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Published: October 30th 2012
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Todays adventure took us to Corcovado, or 'Hunchback', which is the mountain where Christ the Redeemer is. Heard from a few people from the hostel that you can actually hike up to the statue so myself and a friend decided this would be a good idea. We got the bus through town to the Parque Lage which is a public park. Inside here is an incredible mansion that is home to an art school. From here you walk through round the back and up some steps to a guard post who make you sign in and give you a map of the route up to the statue. The trail started pretty straight forward so thought that the 710m ascent would be easy. I was wrong. A few minutes into the trail there were crashes all around us so we stopped and we were being surrounded by monkeys who were rather curious to see what we were up to. I say monkeys, from the photos it may be blatantly obvious that these are not actually monkeys but some other species, but for now we'll call them monkeys. They were pretty brave and got within a meter or so of us. We walked
past several waterfalls which were really just huge rocks with water trickling down but still quite cool. Things got much, much steeper as we progressed. We came to a point where there was a metal chain that you had to use to get up the rocks as it was so steep. After about an hour we reached the train tracks of the rack train that sensible people take to get up the mountain. We then ended up on a road that wound it's way to the top. At this point we were in the clouds which was an incredible sight. The wind would bring all this mist crashing over us. About an hour and a half after setting off we reached the top and walked up a few flights of stairs to the statue.
The statue is 39 meters high and was completed in 1931. It was an incredible sight, made that much more special because of the epic pilgrimage we had just made to get there. We had to fight our way through a solid wall of Russian tourists all posing in front of him with their arms spread wide. We were above the clouds, which looked like
a thick blanket covering most of Rio. Weren't able to appreciate the view down onto the city because of the clouds but the clouds themselves were pretty cool to look at. After the large group of Russians left the place was quite empty so we hung out in the sun and just started up at this massive statue of Jesus. Decided on getting the bus back down, which only dropped us off halfway so thought it'd be fun to walk the rest of the way. According to one of the people who worked there it was a 1km walk. I think he actually meant 1 hour, which we made into about an hour and a half.
There was a big Halloween boat party that evening so bought our tickets for that. In the end 17 of us went from the hostel. The party was through Rio Boat Party and was insane. It left at 12 from a pier a little way out from town so we all drank together at the hostel and got taxis. It got back in at 4am and was a really messy and fun night. Caipirinhas all night and dancing on a rocking boat with
no one steering was incredible fun. Their slogan is 'what happens on the boat stays on the boat', so i'll leave it at that.
It's now the day after the boat party and most of the hostel is hungover. After peeling ourselves from our beds we all headed to the beach and festered there for most of the day. Lying in the sun and being thrown about by the big waves coming in was a brilliant way to get over our aching heads. Being shown up at football by the locals was also quite amusing. We thought going to a pizza and pasta buffet for dinner was a good idea so we did. It was around $100HKD and the pizzas just kept coming round and being dumped on our plates. We were warned before hand and had saved space for the 'desert pizzas' which were chocolate pizzas topped with strawberrys, m&m's, white chocolate, chocolate flakes and ice cream and several other combinations. We ate so much we started getting delirious with all the sugar we'd eaten.
Decided to stay at this hostel a few more nights. Was supposed to be moving to another which is further into the
city and away from the beach, but the atmosphere here is amazing so going to enjoy it a little longer.
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