Rio in the rain

Today was the anticipated tour of Rio. We had booked it through our hostel and we were picked up from there. The tour stopped at a couple of other hostels picking up some Mexicans, Germans, an Irish guy and a few others whose nationality we didn't manage to figure out.

First stop was the famous cable car ride up the sugar loaf. Almost vertical, this huge lump of rock takes two extremely steep rides to get up to the top, but the view from the top is spectacular. Rio is clustered around the base of incredibly steep mountains next to the ocean. The result is stunning as hopefully the photos show.

It rained a little while we were up there but as we came down and (after the Mexican's eventually joined us) headed to lunch. While we waited for them we chatted with the tour guide who professed a love of Australian rock and roll. It was a bonding moment.

Lunch was a fantastic buffet made up of hot and cold items. There were meats of many varieties, rices, various bean dishes and lots of salad. We tucked in but as we did the weather changed. It began to rain, and I don't mean drizzle, it bucketed down. The tour guide offered to hold the rest of the tour tomorrow, but as we are leaving tomorrow Anna, Amy and I elected to continue. Everyone else, however, decided not to so we had to drop them off and pick up a new tour guide before we could continue which was frustrating. It did give us a chance to stop by our hostel and get warmer and weather proof clothes though.

Next stop was the famous Christ the Redeemer statue. No doubt you will remember him in his arms out stretched pose from the famous travel posters or Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet. The mountain he is on is over 700m tall and due to the weather was shrouded in cloud. We made our way up and our first view of the 38m soap stone statue was a vague outline in the cloud (as demonstrated by Amy).


Being so wet and miserable, we were the only visitors, so we had a good chat to Christ and like a good religious deity, he revelaed himself in his full glory! It was only momentary though, pretty quickly he once again disappeared into the swirling mist, however in that brief time many photos were quickly snapped.

We headed back down and indulged in some hot chocolate. It was hot, sweet and very chocolaty. Also cheap, what more could you want!

The tour continued back down the very misty mountain. It is beautiful jungle, but only fairly recently planted. Rio was basically completdly deforrestated by the Portugeaues when they first arrived. Amazingly the main reason was to get a dye from the wood to dye the red clothes of the clergy. The Catholic religion has a lot to answer for in this country. They also ruled that the native Indians and African slaves had no souls so it was no problem to kill, poison, starve and work them to death. Despite all of this, they intermarried and now as our guide described it, the people here are a cocktail of races. This does make for very attractive people.

The tour continued to the main stadium here which is huge but we weren't that interested, so headed to this amazing cathederal which is a huge cone shape. Anna and Amy told me it looks like the beehive in New Zealand. It also had a bell tower which resembled an oil rig. Apparently it is based on a Mexican building style and it can hold 22,000 people although I kind of doubt that number.

Finally we headed back to the hostel but given we were already wet just went straight out and bought yummy local cheese filled pastries for dinner. We brought them back to the hostel and ate them in the teeny, tiny kitchen.

Rio has been great, even if the weather wasn't the best, but tomorrow we are off to Iguazu Falls!