As we begin day 4 of the trip, I can report that the Rio experience has been a bit of a mixed bad of both good and bad although I can blame little of the negative on Rio itself.

The bad started with our friends from American Airlines being unable to successfully transfer our luggage from the first leg of our flight to the second.  This was not entirely unexpected given the sprint Jeff and I needed to make through the Miami airport just to catch the connecting flight.  What was unexpected was AA’s inability and seemingly lack of desire to get us our bags once they made it to Rio.  After five or six calls to customer service revealing the same status of “scheduled for delivery”  (and after three days in the same clothes) I took matters into my own hands by calling the delivery company and squaring things away.  Our bags arrived last night just two hours after I made that call.  Apparently AA reps are not permitted to make international calls.  How can that be?

On top of this, the weather hasn’t been the best.  It’s rained quite a bit which normally I don’t mind but beach time has been limited and the view from the major sites have been hampered a bit.  Nevertheless, Jeff and I are having a great time and as I said, Rio is little to blame for the frustrations.

We kicked off Monday walking around Ipanema during the day, soaking up the local vibe and enjoying our first taste of Brazilian cuisine at lunch.  At night we toured Ipanema and Copacabana beaches with the aid of a Rio native named Tati.  We met Tati through a friend of Jeff’s and along with being an invaluable tour guide and source of local knowledge, she has been great fun to hang out with.

After knocking out some errands in the morning on Tuesday, we spent the afternoon at the beach with Tati and her cousin Simone.  The sun was scorching hot but the ocean water felt great, and I came away from the afternoon with only a slight sunburn.  At night Tati and Simone took us to our first official Brazilian churrascaria where we stuffed our faces with more food than anyone should consume in one sitting.  The night was topped off with drinking and dancing with Tati and a group of her friends at a bar in Lapa with a live Samba band.

Yesterday Jeff and I spent most of the day on our own on a guided tour of Rio with visits to Sugarloaf Mountain and Corcovado, site of the famous “Christ the Redeemer” statue.  While the city tour was quite poor and the organizational skills of our tour guides even worse, the views from Sugarloaf Mountain kept the day from being a total wash.

Today is our last full day in Rio before moving on to Salvador.  It’s raining now so we’ll try to keep ourselves as occupied and dry as possible in the afternoon before heading out to Copacabana tonight to celebrate New Year’s.  Supposedly the firewoks display is unrivaled throughout the world and is witnessed by nearly 2 million people – a number that boggles my mind.

One last note before we head out… as was the case last year, Jeff is blogging with more frequency, detail and humor so be sure to check out his stories as well: http://travel.jeffnyveen.com/.