My eyes snapped open. I was just having a terrible nightmare that I was in another country, asleep in the sand on what is touted as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world surrounded by sunshine and gorgeous women, entirely organized and funded by the United States Army when I awoke to the sound of.......oh wait, that's right. The sound of crashing waves and children playing. Because it wasn't a nightmare. It was in fact, a beautiful combination of two seperate worlds. Reality and paraiso (paradise for my English homies out there in the audience. 'merica)
Truthfully, I awoke to my cadet buddy nudging my shoulder asking if I wanted to go for a barefoot run along the water (PT is free, @Alex Cattley) and I obliged him. We ran for about 15 minutes, approximately reaching the end of the beach we were on. Running on soft sand us surprisingly difficult and our 1 minute sprint at the end of our jog completely gassed us. To cool off, we hopped in the water, getting beat up by South American waves and the under current (which by the way, is casually super dangerous down here. Like children gettin' dragged out to sea type dangerous) as we swam. We let the water drag us a good 200 meters down the beach before we started running back. Very relaxing. We hung around the beach a little more and then proceeded to walk into the city a bit to grab some food.
We ended up being so pooped from the night prior that right after dinner (another Rodizio pizza place. For those of you just turning in, imagine a restaurant where waiters just walk around with trays of different pizza, with everything from 4 cheese, to ham, to tuna, to shrimp and eventually, dessert pizzas covered in chocolate. It's a beautiful thing) we ended up walking back to the engineering school and calling it an early night. Our host friends (who I'm convinced are robots due to how much partying they do with how little sleep they get) headed out for another night on the town. We planned on getting up early to work out (motivation is pretty easy to find when it's beach season all the time) and spending the whole day at the beach. Which I know was a fantastic plan because that's exactly how it happened.
After a glorious 9 hours of sleep (I literally thought I was dead on 2 seperate occassions. Not like, "they" thought I was dead. I did. That's how awesome my sleep was. I awoke with my running partner and we took off for Pao de Acucar. IME (Instituto de Militar Engenharia) sits at the base of the most recognizeable 2 lumps in South America and for those of you that remember my trip there, there's a bit of a nature trail walk (read: epic mountain climb) involved in getting up the first hill. In my semi hungover stupor from the day before, I agreed to "run" (there's a word. I wouldn't necessarily apply it to what I did that day, but hey, that's just me) up said trail. Ha! I would say we were laughing then but between hurdling gigantic roots, scrambling on hands and feet, and hurriedly aplogizing in terrible Portuguese to the people whose otherwise fine days we disturbed with our shirtless thundering through the otherwise serene wood, it was kind of difficult to breathe, let alone laugh.
After just half an hour, we had some difficulty walking all 300 feet back to IME. We eventually crawled our way back, showered up, and got ready to head out to the beach. We opted to walk to the beach this time, taking in the sights and sounds (read: overpowering smell and visual confirmation of food vendors on the sidewalks, or was we've dubbed all of their wares, "street meat" (carne da rua) regardless if it's grilled beef or peanuts) of Rio and arriving at beach in no time at all. Our buddies told us to set up in front of Copacabana Palace (probably the nicest hotel I've ever looked at) and we waited for them to arrive, taking in the entire scene in front of us.
At this point, it became rather apparent that beachwear extending within a foot or so of the kneecaps was highly unpopular. We decided it was time to go for walk and see what could be found in terms of proper swimwear. In Brazil, proper swimwear for men is a sunga, or in English, "really small bathing suit". Just check Google Images for "Sunga Brazil", that should tell you everything you need to know. We crossed the street to a small marketplace full of tents and began to explore them. Everything from tiny statues of Jesus to handbags shaped like Brazil were for sale and there were enough soccer (excuse me, futebol) jerseys to cover the beach. We circled the tents and saw only womens bathing suits. Damn. How was I going to look socially acceptable on the beach without a sunga?
Finally, we ended up asking one of the street vendors. While constantly trying to redirect the conversation back to the fact that no sunga outfit is complete without an authentic "Brasil" jersey from Nike, he pointed us towards one of the far tents. While it appeared at first that this tent only held bikinis, as it turns out, looking a little closer would have helped us realized that half of those bathing suits didn't come with tops. Because they were for men.........niiice.
"Aqui. Tire tudo." The women pulled the tent flap abruptly shut and informed me that this was an acceptable place to try on my sunga. I had chosen a small (ps, they're all small) green one with a Brazilian flag. Because nothing says you're a tourist more than pale white skin and a bathing suit with a flag on it. As soon as I pulled it on, I had 2 distinct and simultaneous thoughts, the first being, "Where's the rest of it?" and, "I don't think there's enough of it for me to even get a wedgie......awesome." I stepped out from the tent and whether he was holding back a sneeze or trying not to throw up from laughing so hard, my cadet buddy slightly nodded his approval. "It......uh........fits.......?....I guess....." I nodded, not sure if he was asking to telling. "All right smart ass," I said, "Your turn." He disappeared behind the tent flap with the largest sunga the woman had in her tent; GG (grande-grande). It was bright red with some white stripes and with his 6'4", 210 pound frame, I wasn't entirely sure it had enough grande in it.
He emerged......victorious. Well victorious for him. It fit. For me, not so much. To put it politely, there are just some things you can't un-see. We put our shorts back on over our newly purchased swimwear and headed back to the beach. Tanning time.
More stories from the beach and a little Rio night life next time. Beach in Portuguese is, "praia".
Tchau for now!
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