Rio City Tour

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Tuesday 22nd April
Managed to get up 530am, and was ready to leave by 615am. Gaynor usually gets the bus from central Niteroi but as yesterday/tomorrow are public holidays the city should be quieter. Amazingly we make it in in 45 minutes - normal day would take about 1.5 hours. Get an hour or so on Gaynor's assistants computer before she arrives for work. I thought the city tour I'd signed up for with the rest of the group was meeting 1pm, but messages on Facebook indicate otherwise so I catch a taxi to the hotel for 1030am. Everyone turns up - Lila had forgotten to tell them that the tour was 1.15pm! Never mind, head out with Shilpa and Linda to look round the shops. Linda is on the hunt for bikinis, but I find a new swimming costume. Grab some fruit for lunch and head back to the hotel.

Lila's not coming with us on the tour but catches up with us. The tour is not specifically for us but seems to be a nice bunch of others. Weather doesn't look spectacular but never mind! First stop the Corcovado for the statue of 'Christ Redeemer'. Last time I saw this half the view was obscured by clouds. As we head up this time almost all the view is obscured! However, we can see the statue, and slowly the clouds dispersed and we actually got a pretty good view. Exactly 40 minutes later we're back in the van and heading past the Maracana Stadium and a favela. We come to a stop outside the Samba Stadium where Carnaval starts every year. Here there's a chance to try on a costume and have a photo for R$3... Of course I take the opportunity and try and find one that's really over-the-top. Makes you want to dance but my head-dress was really painful - not sure how anyone wears that for any length of time!

Next stop, the Cathedral. Bit 1960s on the outside, but the inside generated a real feeling of peace. Beautiful stained glass windows depicting earth, fire and not sure what else. By this point it was pouring with rain but we still had the Pao de Acucer to see. As was given ticket saw it was valid for 4 days and debated leaving it for another day, but then decided to go up with the group in the hope that the weather would clear as it did earlier. We saw quite a bit on the way up but by the time we got to the top we became enclosed in a cloud. Not much else up there except expensive shops so we came down early and I met Gaynor at the bottom, with a quick goodbye to some of the group, and headed back for another meal/sleep!

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Photos

What you expect from Copacabana
(well, didn´t want to aim at a real one!)

First view of the statue from behind
(last time I saw it was cloudy, was hoping for better this time)