At the Copa-Copacabana...

               It has been, indeed, a long,tiring, yet very fulfilling day in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. It may be a lot to digest, so don't mind if I feed it to you in bits and pieces. 

          My day all started with a pungent shot of black coffee, and then we were off. My parents and I began our excursion by walking several blocks through the bustling streets of the city until we finally reached the famed Copacabana Beach. Now, I know how much people can exaggerate about Brazil’s beaches, but it was almost as if we were transported

to a different planet. It was in a word: unearthly. The sand was of a pale, golden hue. It was soft, and firm, and fine. The tint of the waves crashing upon the sand was not of the insipid, murky brown, or dull green, but rather a lucid aquamarine. The bottle-green waves would roll lazily by, until they finally crashed down upon the  warm shore with a white flourish of foam and bubbles. Finally, to make the scene all the more picturesque, majestic and stone brown mountains, crowned with verdant vegetation, loomed above the landscape. Their beauty was further compounded by the numerous  reddish brown houses on the sides of them. My mouth agape, I stared at the city which emb

raced the beaches. Adjacent to these majestic, and awe inspiring mountains,were equally proud, hotel complexes, which were futilely trying to compete against the staggering beauty of nature.

      As we walked quietly alongside the boardwalk, I found myself humming the tune to an old Barry Manilow song.  "At the Copa-copacabana, the hottest spot north of Havana!" I believe I kept this song repeating softly in my head until we finally left Copcabana and  reached Ipanema.

     Telling from my tell tale calluses and aching feet, we must have walked more than seven miles in our first day in Rio, for we passed all the three famed beaches, Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon.

           Surprisingly enough, each surpassed the others in full, with their spectacular views of the twin mountains and bottle green waters.

             After countless hours and miles of walking, I eventually peered down at my feet, cursing the searing pain within them, only to suddenly  notice an intriguing pattern beneath them. All of this time in the famed beaches of Rio de Janiero, and I had not even cared to glance at the ground beneath me. It was a magnificent black and white pattern which had black curved waves sweep gracefully among the white waves. Each consisted of tiny pieces of a mosaic cut in jagged pieces. I stopped walking for a while and wondered how anyone could possibly put each individual tile in the board walk to make such a vast stretch of pavement.