Arriving at the Olympics 2016

We are both very excited about starting the Olympic leg of our year, although sad it's the final stage. We are spending the day in Panama for flight reasons and then heading in to Rio on Sunday morning. 

We haven't seen all that much of the first week action - partly due to spending 4 days of it on the Inca Trek. We did excitedly manage to see some of the Opening Ceremony, the night before we started the trek, although it was a tricky start. We had heard the hotel we would be staying at didn't have televisions in the rooms. When we walked in though there was a big TV in the lobby, although it was pointed out that it was unplugged and indeed through a combination of gestures the lady behind the desk got the message across that it didn't work. 

Someone said that the sweet shop round the corner had a TV showing it so we lurked there for a little while until it just became weird! 

We then headed to the main square to peer in the restaurants and bars looking for one with a TV. In the corner of the square, rather hidden we found a small restaurant with a big TV whose lady was willing to switch from TLC to ESPN for us. We ordered a Sprite and a beer and she went out to buy them from somewhere else to serve to us! 

We got in a good hour of footage, making up our own interpretations of the dancing as our Spanish has not reached a level to understand what the commentators were saying. We saw the start of the countries coming out and then went to join the rest of our tour group for dinner - delightfully for us it turned out we had our own room with a tv so we could carry on watching! It was fun wondering what the name of our nation was in Portuguese to know when we would be coming out! 

While on the trek each of our group predicted how many medals their nation would have won when we were back in wifi land. We finished the trek and spent a few hours before catching the train in a lovely comfy restaurant and big sofas with a tv and four Olympics channels. It was just what my brain wanted to settle into in my body's exhausted state. 

From then on, we have caught bits of coverage on tv. We are quite up on how the South American countries are doing. We had watched quite a bit of the cycling time trial, with Chris Froome about a minute away from finishing when ESPN switched to watching Argentina in the volleyball! And can you guess who the biggest star is of the Olympics in Argentina? Well we feel it's Juan Martin Del Potro in the tennis, as seemingly every 10 minutes a banner has appeared on the screen telling us when his next match is!! Some of the South American countries seem big in to their handball so we have watched quite a lot of that which has been useful in learning what's going on before we are there watching it on Monday. 

So we arrive in Rio on Sunday morning and are going to go in search of new tickets. The stadiums don't look very full, but we are not sure how easy (or expensive) it will be to buy them there. Even if we don't get any extra we are still excited by the events we will be seeing:

Monday night, midnight UK - handball

Tuesday,  6.30pm UK - basketball

Wednesday all afternoon/evening - women's golf

Thursday, 3pm - no tickets but planning to cheer on the Brownlees in the men's triathlon (we have our Yorkshire glad ready to wave!)

Friday, 1pm UK - canoe sprint

Saturday - same again for cheering on the women's triathlon (3pm) and then we have tickets for the athletics at night (midnight UK), hoping that Mo stays fit and shines in the 5000m. 

So as it stands, don't strain your eyes looking for us too closely in the crowds on the tv! 

Then we leave on Sunday getting back to the UK on Monday 22nd August.