Rio de Janeiro is one of those places where you need to ride the taxi to get places. It’s surprisingly inexpensive. A trip across town was only $15 (at least a 20 minute taxi ride).

All of the taxi drivers could spot us as tourists a mile away and would rush in line to take us to our destination. The fact that they couldn’t speak English a distant concern.

Inevitibly the taxi driver would ask us whether we had tried a Caipirinha drink.

All of them asked us this.

So we’d say, that yes, we had tried one, and then they would proceed to tell us how it is made, how it got to be so popular, and why they liked it.

You could see a glint in their eyes. You could tell they had plans to get one after work.

Then the driver would proceed to tell us not to drink more than 3 of them in one sitting.

Usually they would mutter something about first hand experience when I asked them how they knew that. Then they were silent the rest of the trip.

Did I mention it’s the national drink of Brasil? I tried one and it pretty much knocked me out, but I hadn’t eaten anything in about 10 hours either and had to go and find some emergency food rations. Without that little meat-roll thingamabob I’m sure I would have passed out. Sheesh.