Advertisement
Published: January 28th 2016
Edit Blog Post
Saturday January 23rd, 2016. Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro Province, Brazil.
After a posh breakfast we decided to venture out into Rio again. Rio was founded in 1565 by the Portuguese as a fortification against French privateers who traficked wood and goods from Brazil. The Portuguese fought the French for almost 10 years with both sides having rival native tribes as allies. During the early 18th century the city took off. It had been a minor outpost in the Portuguese Empire until gold, diamonds and ore were found in Minas Gerais in 1720. Rio then became an important port for exporting these minerals and replaced Salvador as the main city in the colony in 1763. Brazil became independent in 1822. It adopted a Monarchy as its form of government. The capital is now Brazilia.
Surprisingly the weather seemed to be a lot better. We headed straight back to the tube station and caught the first train to Botafogo which is the nearest station to Sugar Loaf Mountain or Pão de Acucar. We found a guy who spoke English who directed us to bus stop 2 where we had to wait for a 513 bus
to Urca. Two 513 buses sailed straight past the queue at the bus stop and we started to wonder if there was a problem. After waiting for half an hour we were just about to give up and catch a cab when a third 513 arrived - and actually stopped. We alighted where everyone else seemed to be getting off and made our way to the cable car station 1 at Morro da Urca which is the first leg of getting to the top of Pão de Acucar.
The queue was a long zig zag. The board in front of us informed us that there was "Approx 1 hour to the ticket office from here". We waited patiently, passing the 20 minutes to go sign and reached the ticket office in almost exactly 1 hour. D was allowed to go for half price - but only if he had photo ID - which he didn't. The ship had kept our passports! So we both paid full price and then queued again for the next cable car up to station 2 on Morro da Urca. D took a couple of snaps from the cable car. The weather was
clear skies (unlike the forcast) and the views were absolutely stunning. We could see the Christ the Redeemer statue clearly - not a cloud in the sky. After wandering around for a few minutes taking in the wonderful 360 degree views, we queued again for the cable car up to the station on the top of Pão de Acucar itself. Here there was more of the same - fantastic views and a cloudless sky. We could see Urca, Botafoga & Copacabana Beaches, the districts of Urca and Botafogo and across to the monument of Christ the Redeemer in the National Park. After drinking it all in for a while, we repeated the queues at all the stations in order to get back down and then made our way to the bus stop.
As the weather was clear we decided to give the Christ the Redeemer Monument another shot as it is such an iconic Rio sight. We got on the wrong bus - which turned out to be a result as travelled half the distance back to the tube station free. When we got off we could walk the rest of the way. This gave us the
opportunity to see some of the 'real' Rio with its cafe culture and markets. We stopped at a local place and had a beer before returning to the tube station to repeat what we had done yesterday. This was all very good in theory except that yesterday there was nobody around because the weather was so dreadful but today (the first clear day in 5 days) the world and their mother wanted to go to Tijuca National Park!. When we got to the Van D queued for the ticket while M queued for the Van. This took about an hour. Unlike yesterday though, we were able to purchase the park tickets with the Van ticket. When we got to the top it was another never ending queue. After waiting for about 20 minutes outside the "boarding gate" (ha ha) two girls in front of us from the Van queue looked at their tickets, spoke to a park official and proceeded to jump the queue and go straight to the boarding gate. M looked at the tickets and realised we had a time slot (which had passed half an hour ago). We followed suit, showed our pre-paid tickets and went to
the boarding gate. No boarding gate though - just another endless queue zig zagging around in a covered area the size of a football pitch! The time stamped tickets didn't do any good here - we were told we had to queue up the same as everyone else. An hour and a half later we boarded one of the buses to the top of Cocavado Mountain in Tijuca National Park where the iconic monument is located. It was absolutely heaving with people lying on the floor taking selfies, kids peeing in the corners (because they had to queue too long). It was about 50 people deep to get a snap of the front of the statue. We stayed at the top for about 15 minutes. We couldn't leave it any longer as we needed to get back to the ship. This meant we would miss going to the iconic beaches. M got a very expensive FM and we made our way to the queue to get down. This turned out to be much less painful than the queueing on the way up and we were on a bus within 20 minutes. We repeated yesterday's route but alighted at Presidente Vargas
station for a change. We walked back to the ship and arrived just in time for a quick drink before changing for dinner. There was a Sail Away Deck Party that evening but we were just too queued out to bother.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.074s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0398s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb