I hit Rio Sul for the first time on Day 2, doing the mandatory shopping trip with the fav. It is a great mall, although I was really surprised by the prices on the electronics. Shitty 1.3 megapixel digital cams were going for the equivalent of $300 US, what a ripoff. Definitely make sure that you bring every piece of electronics (notebook, camera, etc) with you on your trip because you do not want to have to buy something down there.
Day 3 started out about the same as Day 2, except in the afternoon I finally decided to act like a regular tourist for a couple of hours and went up to Corcovado. The views are awesome from up there, and I went on a day when there were no clouds to be found. The drive up is a bit rough, and took much longer than I thought. Bouncing up down the side of the mountain on a cobblestone street, wow what great planning by the Rio tourist bureau. I think we paid the taxi driver 70 or 80 reais for the trip from Copa up and back, with him waiting for the hour and change that we stayed there. Another word to the wise, make sure you have your taxi driver just wait for you while you walk around, it's much, much cheaper than taking one taxi up and then negotiating with another taxi to get back down.
It is worth, for the record, to state that on both Day 2 and Day 3 I went both nights to Terrazo and left the fav sleeping in the room. I even got Aldaron to do the same on Night 3, and getting that guy away from his wife is sometimes pretty hard!
My general observations on the two-day honeymoon - I generally enjoyed it, although on the second full day I was really thinking about how nice it would be to be at 4x4 or any terma, for that matter. While very jealous of other garotas and any mongers I happened to be hanging with, the fav was fairly low maintenance. The programa garotas are all champion sleepers (I guess because they spend so much time in bed!) and combine that with a great place like the Marriott, with double-thick mattresses and down pillows and comforters, large bathtubs, nice robes, etc they are basically happy as clams just to be there.
My fav and every other GP are also the biggest chowhounds I've run into in a while. I hit the concierge lounge at least 3 times a day, one to have free breakfast in the morning and to grab some sodas and water, a second beverage run in the afternoon and then a third run in the evening for appetizers and more drinks. My fav thought that the concierge lounge was the most awesome concept she had ever come across and had no qualms about loading up on whatever they happened to have laid out when we went in there.
So basically, like most women around the world, garotas can be kept very happy by supplying a nice bed to sleep in (for like 14 hours a day), plenty of eats (I brought Dove and Ghirardelli chocolates and every time I looked around, a couple more empty wrappers could be found) and drinks and some television.
However, at the end of Day 3, I had generally come to the conclusion that, while I was having fun, I did not come to Rio to hang with one girl. My safado instincts were now running the show, and I started thinking about all the girls I wasn't fucking, and suddenly the fav seemed really boring, and the Marriott seemed boring, and just like millenia ago when a partially-domesticated canine would leave the campfire and slip back into the woods, tomorrow I would rejoin the pack of safados who were doing their best to despoil the natural resources of Rio de Janeiro.
