RIO DE JANEIRO

Sugar Loaf Mountain

Copacabana beach

Christ the Redeemer

We were up early – 0630 – to watch our arrival into Rio de Janeiro.  We were keeping our fingers crossed for fine weather, especially in view of the recent rains there, but the sun rose to cloudless skies and hot temperatures – between 32 and 38c!

We had booked a full day’s tour here, in the morning to Sugar Loaf Mountain, which involved travelling by coach and cable car, lunch at Ipanema, then after to Corcovado to take the train to see the statue of Christ the Redeemer.

Rio is a beautiful city, so different from Recife!  Our coach journey took us through the city, past the botanical gardens and to our first stop at the cable car station to await our transport to take us 1293ft to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain. We had 40 minutes free time that gave us plenty of time to take photographs and have a drink in the shady part of the gardens.  We were fortunate because we had hardly any queue for the cable car consequently there weren’t too many people around, but when we left, it was difficult to move to vantage points to take photos.

We then boarded the coach that drove us past Copacabana beach, a fantastic stretch of white sand covered in colourful beach umbrellas.  From there we went through LeBlon and then to our lunch stop at a restaurant in Impanema, a dining experience not to be missed!  For any meat eaters who are reading this blog, all your prayers would be answered!  The waiters came round bearing 2ft high skewers, each carrying sausages, chicken, spare ribs and best of all, steak.  There was as much meat as you could eat with salad, fries and numerous Brazilian side dishes.  Ice cream was to follow with almost undrinkable black coffee in cups the size of egg cups!

Back onto the coach then for the short journey to the Parque Nacional de Tijuca to view the 125ft statue of Christ the Redeemer.  We first had to get to the train station, where we queued for about half an hour before boarding a 2-carriage cog train which took us up the extremely steep 2.5 mile route to the top, which took around 20 minutes.

This was where there were massive crowds, many of whom wanted to lie flat on their backs and get their friends to stand in front of the statue with their arms stretched out! This made getting anywhere to take a photo a bit difficult but we managed. 

Again we were given warnings about the high crime rate at these top tourist stops, but there were police in evidence, more so at the statue, and we had no problem at all.

Having left the ship at 0945 we arrived back at 1815 to get ready for dinner at 2030.  The ship sailed at 2300 for our next stop in Montevideo on 25 January.