Jasus!

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Niamh was felling particularly holy today and suggested we go see the Redeemer statue, a massive thirty metre tall statue of Jesus, 30 metres doesn’t sound like much but that’s the equivalent of 5 T Rexs in Jurassic park standing on there heads (My non denominational schooling in my youth is thinking how 5 tyrannosaurus Rexs standing on their heads would be far more impressive then the current setup but lets not get sacrilegious, a Kevin smith still buddy Christ would have been nice though)

Aside from the fact that he is 30 metres, 6 Tyrannosaurs or 2/3 of Godzilla tall JC’s 1000 metric tonnes on a mountain that looms far above the city, my ears popped twice on the ride up.

Considering Jesus, or “Cristo” as the Brazilians call him, is to Rio what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris and The Empire State Building is to New York in terms of spectacular landmarks one would expect transport to the statue would be relatively straightforward as deciding it is a good idea to purchase a kebab after ingesting several pints?

Well it isn’t.

Between us and the Son of God are a number of Favellas, Highways and lots of those big mountains I alluded to as fingers in my previous entry that make direct passage difficult.

Thankfully myself and Niamh have our trump card, purchased last minute while on stopover in Heathrow as some of the original guides were left on my bedside locker in Dublin, The Rough Guide to South America on a budget.

Now I want you to take a good look at that book title and put inverted commas around where it reads “Rough Guide” because the book proved to be a complete waste of paper and no doubt several environmentally significant hectares of Amazonian Rainforest were ironically cleared to make way for its publication.

We took the bus route clearly outlined in the aforementioned Tome of wisdom from the centre of Rio, the centre being a little bit less salubrious then the beach district but certainly not the wild west as some people described to us prior to leaving. The centre of Rio is also not plagued by what can only described as Latino George Hooks wearing only thongs, such specimens seem to flourish along the promenades of Coco cabaña and Ipanena.

After following the books instructions to the letter we arrived just outside a Favela on the very outskirts of Rio and despite numerous mountains visible on all sides none of them had Jesus standing out on their summit let alone a 30 foot stone replica of him. All we saw were endless rows of makeshift Favela housing, clumps of uncollected rubbish and lots of people staring at us.

Yesterdays smugness of how Rio was no where near as scary as it was in real life were rapidly forgotten and if I had more then the meagre half bottle Passa Quatro Agua Mineral my bladder surely would have expelled it in fright.

Niamh immediately swung into action and using a bit of heavily mangled Portuguese combined with a deft use of charades managed to convey to the bus driver, before he clocked off, where we wanted to go.

Niamh simply extended her arms and said “Christo” I did likewise and simply adapted the same posture while uttering “Jesus” over and over in what I thought was a Portuguese accent. Seeing how it came out “Jasus” I clearly unsuccessful. We did this as he bemused bus driver smiled at how we had got it so utterly wrong!

The bus driver, who I must say like all the Brazilians we have encountered so far was extremely helpful and friendly showed us to another bus that would take us where we needed to go.

40 minutes later we arrive at “Jasus” and hope onto a shuttle bus. The shuttle bus takes us past yet another favela which we can have a good look at. I saw main entrance hut manned by three men one of which was armed with a rifle I couldn’t identify due to the speed of the shuttlbus (it appears all motorists in Brazil drive the same way as our taxi man on the first night!)

Further up the road were crowds of children no more then 6 or 7 kicking a football and generally doing what kids that age do. Without warning a police jeep overtook our bus at speed and its officers, who appear more like soldiers disembarked onto the road. Instantly all the kids dropped what they were doing and begun to produce and fly kites so they would flutter above the favela(the road we were on overlooked it). As it turns out the young children’s job in the favela is to fly kites to warn the drug traffickers inside that the police are coming.

Jesus himself was worth the epic trip. You’re at the highest point in Rio and all you can see is the vast metropolis sprawling in all directions as well as the occasional jungle covered mountain.

As stated in the last entry we changed hostel. The new hostel isn’t quite in the jungle as advertised, as it turns out its only 100 metres( Up a massive hill) from our previous one. It does however overlook the foot of one of the many mountains that dot the city and you can hear the buzzing of insects and the occasional howl of monkeys from time to time. Niamh spotted a spider outside the window as big as her hand so naturally I am on edge!

In any case the hostel is larger, nicer and cleaner then the last one so there is a good chance we will remain here until we head south this weekend.

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