de coco—not the most portable drink, sure, but a great value for 5 reais ($1). You’re basically paying for someone to cut it open and a paper straw because if you’re really thirsty and happen to have a giant knife with you, you can just grab one from the many coconut trees around.
Since it was definitely not raining, we stayed on the beach until early evening, then since it was still not raining we watched the sunset on Ipanema beach and walked along Copacabana to check out the night market.
Forecast for Sunday? Yeah, mix of sun and clouds, showers and isolated thunderstorms—basically local slang for “don’t have a clue, you’ll see when you get up.”
