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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 by Edgar Fonseca in a modern style based on the Mayan architectural style of pyramids. It was completed in time for the papal visit by Pope John Paul II in 1980. The cathedral is incredibly ugly on the outside, but has some gigantic panels of stained glass that make the inside more attractive.
Next we headed off to Corcovado Hill from which
the statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooks the city of Rio de Janeiro. The bus took us as far as Cosme Velho the residential district on the lower slopes of Corcovado Hill. Fortunately we had timed tickets booked for the train that runs to and from the summit on a rack railway so we didn't have to queue for hours on a busy public holiday. A twenty minute ride through the rainforest saw us very near the top of the hill. From the train terminus we had a choice of walking the rest of the way to the summit or taking a lift. We opted to walk which gave us plenty of opportunities to take photos on our way.
When we reached the top it was crazy, CRAZY busy. We didn't even try to stay together in our group or even in couples - it was every man and woman for him/herself!! I HATE crowds but, figuring that I would probably never be in Rio again, I was determined to take some photos of Christ the Redeemer AND make my way to the lower terrace for the panoramic view over Rio. I eventually shuffled my way to the front
of the lower terrace and took in the amazing view down over the city of Rio and it's huge harbour.
Right, time to make my way back to base of the statue and find the path down. After taking an elbow in the side of the head returning to the upper terrace another woman pulled me out of her way and then stood on my foot anyway. !#$&$ (#&!$+! - I exclaimed at her rudeness and then realised where and when I was and felt some remorse for being such a blasphemer.
When Bernie was attempting to return from the lower terrace he was pushed out of the way by a woman who was barrelling down the stairs saying - sorry, sorry, sorry. Bernie pushed back and said - no, you're not, you need to let some people come back up the stairs and then there will be room for people to move down to the lower level. That slowed her down for a nanosecond before she continued pushing her way down towards the lower level.
This site absolutely wins the award for stupid tourists taking photos. It seems that 'the' photo to have is one taken
by a photographer laying on the ground while you pose with arms outstretched like Christ the Redeemer in front of Christ the Redeemer. The terraces were like a cattle yard with people milling around and pushing and shoving to get from one terrace to the other. There is no way I would have put my body on the ground where there was a serious possibility that my head or another body part might get stood on!! And then there were the ones taking photos from the lower terrace over Rio who had to post the moment on Facebook before they could move away from the front of the terrace to allow other tourists a chance to see/photograph the view!
After battling our way out of the worst of the crush we lined up to buy freshly squeezed juice that had been highly recommended by Gina. Who knew pineapple juice would take so long? We were starting to think they'd gone to Hawaii to pick the pineapple. When it finally arrived I went to pick mine up not realising how squishy the plastic cup was going to be. I squeezed nearly half of my drink down the front of the
counter ... which caused me to say another very bad word - starts with 's' ends in 't' - on a holy day. If I was on the list for Heaven I think I have been struck off!!
Back at the bottom of the hill Ricardo pointed out that if we looked back up the hill we would see that cloud had now settled over Christ the Redeemer. It seems that our visit was timed to perfection as we were lucky enough to have a clear view from the summit while we were up there.
We piled back into the bus and headed off to Sugarloaf Mountain. We queued up again, this time for the cable car that transports tourists to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. The cable cars reach the summit via a staging point on Morro da Urca where we stopped for lunch. Today we had solgados ... which are empanadas by another name! We started off thinking the empanadas were great, but now we are starting to get a bit bored with them.
While we were eating lunch the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain was in and out of cloud. A couple of times, when
I thought the cloud was clearing, I jumped up to take a photo only to have the cloud close in again before I reached the edge of the terrace! After we had all eaten we queued again for the second leg of our cable car journey to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. When we reached the summit we found ourselves fogged in!! The cloud came tantalisingly close to clearing a couple of times only to coalesce back into a dense fog that obscured our views and robbed us of the opportunity to take clear photos of the city below us. We had to count ourselves lucky that we had great views from Corcovado Hill earlier in the day.
We rode the two cable cars back to sea level bemused by the operator on one leg who barely had to interrupt his perusal of Facebook to run the cable car! Back on the ground at the cable car's Praia Vermelha terminus I watched the mountain make its own clouds. Each time it looked like the cloud was about to clear the air being pushed up the side of the mountain formed a new cloud that obscured the summit! No wonder
we were having trouble with the fog while we were up there.
Back on the bus we drove back to the hotel by way of Ipanema Beach. Ricardo told us it was a fairly easy walk from our hotel along Copacabana Beach and around to Ipanema Beach. With the rest of the afternoon stretching ahead of us Bernie, Meredith and I decided to venture around to Ipanema Beach just so that we could say that we had set foot on Rio's most famous beach.
Some of us who didn't redeem our drink vouchers last night decided to meet for pre-dinner drinks in the hotel's rooftop bar. We eventually found our way out to the bar behind the pool - it really could have done with a couple of signposts to point people in the right direction! Bernie and I were the first out on the rooftop enjoying a fine and balmy Rio evening. Would you believe it? We had barely taken our seats when Men At Work 'Land Down Under' was played over the bar's PA.
We were due to meet Gina in the foyer at 7.00pm. Meredith finished her drink and headed back downstairs at about
6.45pm to make sure that she would be on time. The rest of us made our move at about 6.55pm and if the lifts had been running properly we would have made it easily!! But the lifts were in the middle of being upgraded and I think only two went all the way to the roof? Anyhow, one of the new lifts appeared to be stuck on the 22nd floor and the other one was a no show. Eventually we decided to take the stairs down two flights to the floor that should have had five lifts servicing it. So, down the stairs, through a service area and eventually into the lift foyer two floors down. It still took ages for a lift to come and we were about 10 minutes late to meet the rest of the group in the foyer. Still I think that was the only time the whole group had not been on time for an agreed meeting time. Not bad in five weeks. At least it wasn't only us, there were six of us who were stranded on the rooftop!
With it being Good Friday, Gina took us to a seafood restaurant around the
corner from the hotel for dinner. Although Gina had booked a table for 15 for our group the restaurant seemed ill-prepared to receive us. Despite the fact that they were not fully booked the staff had difficulty organising 15 wine glasses for us. And then they didn't have the wine on their wine list and our wine orders had to be substituted. Talk about organised chaos. Thank goodness Gina knew what their serves were like. She assured us that a 1/2 paella would be plenty to share between two people. Yep, Bernie and I struggled to finish our seafood 1/2 paella. I guess that means that their 'regular' paella is of a size to serve four people?? It certainly helped to have someone with local knowledge who knew this otherwise we would have had a lot more paella left over.
The restaurant became much busier while we were there so we adjourned back to the hotel foyer for some farewell speeches. Gina was booked to fly home to Peru in the middle of the night so we needed to say our goodbyes and thank her for taking such good care of us on our South American adventure. Geoff had
been elected to be our spokesperson and he did an excellent job acknowledging the contribution that everyone had made to our holiday. Unsurprisingly Bernie and I took out the paparazzi award!! Geoff has done a little bit of musical theatre in his day so he finished the awards ceremony with some heartfelt words and a cash filled envelope for Gina and then launched into 'What A Wonderful World'.
It is going to be very strange saying goodbye to the rest of the group tomorrow and venturing off on our own for a week in Patagonia.
Steps 13,277 (9.92km)
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Sue Alford
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Your travelblog
Hi Tracy and Bernie - I've thoroughly enjoyed following your South American journey - brought back so many memories of my three months there in 99. Your photos are fantastic and you sound very pleased with how it has all gone. Enjoy your week in Patagonia which you will also love I'm sure. Cheers, Sue