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Published: April 13th 2008
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So, we escaped the rain in the mountains and headed to Rio de Janeiro where it was also raining! What an anticlimax!!
The first night we stayed in a hostel in Copacabana. It wasn't the best hostel in the world and the prices are astronomical. Luckily we found an apartment more or less straight away. Maria at
It's All Brazil gave us a good discount as we are here for 3 weeks and we were able to move in straight away. The apartment is literally 2 minutes walk from Copacabana beach and is very comfortable. So now we are self-catering, maybe we can shift some of those pounds the wonderful breakfasts have been putting on us over the months!!
When you think of Rio, you think of sun, sand, samba, football and the figure of Christ standing guard over the city. We certainly didn't see much of any of this for the first few days. We did manage a walk out toward Ipanema and around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas. At 7.5 km round we didn't expect to see too many people doing the circuit so we were quite surprised to find it was packed. Good exercise though and some great views.
After 4 days we finally got a bit of sun. Our routine is going to be breakfast, beach, shower, lunch, something touristy, exercise routine, dinner, or at least that's the plan. Tanning, toning and trimming eh!!!!!!!!!! So now we know, the beaches are great, although they are a bit crowded at the weekend and the waves are sometimes too much for us. Trish has already managed to lose one pair of corrected-vision sunglasses when a huge wave swept her away, and she's the strong swimmer!!
The first touristy thing we did was a trip up the mountain to see Cristo, the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer. We hadn't really been able to see him from below because of the cloud since our arrival. On the first good day we took the bus out to Cosme Velho. It took an hour from Copacabana which rather surprised us. When we got there we missed the train to the top by about 30 seconds. At least it gave us the chance to browse the visitor centre and chat to half of Australia who seemed to be on the same train as us!
The train took almost half an hour
to reach the summit. For most of the journey you are surrounded by greenery with no views which was disappointing. At the top it was a different matter. The views were extraordinarily good, even though there was a bit of haze around. You get a fabulous panoramic view of the whole of the city and it is truly breathtaking. Getting cheesy photos posing in front of the Cristo wasn't easy as everyone else is trying to do the same thing! The statue itself was impressive but it seemed a bit grubby, especially after the gleaming white version in
Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is actually taller too!
We have plenty of time to do everything we want to in Rio, so for now we are just going to enjoy the sunshine now that it's here and take it slowly.
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