Back in April, we had found a promotion with Gate 1 Travel for a weeklong trip to Peru over Christmas. We hopped at the chance to see Machu Picchu! Fast forward a few months, and we were ready to go. Two weeks before we were set to depart we got an email from Gate 1 informing us that there was political unrest. The Peruvian president had tried to dissolve the constitution – and had been arrested. People had started to protest. Fast forward until 4 days before our trip was set to depart. Their defense department had shut down inter-country travel, basically, they were trying to make it impossible for their citizens to be able to get around the country for protests. Gate 1 made the decision to cancel our trip, rightfully so.

We had a bit of a heads up that this could happen – so we had thought of a few backups. In case you’re new here, we have a few different bucket lists running. We are trying to get to all of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World and all of the different continents. So we immediately started looking at South American trips. We couldn’t find anything with Gate 1 – but they had put in a refund request for us once the government shut down travel. So we decided to use that money to buy airfare to… Rio de Janeiro!

Rio checked two boxes off of our list – new continent and housed a wonder of the world – Christ the Redeemer. We booked this trip on Friday, 12/16 and our flight departed on Tuesday, 12/20. It was the most chaotic time frame for us. We had mentally prepared for months for our Peru trip. We knew very little about Brazil. Except we knew our first barrier would be the language. Neither of us know any Portuguese – but we both had taken Spanish classes so we can understand it well enough.

The first day of our trip involved flying to Houston – where we had a few hours connection before flying straight to Rio, which was a 10.5 hour flight! Our travel was seamless, but of course, any long-haul flight is never fun. Neither of us slept well – we arrived in Rio around 9:30 am in the morning on Wednesday 12/21.

We made it through customs pretty quickly – but we had two obstacles to figure out pretty quickly. 1) I had read ahead of time that a lot of the bank ATMs in Rio did not accept US debit cards – other bloggers recommended getting cash at the airport. 2) Figuring out where Ubers pick up at the airport. I have a gal on my team who is from Brazil and had sent a ton of advice and recommendations ahead of time and warned us that Ubers were cheaper, but harder to get to.

Our quest to find an ATM basically led us directly to where the Ubers pick us up. The first ATM declined my transaction, but the second one worked! Phew! We were on our way!

Rio welcomed us with a very rainy day. We got to our hotel (Hilton Rio de Janeiro Copacabana) and weren’t able to check in right away. So we went to the hotel restaurant to hang out for a little bit while they prepared our room. After we got checked in we took a quick power nap and freshened up.

The rain was supposed to let up – but it hadn’t yet so we took a cab to a restaurant. We got a taste of our first Caipirinha – which is made with a sugarcane liquor and lime. Super tasty – and I think I found my new favorite drink!

The rain cleared up and we walked our way back to the hotel because it had slowed to a sprinkle. Our hotel had a great location – close to the beach and lots of fun restaurants nearby.

We were exhausted and turned in for the night.

Up Next:
Rio de Janeiro city tour
-Christ the Redeemer
-Sugar Loaf