Rio de Janeiro City Tour…

Taking our bikes to ride around the city was never going to be an option… Traffic in Rio is a nightmare on a good day…!!

We opted to use the services of a local tour company and were collected from our hotel at 8.30 am to begin an ten hour tour of the sights… We hoped the $100 price tag would be worth it…!!

Bikers on a bus...!! We would prefer to have been on our bikes...!! It would have taken us half the time...!!

The bus wound it’s way through the traffic and stooped at the Maracana Football Stadium, once the biggest in the world, that could hold up to 200 000 people…!! Can you imagine what the noise inside would be like during the height of a game..?? FIFA have insisted that before the next World Cup Final is held there in 2014, the stadium must be renovated to hold only 75 000 people…!!

Safety was obviously the chief concern, but I would think that this ruling has not gone down very well with the locals…!!

Our first stop was the giant Maracana Football Stadium, which will host the final of the 2014 World Cup....

"Hijackers...!!" said Roger, "Those might look like musical instruments, but we know better...!!"

After a long ride, we arrived at the base of Corcovada, the mountain on which the famous Statue of Christ the Redeemer stands…

A two couch train runs up the steep incline to get to the top of the mountain, and passes through the largest patch of indigenous forest, the Tijuca National Forest, found in any other city in the world…

There are a few stations on the way up, and at one of them, a quartet of musicians hopped aboard, and began playing Samba tunes on the instruments they carried…

The sang a few songs that were known to the local Brazilians on the train, as many of them joined in the singing and clapping…

Finally, we reached the top, and got off the train and followed the teeming crowds up a steep ramp, then an escalator, and out onto the top level…

The concrete walkway brought us out to the back of the statue, and I was immediately awestruck by it’s sheer size…!! I knew it was going to be big, as we have all seen photos of this magnificent statue, but when you come face to face with it, you cannot help but be slack-jawed at the sight of it…!!

The iconic statue of Christ the Redeemer, Corcovado, Rio de Janeiro.

Corcovada is always crowded... Be prepared to be jostled, and keep your valuables out of sight...!!

We struggled to walk through the throngs of people that blocked every walkway on every side of the statue, trying not to disturb the few people who were either deep in prayer, or just staring reverently up at the face of Christ…

For me, it was definitely one of the chest-tightening moments on my tour… I remember crossing myself, and mumbling a quick prayer of thanks for getting me this far safely, and then went in search of Roger who had been lost in the crowds…

I found him at the far end of the walkway, looking out over the magnificent views of the city far below us…

“This is some sight…!! I’m glad we could make it, Bro…!!” he said…

We turned to look back at the statue, watching the hundreds of people trying to get photos of themselves with the statue in the background…

This is the 5th largest statue of Christ in the world, and is almost 40 metres high in height, and 30 metres wide… It weighs a massive 635 tons. and is made from reinforced concrete and soapstone…

This symbol of Brazilian Christianity, too nine years to build, and was completed in 1931…

Roger and I stood looking back at the Statue for a long time, trying to imagine the work that went into building it, and how they managed to do it all over 80 years ago… Even by today’s high tech engineering standards, it would be a colossal enterprise…!!

The "We were there !!" shot...!! We had to bat a few folk out of the way to get it...!!

Views of the city from up here are spectacular...!!

Those aren't birds on Christ's shoulders, they're cameramen...!!

Met this geezer at the base of the statue... He asked where he could find a proper helmet, his one keep blowing off when he reaches 65 km/h...

Our next destination, Sugar Loaf Mountain, could be seen in the distance...

After a buffet lunch at a restaurant near Botofogo Beach, we were taken to the cable car station at the foot of Sugar Loaf Mountain… It was named by the Portuguese, who in olden times, used to sell sugar in wooden bowls, and when these bowls were turned upside down, the shape closely resembled that of the mountain in Rio de Janeiro…

While we were having lunch, I overheard a couple behind me talking in a language that was well known to me…

“Ag nee, man…!!” said the gentleman to his wife…

I turned and greeted them in Afrikaans, much to their delight and surprise… They were on a two week cruise up and down the coast of South America, and were leaving for Argentina the following day…

Met this couple from South Africa while on our tour...

In our rush to get back on the bus, I forgot to get their names, but it was nice to meet someone from back home, and speak a little Afrikaans again…!!

By the time we had taken the first cable car to the halfway point at Sugar Loaf’s base, the clouds came swarming in off the Atlantic, and at one point visibility was almost zero…!!

Sugar Loaf was playing peek-a-boo...!!

The clouds swirled around the peak, one minute giving you a great view down to the many little bays below, the next, completing blocking out the view…

We watched a small family of Marmoset monkeys flitting through the few trees up on the top of the mountain, and wondered how the heck they had got up there in the first place…

“They took the cable car, just like us…!!” suggested Roger…

One of the many smaller beaches in Rio, that few tourists ever get to see... I am sure the locals like it that way...!!

Roger makes friends wherever he goes...!!

We were herded back onto the bus, and made our way to the last stop on our tour, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro… On the way there, we passed under the Carioca Aqueduct, which was built in the middle of the 18th Century, to bring water from the Carioca River to the city…

In those days, Rio sat in the middle of a large swamp, formed by a few smaller river that emptied into the many bays… Today most of that land has been drained and reclaimed, and the aqueduct now serves as a bridge between two neighbourhoods…

The old aquaduct that used to bring water to the city...

If somebody had told me that I would one day see a Roman Catholic Cathedral shaped like a pyramid, I would have taken a closer look at what they were smoking…

The strangest design for a Catholic Cathedral that you are ever going to see...!!

Forget all about the Gothic structures you see in Europe or elsewhere for that matter… No statues and gargoyles here…!! The cathedral is a circular pyramid, and can hold up to 20 000 people standing… (and 480 who fall asleep during services…!!)

The massive stained glass windows of the Cathedral... (My grandmother would have fainted dead away at the sight of girls wearing shorts in a church...!! I felt a bit faint myself...!!)

After ten hours, the tour was mercifully over…!! While the sights we had seen had been well worth the effort, sitting in a bus in what always seemed to be peak hour traffic, was not our bottle of beer…!!

We were dropped off a block away from our hotel, and couldn’t wait to have a shower and go out for a walk to stretch our legs…

The next day, we planned to visit the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana, and after a short taxi ride to Ipanema, we took off our flip-flops and began strolling the length of the beach, looking as out of place as two pork chops in a synagogue…!!

It was mainly Roger’s fault…!! His lily-white skin had people reaching for their sunglasses to avoid the glare…!! I only stood out because I was wearing a board-short costume, and all the other men on the beach were in tiny Speedo’s…!!

The northern portion and less crowded part of Ipanema beach was a pretty sight...

We left our gear with a young woman was was sunbathing close to the water’s edge, and went into the sea for a swim… The water here is a dark brown colour, a result of the run-off of water from the many small rivers that flow into the Atlantic… It might look blue from a helicopter, but trust me, it isn’t…!!

Ipanema is the beach where young people go to show off their bodies and latest costume designs, many of which leave very little to the imagination… Judging from the number of young people on the beach on a week day, Rio must have a serious unemployment problem…!!

Muso statue on the southern end of Copacabana beach... Also the last photo of my gold chains...!!

We then walked up and over the narrow peninsula that divides Ipanema from Copacabana, and began our long walk down this beach, to a point opposite our hotel…

Copacabana Beach is a more family orientated place to spend the day sunbathing… There are beach football games going on all the time, as well as volleyball and beach tennis… Kids dash about, followed by concerned parents and nannies, beer-bellied men strut around, proud of the money they have spent, getting to look like they do… In short, it’s just like any other beach in the world…

Copacabana Beach stretches aound the bay... Our hotel was about halfway down from where this photo was taken... A long walk in the heat of the late afternoon...!!

Except for the little bastards on bicycles, who are watching and waiting for an opportunity to grab a camera or a handbag, or my case, the gold chains around my neck…

We came off the beach more or less opposite to where our hotel was located, and began walking towards the traffic lights to cross the main road that runs along the shore-front… I saw a bicycle coming towards us at speed, and watched the teenage rider (of African decent…!!) dodging between the many people walking in front of us…

Just as he got abreast of us, his hand shot out like a striking cobra, and jerked the chains off my neck…!! He did not even pause in his pedaling…!! It happened so fast that neither Roger or I were able to react, and by the time I turned around, he was already 20 metres away and picking up more speed…!!

Dozens of people saw it happen, and many came over to offer their apologies to me for the behavior of their “fellow citizens”… One guy ran over to a police car that was parked up the road, and made the report himself… The guy radioed other cars in the vicinity to be on the lookout for the thief, but I knew that it was all in vain…

To say that I was annoyed would be the understatement of the century… My mother had given me the one gold chain, that I had rarely taken off over the past 25 years, and my sister had given me the other, with a simple gold cross on it, before I left on my journey… The commercial value meant nothing to me, but the sentimental value was enormous…

To the guy who ripped those chains from my neck, I have but one thing to say: May the fleas of a thousand dogs infest your genitals, and may your fingers turn into fish-hooks…!!

I left more than a footprint in Rio de Janeiro...

I hardly tasted the beer that Roger bought me to get me to calm down, and when he said,

“I’m all Rio-ed out… Lets get the hell out of this place…!!”, I was in full agreement with him…

We went back to our hotel after a quick dinner, and began packing for the road to Paraguay… We had seen and experienced both the good and the bad that Rio is all about, and did not need to be constantly looking over our shoulder when we were out and about, trying to enjoy the vibe of the city…

You can keep Rio, ladies and gentlemen, there are far better places to see and visit in South America…!!

©GBWT 2012