2021 Rio Camp: Day 5
Oct 29, 2021
Skipped breakfast.
Eating way too much on this trip and my gis aren't going to fit next week if I keep eating 3 times a day. No gi training in the morning was an open Q&A with Caio. He answered any and all questions people had about no gi. It was interesting hearing his thoughts and what questions were easy to answer and which were hard. A lot had to do with not just what you do in a specific situation but also what your opponent is doing. Endo, Ender and I along with our friends from back home newlyweds, Bronte and Pocholo, then took off to drop off more laundry and to go back to Casa do Acai to try the acai again. This time the acai was even better! My favorite of the trip so far! We hurried back towards the hotel. Ender, Bronte, and Pocholo went straight to Bibi's for another round of acai. Endo and I went to our room to get ready for our excursion to Chrst the Redeemer. Caio had been putting off this trip hoping clearer weather would come. It did not. We've had cloudy, rainy days every day this trip. We took a train up the the statue. Once up there we only had 25 minutes to grab souvenirs and pictures. Endo and I took our gis with us so we could get some pics repping our school T3MA. Unfortunately it was very cloudy. Luckily, we'll be going again next week during the 2nd camp. Instead of taking the train back down we walked back to our vans. Ender walked with me helping me on steep parts because my old knees don't climb down hills very well these days. At the bottom we split into 2 groups. Those that wanted to go back to the hotel for gi training and those that wanted to visit the Selaron Steps. I opted for training. We worked on triangle baratoplata from cross sleeve De La Riva. Endo felt very at home with these techniques, where I struggled. It's been interesting to see over our bjj journey what clicks with him and what clicks with me. Our training has been very similar but there are concepts one of us will immediately understand but the other struggles with. It's neat to see how differently our brains process the same details. After class is was a quick shower and then off to dinner. We had to trade in the 3 vans we usually use for smaller cars that could fit in the roads up to the top of a favela Vidigal where we were having dinner. We climbed up winding narrow roads until we got to Bar Da Laje. There we were greeted with sprawling views of the city lit up at night. We had our choice of 4 dishes for dinner. Feijoada (Brazilian Black Bean Stew) a traditional dish in the favela. Filet mignon, chicken, or vegan spaghetti. Endo had the feijoada and loved it, said it reminded him of comfort food. I had the spaghetti, which was not very good. Oh well. We piled back in our cars to come down from the favela. The roads are so narrow with tight turns. We encounter 2 cars coming up the hill while we were trying to go down. Both were not going to fit. We were at a standstill with much flashing of lights and the driver's yelling at each other until finally the car in front of us backed down the hill so we could pass. Tomorrow is beach day!
