The entrance to the Metro looked more like a department store, with a huge graphic of a pretty Brazilian girl looking happy and “mobile.” We followed our noses until we had found the ticket booth, adjoined by several closed snack stands. Except one, and it had the water I needed.

The rest of the group stood around the ticket booth trying to figure out what to buy while I blissfully caved in the flimsy plastic bottle with a rapid evacuation of liquid. By this time, they had figured out what tickets to buy and exactly where we were to go. It was actually very simple. The maps aboard the train were easy to read, and after we disembarked, we would have to walk about 6 blocks or so to the beach. Not bad.

The car was full of people in relaxed gear. No businesspeople. Many pairs of Havaianas.

On the route to the beach from the station, we encountered sidewalk vendors of all kinds, including a raw coconut lady, who sold us a couple of cups of the real thing. Inside a large mobile ice chest, she had several pre-drilled green coconuts ready to pour. Primitive, yet sophisticated! You could buy the whole coconut complete with straw, or buy the small cup, which we did. Still glyceriney tasting, but I could just FEEL the electrolytes pulsing through my system.

Somehow, Robo, Pettus and the kids had gotten ahead of Jean and me, and when we caught up to them, it was at a street corner covered with a plush high rise condominium. They excitedly reported that they had seen a Playboy Brazil model leave the condo and cruise toward the beach!

Patricia had pointed her out as what the Brazilian woman’s ideal for legs would be. The doorman to the condo had been listening from inside his grated entrance, and told them that she was a playmate. He also asked if they’d like to see her pictures, because he happened to have the magazine. Well, duh! Of course they did, and when Jean and I came up, he was more than happy to show us, too. Whee! What a claim to fame for the poor sap. But we were all thinking that Copacabana was gonna be packed with her ilk! We hustled on.

The beach had been expanded in 1960 by new sand from nearby Botafogo Bay. After this, there was no stopping the popularity and fame to be enjoyed by Copacabana and Ipanema.

The place was lined with various local vendors, and tiny food and beverage joints. We managed to find an empty table under an umbrella at Big Bob’s Hamburgers. (Weird, huh? We found out later that the burgers were, too.) Pettus and Patricia had bathing suits on under their clothes, but the rest of us looked like landlubbers.

Robo decided to take his shoes off and walk on the hot sand. Meanwhile, Jean and I had wandered out toward the water, she taking off her Crocs, me leaving mine on, including the socks. I took shots of Jean and the surrounding fauna. Uhh. Where was that Playmate? Cause there wasn’t anybody here that looked like that!

A-HA! A towel sitter! The place was crawling with ’em. And butt brushers, to boot. Apparently NONE of these people had read the books Jean had read. We began to figure that they were probably tourists, and had scared most of the pretty girls away to Ipanema Beach next door. We also learned that Copacabana and even Ipanema were no longer pinnacles of dazzling Brazilian beach beauty. The glitterati had moved on to Búzios, three hours up the road.

By this time, I had already stepped in enough water to completely soak my socks inside my Crocs. So Jean took my picture.

Hey WAIT!  I didn’t have a towel with me! Oh. Wrong guy. Maybe this is it.

There! All righty. Beach: nice. Water: cold. Brazilian hotties: nottie. We decided to go back up to Big Bob’s tables and hang around while the others had their Copacabana experiences. While we were sitting there, I had brief 12-word conversations with some of the people sitting around us. Kids were coming up constantly trying to sell us candy and other trifles, which we refused politely. But when a guy came up with a bunch of wood carvings, particularly the wooden mortar and pestle for making caipirinhas, I was suddenly interested. I asked if he had made them, and he said “yes,” but I don’t think he did. However, the 12 bucks American that I paid for it was well worth it whether he made it or not. It’s already received a severe workout here in the States, and is one of those things I would have killed myself had I not gotten.

Pettus and Robo were ready to go off to the beach for how long, we didn’t know, or really care. It was comfortable watching the pigeons wander around in the shade of the tables. We did nothing more but actually enjoy the sun, look at all the people and lovingly mother over our flea market goods and my new caipirinha maker. I felt like Jean’s grandmother, Big Mama, (also Carol’s grandmother, God rest her soul), who used to love to sit in the mall and watch the people for hours.

I love in this picture how one pigeon is coming into the frame on the left just as one is leaving the frame on the right. These Brazilian birds were so much better photographically trained than the ones in the U.S., I’m convinced.

Carol had given Daniel some money to buy jeans for school while we were in Rio, being that they weren’t available in Salvador. Somehow, D&P found them at Ipanema beach, a mile or so down the road. Before Patricia got into her bathing suit, I took their picture by Big Bob’s.

It finally hit me the other night who Patricia keeps reminding me of! She’s got this whole Scarlett Johansson thing going on! I saw the actress on some talk show the other night, and it was like a ton of bricks dropping on my head.

 After everybody split, Jean and I sat at the table contentedly, me drying my socks in the sun on one of Big Bob’s chairs. I saw a cute beachgoer and offer her for your inspection. The incredulous, odor-detecting smell on her face can only indicate that she has caught her boyfriend sitting on a towel.

There was a team of volleyballers warming up for a match to our right.

That was all I had written when I first posted this story. Blog teamster Estado Coco Robo has since written in:

You may already have this coming up, but in case not, it’s probably worth mentioning somewhere around “There was a team of volleyballers…” that the volleyball was soccer-style — feet, head, chest, but no hands. I did a quick look-up on it. it’s called futvolei (FOOCH-volley).

That Robo has class. Notice how he allowed for the fact that I may have been planning to mention the style of volleyball going on. No way in hell did I know anything about nothing! That’s why I put these specious facts out there like targets: just waiting for clarification or refutation. It’s fun! It’s educational!    Let’s return to the newly-enriched “narrative.”

The futvolei players were a brief diversion just in time for Pettus and Robo to return from the beach and Jean from the public locker room under the street, where she tried to wash the sand off of her feet. It was gonna cost 2 Reais, so she declined and came back up to Big Bob’s to give us a huffy account about the ripoff going on downstairs.

Yep. Time to go. But D&P had just left only about 30 minutes earlier. What would the plan be?