Blogs from Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, South America - page 8

June 13. We emerged from the fog of a 9-hour overnight flight into the Rio airport, which is large and modern, walked about half a mile (literally - I have a pedometer), and entered a long, slow immigration line serviced by only two agents. The joys of travel. Things were looking up, though, when we breezed through customs and emerged into the real world to find our Overseas Adventure Travel guide, Danna, and four other group members waiting for us. From that point on we were well taken care of with comfortable bus transportation and conversation on the way to our Rio Othon Palace Hotel right on the beach in Copacabana. First impressions of the city: huge, spread out over a large area divided by beautiful peaks and bodies of water, requiring bridges and tunnels that ... read more

First time in Brazil, I was amazed how large Rio de Janeiro was. Every bit of land on hillside as was built on, from favelas to multi-storey buildings. We were staying at Copacabana beach, so spent the next day planning the trip and then relaxing at the beach. The waves are pretty crazy there, with the odd one rolling you right over. It was understandable how not too many people were out too far in the water because of this. The next day was spent at the Jardin Botanico. There were lots of monkeys there, pretty cute wee things, we saw one cracking a nut on the ground with his human like hands and others grooming each other. There was a lovely mix of flowers across Brazil and South America as well as the rest of ... read more

Travelblog –journal for Rio de Janeiro/ Paraty / Ilha Grande (November and December 2015) Sunday, 29 November 2015 – We arrived at Rio de Janeiro’s Tom Jobim international airport in the early evening, after sunset, and spent the next hour waiting to clear immigration. A KLM flight had landed prior to our own and there were only three officials processing the non-Brazilian arrivals. Our two small suitcases we waiting for us when we finally reached the baggage claim. We are travelling much lighter on this visit to South America – one carry-on sized suitcase each, which we checked, and our 15 (Joan) and 20 (Greg) litre backpacks that we carried on. Banished to permanent storage is the super-size suitcase we hauled from Medellin to Buenos Aires! We found an ATM machine and withdrew some cash and ... read more

Thought I should do the Sugar Loaf Mountain today as I only have two more days left in Rio. The plan was to take a bus but I failed to understand Sheila's instructions about where to catch this (turns out she wasn't sure anyway) so made for the front alongside Copacabana beach. Most of the bus stops here tell you nothing about which buses stop there so after a while I approached one of the stallholders. I must have asked by mistake if I could pick up a taxi, not a bus, for Pão de Açúcar because, after I had let about 50 taxis go by, he approached me looking puzzled. This was useful as I established there was no chance of my getting the bus I needed there so I hailed the next taxi. There ... read more

Today it is Good Friday in Rio! Maybe not the best day to be going to visit one of the world's most famous religious icons? But ... more on that later. When we looked out our window this morning we could see people out an about early on this religious holiday on Copacabana Beach and there were frigate birds wheeling overhead - the first we have seen since the Galápagos Islands. After breakfast we commenced our bus tour of the city. Our first stop was at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Sebastian which was surprisingly deserted on Good Friday morning. When I asked Gina about this she told me that its main service would be later in the day as the final stop of an Easter procession. Built between 1964 and 1979, the cathedral was designed ... read more