RIO DE JANEIRO (Part 2) INCLUDING GUANABARA BAY CRUISE--Friday, December 20, 2013

---

RIO DE JANEIRO INCLUDING GUANABARA BAY CRUISE--Friday, December 20, 2013

On the third day, we took a very nice boat tour of Guanabara Bay.

Rio de Janeiro got its name because whoever the first explorer was, when his ships sailed into this bay, it was on the first of January in 1502, and they thought it was the mouth of a river—hence Rio or river.

The day was clear-ish at least not raining and the water calm as we motored around the shore of the large bay. Sugar Loaf and the several of the other mountains around the bay look similar to the karst mountains in the Lee River Valley in China--worn down lumps formed not by volcanic action but by tectonic action pushing them up. Valerie tried to get a clear picture of Christ the Redeemer statue from the boat, but I am not sure it was ever really clear and cloud free.

We saw buildings on the shores from various eras, a few colonial, some just old, and some new and modern. The Brazilian Naval presence is here with a number of academy/college/training buildings and their shipyard. We passed an old French fort, an early Spanish fort, and a building that was built on a rock in the bay and was used as a prison—Brazil’s “Alcatraz” but looked older and much, much smaller with no windows.

On the top of another island we saw a very old Sailor’s church. We then went around an oil platform being built in the middle of the bay and then went through and then back under the 8 1/4 mile long President Costa e Silva Bridge, spanning the bay. All around the boat were small flocks of Brown Boobies just skimming the water’s surface. The boat then cut across the water back to the downtown Rio side of the bay, along the side of the domestic airport, and then around a point of land that the old ornate Portuguese Royal Palace was built on. It was a very interesting looking building but we didn’t see any tours that included a stop there.

When dinner time came, we walked down the street to the next hotel as Valerie had noticed a restaurant there. We thought the menu would more likely have English subtitles than in a free standing restaurant. While waiting for our meals to arrive, we decided to check out the tours this hotel offered since we had nothing scheduled for the following day. To our surprise, they offered the same tour to Petropolis that was cancelled by the other Grey Line tour company. We decided to book it right then.

I ordered chicken and veggies and my meal came with 3 pieces of grilled chicken breast and then a “fan” made of a generous stack each of green beans, carrots, chayote, and cauliflower. Very pretty and I really enjoyed eating it.

---