I swear I'm going to pistol-whip the next person who says shenanigans

Today is St. Patrick's Day (and my 30th day on the road), so we are putting on our finest green garb and heading to an Irish pub in Ipanema called Shenanigans. We've got two more nights in Rio, our longest stop on the trip to-date, and we want to make the most of it. Tomorrow we'll kill what's left of the alcohol we bought on our way in at duty free.

Yesterday we took a short 2.5 hour bus ride to Cabo Frio (Cold Cape), a quiet beach town first discovered by Americo Vespucci in 1503. Lots of people fish here (Phil and Auggie got in on the act), and the water was clearer and calmer than in Rio. It was nice to get away from Rio for a day and escape to a place where we weren't constantly worried about a potential strangle-mugging.


I should give Rio a little bit more credit. It isn't nearly as dangerous as every guide book and self-proclaimed Rio expert had warned us about before our arrival. It's like any other big city- if you're stupid and go where you shouldn't when you shouldn't, then maybe you deserve to get mugged. We travel mostly as a group of 4, which is helpful - although one of our four is a giant Chinaman, so we are usually a walking bulls' eye - but we've been careful and haven't run into any issues.

Overall, we've come a long way since our first night of frantically searching for a place to sleep. Our apartment is only a 30 second walk from Copacabana beach, and we've done just about all that Rio has to offer (Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf Mtn, Soccer game at Maracana Stadium) except a Favella tour. None of us really saw the novelty in taking a tour of a slum.


So it's been a good week here. We're all looking forward to tonight's shenanigans (ja ja ja) and drinking some green beer. Still, I'm beached out and ready to move south to Buenos Aires.