Blogs from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America

I am not sure when I first saw the Christ the Redeemer statue on television or why it had such an impact on me, I suspect it is a side effect of watching too many Bond films and others in that genre. But whatever the cause, it has been a wish of mine ever since I was a child to visit this special venue, a wish that with my fear of heights and my fear of flying I never expected to come true. However today, I was lucky enough to see the statue and the spectacular views that surround it. The landmark sits on the top of Corcovado Mountain, a mountain named after its curved shape, from the Portuguese for camel-back or hump. The mountain is found in Tijuca Forest National Park, a wonderful rainforest in ... read more

Brazil is known to be a Catholic country and this is evident on the streets of Rio de Janeiro where you can find an enormous number of churches. Each one however, is very different to the one before. There are churches of all sizes and styles. I visited a few of these and was struck by the huge differences in appearance and feeling. On Easter Sunday we celebrated Mass in a relatively modern church on the beach in Florianopolis. This was a rather lively catholic mass with an established and popular band who led the singing of the hymns. The words were projected onto the walls and the sound system was new and very effective. Inside the church, there was little in terms of decoration and the walls were very clean and pure. The feeling inside ... read more

And hello beaches of Rio indeed! They really are something else, almost as if they could inspire a song or two! So I arrived in Rio this afternoon after a 2 hour flight from Foz do Iguaçu. It was a smooth enough flight and for someone who continues to suffer from a fear of flying, I have to say that two hours does seem a very short flight nowadays. As we neared our destination, I was even brave enough to look out of the window of the plane and was amazed to see the sprawl that is Rio de Janeiro. It is incredibly crowded but then in between all these pockets of development, there are mountains that appear to have grown up through the city, rather than the opposite that is the natural progression of development. ... read more

Well after our revisit to Rio (it was like going home) we started our journey up to Casimiro de Abreu, which was only a 2 hour bus journey. On our way, Luis Paulo (the CEO of the association) was trying to ring us but we couldn´t hear him at all. So we got off the bus in Casimiro around 9am, rooted out Luis Paulo´s number and tried to ring him. We got through to a girl who dídn´t know much english, but we understood that he would call us back in an hour. So we decided to go look for some breakfast. We wandered into a restaurant, but they weren´t serving food until lunchtime. The very nice lady (with no english) let us leave our heavy rucksacks in her restaurant and showed us where to get ... read more