HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: The views
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing
Breakfast is included in the rate of the hotel and we have to say it is the best we have had on tour by far. 10 different kinds of rolls, scrambled eggs, deviled sausages, ham, cheese and platters of fruit. What a spread. There are a few drunk and hungover faces around the breakfast room this morning and this is exactly why I didn’t want to go out and glad that I didn’t last night.
I am on day 84 of the South America portion of the trip.
I leave in day 88 of the trip and rejoin on day 115 in Manaus.
When I return there will be 42 days left……. Where is the time going?
12 noon is a funny time for a day tour, it sort of disrupts the morning but we went for a small walk around the area, stopping at the supermarket and I needed to also buy a new pair of thongs to replace the ones that I broke in Paraty. There was a shop not far from the supermarket that had Haviannas and I left 10 minutes later with 2 pairs under my arm. They are a Brazil product after all. I have to say they aren’t as comfy as my crocs, but I need to give them a chance as I have been wearing the same shoes for the last 7 months, so anything is going to feel weird after wearing one pair of shoes all the time.
Walking around the streets there is a party air about the place. There are people still drunk or are in the process of getting drunk. There are people dressed as flight attendants, babies, ghosts, maids, nurses you name it there are people wearing it and for those less adventurous or not as prepared there are people walking around with all sorts of head pieces, hats, costume pieces and eye wear of all types. They all look so cool and I think tonight is going to be a crazy night that is for sure. Shelly and Sandy would love this place with all the fancy dress get up walking around the streets. We have seen some creative outfits so far.
Leaving the hotel in out mini-van at noon our first stop was Christ the Redeemer is a statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro and is considered the largest Art Deco statue in the world and the 5th largest statue of Jesus in the world. It is 39.6 meters tall, including its 9.5 meters pedestal, and 30 meters wide. It weighs 635 tons and is located at the peak of the 700-metre (2,300 ft.) Corcovado Mountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park overlooking the city. A symbol of Brazilian Christianity, the statue has become an icon for Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. It is made of reinforced concrete and soapstone, and was constructed between 1922 and 1931.
The ideas for erecting a large statue a top Corcovado was first suggested in the mid-1850s, when Catholic priest Pedro Maria Boss requested financing from Princess Isabel to build a large religious monument. Princess Isabel did not think much of the idea and it was dismissed in 1889, when Brazil became a republic with laws mandating the separation of church and state. The second proposal for a landmark statue on the mountain was made in 1921 by the Catholic Circle of Rio. The group organized an event called Semana do Monumento ("Monument Week") to attract donations and collect signatures to support the building of the statue. The donations came mostly from Brazilian Catholics. The designs considered for the "Statue of the Christ" included a representation of the Christian cross, a statue of Jesus with a globe in his hands, and a pedestal symbolizing the world. The statue of Christ the Redeemer with open arms, a symbol of peace was chosen.
The decision was made to build the structure out of reinforced concrete (designed by Albert Caquot) instead of steel, more suitable for the cross-shaped statue. The outer layers are soapstone, chosen for its enduring qualities and ease of use. Construction took nine years, from 1922 to 1931 and cost the equivalent of US$250,000 ($3,068,097 in 2012). The monument was opened on October 12, 1931. The statue was meant to be lit by a battery of floodlights triggered remotely by shortwave radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, stationed 5,700 miles (9,200 km) away in Rome, but poor weather affected the signal and it had to be lit by workers in Rio.
In October 2006, on the statue's 75th anniversary, Archbishop of Rio Cardinal Eusebio Oscar Scheid consecrated a chapel (named after the patron saint of Brazil—Nossa Senhora Aparecida, or "Our Lady of the Apparition,") under the statue. This allows Catholics to hold baptisms and weddings there.
The statue was struck by lightning during a violent electrical storm on Sunday, February 10, 2008 and suffered some damage on the fingers, head and eyebrows. A restoration effort was put in place by the Rio de Janeiro state government and archdiocese to replace some of the outer soapstone layers and repair the lightning rods installed on the statue.
There are a few ways that you can get to Christ the Redeemer. You can go up via a train that tracks up the side of Corcovado Mountain, you can walk (yeah right) or you can do what we did and you can drive to the ticket booths and then you need to take the National Park vans to the base of the statue. We were given 30 minutes here. It was so busy, which would be expected with Carnival officially starting today. There are 2 ways that you can get to the statue which is via a lift, that had a queue a mile long, or you can walk the 100 odd steps to get you up which is the option we took as time was of the essence. The views from up here are AMAZING, and you have to have good timing and a little patience as the weather up here changes at the drop of a hat as the clouds come and go all day long. When we first got up there we had a great view for around 10 minutes and then it all disappeared in a white cloud for the rest of the time we were up there. This also includes the statue itself with clouds passing around it too. There were a lot of people up here, so I wasn’t able to get my jump with the statue, so I ran with the next best thing and I got it with one of the signs at the top.
So we went back down the same way we got up and out next stop was one of the most well-known cathedrals in the city The Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro (Portuguese: Catedral Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro orCatedral de São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro), is the seat of the archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is dedicated to Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro. The current church was built between 1964 and 1979 and replaced a series of old churches that had served as cathedrals since 1676. It is located in the center of the city. Conical in form and with a 96 meters internal diameter and an overall height of 75 meters, it has a standing-room capacity of 20,000 people. The cathedral's four rectilinear stained glass windows soar 64 meters from floor to ceiling. It was a beautiful church and dress code was not an issue here.
From here we travelled to the steps that we had visited yesterday. There are 250 steps measuring 125 meters long which are covered in over 2000 tiles collected from over 60 countries around the world. No sooner than one section of the steps are 'finished', Selarón starts work on another section, constantly changing it so that it is an ever evolving piece of art. Selarón considers the work as "never complete" and claims that "This crazy and unique dream will only end on the day of my death".
Originally, tiles for the work were scavenged from various construction sites and piles of urban waste found on the Rio streets. Today however, most of the tiles are donated by visitors from all around the world. Of the 2000+ tiles, 300-odd are hand painted by Selarón depicting a pregnant African woman.
Our next and last stop was Sugarloaf Mountain. It is a peak situated in Rio de Janeiro at the mouth of Guanabara Bay on a peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean. Rising 396 meters above the harbor, its name is said to refer to its resemblance to the traditional shape of concentrated refined loaf sugar. The mountain is only one of several monolithic morros (hills) of granite and quartz that rise straight from the water's edge around Rio de Janeiro. A glass-walled cable car, capable of holding 65 passengers, runs along a 1400-metre route between the peaks of Pão de Açúcar and Morro da Urca every 20 minutes. The original cable car line was built in 1912 and rebuilt around 1972/1973 and in 2008. The cable car leaves a ground station located at the base of the Babilônia hill, to the Urca hill and then to the Pão de Açúcar.
To reach the summit, passengers take two cable cars. The first ascends to the shorter Morro da Urca, 220 meters high. The second car ascends to Pão de Açúcar. The Italian-made bubble-shaped cars offer passengers 360-degree views of the surrounding city. The climb takes three minutes from start to finish. Departures are available every 20 minutes between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm and the fare is RS$4 for the whole way to Pão de Açúcar.
The view from up here was more amazing than Christ the Redeemer. The only draw-back was the time of day, as it was just past 5pm and the sun was just starting to set in the wrong spot and it was making the photos a little too over exposed. The view of Guanabara Bay is one of the highlights. It is an oceanic bay. On its western shore lies the city of Rio de Janeiro, and on its eastern shore the cities of Niterói and São Gonçalo. Guanabara Bay is the second largest bay in area in Brazil (after the All Saints' Bay), at 412 square kilometers with a perimeter of 143 kilometers. Guanabara Bay is 31 kilometers long and 28 kilometers wide at its maximum. Its 1.5 kilometers wide mouth is flanked at the eastern tip by the Pico do Papagaio (Parrot's Peak) and the western tip by Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf).
This was definitely a highlight up here and if you are in Rio a definite must. We made our back to the hotel getting back at 6.15pm with a quick pit stop at the dress/costume shop across the road we got some feathers to wear around tonight and blend in with the festivities.
We had arranged to meet everyone at 7pm for dinner and to go and check out one of the street parties in the Lapa area. Things were really start to fire up and there were a lot of people starting to hit the streets. We are lucky we left at 7pm as we just found a table at a bar not far from the hotel that had set up temporary seating and tables. There would have been 50 tables and it was busy. The menu was only in Portuguese so we ordered what we knew which was pizza, fries and sandwiches. There was a mix up with the order and our waiter guy bought out a plate of sausage and onion fried together. Well I am not one to waste food so I took it and was only able to eat half the plate and I don’t think I will be able to look at another sausage for at least 12 months. But it was delicious…….
After dinner we started our walk looking for some live music where we didn’t have to fight the throngs of people but still be in the thick of things. This seemed harder than we first thought but we walked around and just sucked up the atmosphere. There were areas that had drums playing, some areas had boom boxes blaring music but there was never a shortage of people dancing, singing and living the moment. There are portable drink sellers everywhere with their large eskies full of ice and beer and soft drinks. They have a deal where you get 2 cans of beer for 5RS which is like 2.50AUD, for 2 beers!!!!
No wonder people are drunk all the time walking the streets. The drinks sellers could easily bump up their drink pieces and make some more money, heaven knows they work hard for it. The city is on 24 hour activity. You always see the drinks people pushing crates of beer up and down the streets to their stalls and ice race by in bicycles before it melts. That is one thing that the Brazilians do well and that is keeping their drinks cold, like icy cold, all the time. Especially when it is so hot, it refreshing to have a cold drink in your hands, even if it only lasts like that for 15 minutes.
Paul, Liz and Kate have been collecting wrist bands from each country they visit. Brazil still had to be purchased and we saw this Rasta looking guy with a stall of them. The trick to the wrist bands is it has to be the countries colours. This guy didn’t have any but he said he could make 3 and to come back in 15 minutes. Well he looked like a weed smoking hippie, actually that is exactly what he was, so we were going to be interested on just how the finished product would look. There were also a lot of caiparinya stalls around here as well and with the boat ride and mess of Paraty far far behind me, well 2 days ago; it was time to jump back on the caiparinya band wagon. They only cost 5RS (2.50AUD) and are made fresh in front of you with lots and lots of ice…..ah just what the doctor ordered. We headed back to our dope smoking pal and he was still weaving his first wrist band, so we told him we would come back in a few hours and headed back to the hotel for a toilet stop, the up side of having the street party in the same street as your hotel and not having to use the DISGUSTING port-a-loo’s that would even make Kenny cringe. Kate decided this was enough for her, so with her tucked up in bed, getting some directions from reception on how to get to Centro where a concert was due to start at midnight was about to kick off.
It only took us 20 minutes to walk to Centro and there was a massive stage with a 10 piece band and there were singers and microphone people entertaining the crowd all night. It was a great setting actually as it was in a square of sorts with us surrounded by 2 old colonial buildings lit up in all their glory and the city on the other side. So we found a patch of pavement with a beer guy setting up his esky directly behind us (handy) we were all set for the night to people watch, boogie and drink out 2.50 beers till 2am in the morning. The costumes that are walking the streets are just fantastic and you always get a good laugh. We were accosted by some male nurses at one point and also a big dice? Out of all the things to dress as a dice? Well each to their own I suppose. But what a great night and we all made it back safe with camera and money in hand it was a successful night all round.
I can see why this is called the biggest party in the world. It just doesn’t stop and with 1.2 million people hitting the streets each day I am sure no one can boast a party guest list like that one.
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