Brazil World Cup 2014 Day 1

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Bryant and I departed from Dallas at 4pm on Thursday June 26th. The flight had one stop at Miami and then went on to Rio, arriving at around 7am local time in Rio on Friday June 27th. As usual, due to my inability to sleep sitting up, i did not sleep at all throughout the flight. Admittedly i did close my eyes and was in some sort of 'low power' or 'standby' mode but no proper sleep by any means.

Our taxi driver spoke only Portuguese, but we both had brushed up enough to be able to tell him the address as well as figure out how long it would take to get there. We're staying at a rented out apartment (as hotels are way too expensive during the world cup). Since we were a little earlier than expected the owner Juliana was still doing some last-minute clean-up of her tiny apartment and profusely apologizing the whole time. She spoke decent enough English, and apart from having the apartment ready she was also very helpful in giving us a map and directions on how to get around. She left afterwards though and we won't see her again until we leave Rio.

My first impression of Rio is that it is a very green city: lush trees of various types found almost everywhere. And it is sort of an exaggerated version of Chennai in the sense of the huge class divide: there are very posh rich areas as well as very decrepit slums. Our apartment in Copacabana is somewhere in the middle: not too shabby but not too clean either.

We rested up, showered etc and left around noon to go see the Christ the Redeemer statue. We took the subway train and then the bus to get to the bottom of the mountain with the statue. Since almost everything is in Portuguese and not many locals speak English here we did stumble on a few steps in the process but made it there alright in the afternoon. There's supposed to be a scenic tram service up the mountain but that was so fully booked and back-logged that the next one would be available only at 6.20pm. So we took another van service and went up the mountain.

And of course there were just a ridiculous amount of people. Apart from the locals, there were scores of Colombians, Argentineans, Germans, French, Ecuadrians, Chileans and on and on. The theme of the day was standing in increasingly ludicrously long lines as we completed each step of making our way up the mountain using various van services. Luckily we met and made friends with a couple of people who kept us company and provided interesting conversation during the long waits. One is a Physics PhD student from Penn State who is doing a 1-year study abroad in Brazil. He's already been here 5 months, knows Portuguese, and was very helpful for providing travel/commute trips for our next couple of days here. The other guy was a recently graduated PhD in computer science from UCSD, and he is originally from Egypt although he is a US citizen now. He's already been in Brazil for a couple of weeks since the start of the World cup.

While regaling tales with fellow PhD students was entertaining, ultimately the standing-in-line experience was very exhausting both mentally and physically; especially given my lack of sleep the previous night. Apparently the crowds are usually not so ridiculous and this is just the World Cup effect. We finally made it up to the statue around 4pm.

At least the magnificence of our destination made up for some of the exhaustion from all the waiting. The humongous statue of Jesus Christ was awe-inspiring, and somehow it never felt like any photo i took was doing justice to how i felt when i saw it with my naked eye. And the views around were splendid. You can basically see all sides of Rio from this perch and there were breathtaking views of the mountains, oceans and beaches.

We spent about an hour on top and then parted ways with our friends at the bottom of the mountain around 6pm. Bryant and I decided to take a taxi back as it was getting dark and we were just too exhausted to deal with public transport. We split the cab with a friendly 30-something couple from Lebanon and it actually worked out cheaper than the metro. Bryant and I had dinner at a pay-by-weight buffet in Copacabana. Since we didn't even eat lunch this naturally lead to me switching off the rational part of my brain and forking about 0.86 kg of food (mostly meat) on my plate. Very very full right now.

Anyway, it's only a little past 9pm but i'm exhausted. More tomorrow (hopefully!)

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