Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf Mountain and much more.

I think it may be Friday.

We had an early start as there was so much to see and also to do as much as possible before it got too hot.  Alex, our thin version of George a looney but with bigger teeth, guide collected us at 8am.  We skipped the champagne at breakfast as the novelty had worn off.  Our first stop was Christ the Redeemer statue which we had to access by funicular railway.

   The statue is on a mountain which isn't really a mountain as it is a gigantic outcrop of rock, called the Corcovado which means the hunchback but it is also called the Englishmans hill because so many English were involved in the building of the funicular railway.  The Mayor said that the city needed a radio mast but the people objected that it would spoil the natural beauty so someone had the idea of enclosing the mast in a statue.  The church chipped in with money to fund the statue.  It was constructed by a Polish architect in 1926 but the head and hands were brought from France and assembled in situ. It's made of sandstone to resist cracking by the rain and the heat.   It has a definite Art Deco look and is extraordinarily beautiful but you do have to have your photo taken with it so excuse our mugs on it. 

 Various interesting facts - a German has jumped off the right hand, some boys from São Paulo grafittied the base, the police went to get them and their families and they had to come back and clean it off, there is a beautiful small chapel under the statue but mainly the views are breathtaking for 360 degrees.

The lagoon

Sugar Loaf Mountain

View towards the beaches

From there we went on to Sugar Loaf Mountain.  

Again this is an outcrop of rock which when the conquistadors sailed in looked to them like an upside down cone of sugar they made in Portugal, especially as it was covered in guano so it looked white then.  It's not white anymore because of the decline in seabirds living on it.  There are two cable cars to ride up to one mountain and then over to Sugar Loaf.

 The first men to stand on it a hundred years ago had to climb up.  Then the cable cars were constructed by the French and the Italians.  The James Bond film Moonraker was partly filmed here.  Again the views are stunning.

  We were so lucky with the weather as, although it was hot 93 degrees in old money, it was clear and there was a lovely breeze.  There are very tame and cute little marmoset monkeys in the trees up there. Alex told us that if they find fruit up there they burrow into it and eat there way through it till it's all gone.  They won't leave it in case another monkey comes along and takes it

A marmoset

Waiting for the jack fruit to fall

It was hot by now so we went on a ride around the city with Alex giving us a commentary.  The conquistadors had settled in Rio because it has a very sheltered harbour which fact looks like it it is linked to the Atlantic Ocean by a river but it is simply a very narrow opening. They called it therefore Rio (river) Janeiro (January) after the date they landed.  It has three beaches - Copacabana, 6 kms long with imported sand and a promenade made in a snake like mosaic with stones imported from Portugal, Ipanima , which of course has a song about a girl named after it and Leblon.  It also has a lagoon.  Before Brazil was a republic it had two emperors from Portugal.  The second one went to a party on a nearby island and when he came back, the republicans had seized power.  He retired to his summer house in Pedropolis and was happy to stay there but they sent him back to Portugal.  Sadly the Portuguese wouldn't have him so he ended his days in Paris. On the promenade and here and there in the city you can see three red circles which symbolise the joining of the three ethnic groups in Brazil, the Europeans, the natives and the slaves from Africa.

 We saw the new cathedral which is just like a giant beehive but has wonderful stained glass windows on three sides. 

 we stopped at a street made up of steep steps.  It is completely covered in tiles, mostly red. 

 There was an artist called Selvaron who fell in love with a woman, making her pregnant but she died before the baby could be born.  He was so distraught that he started putting bits of tiles on the steps of this street.  People started coming to see it and he began to sell little paintings and making money.  The local gangs moved in and tried to extort money from him.  When he replied, Over my dead body, they took him at his word, killed him set fire to his body and left it at the foot of the steps.  This was only a year ago.  On all his paintings, Selvaron always drew himself with his lovers pregnant body but his own head.

The downtown area in Rio is much like other cities with tall buildings but it seemed to me that there is quite a lot of grafitti.  The streets are busy and there are lots of modern shops but it has a completely different feel to Buenos Aries, more vibrant, less restrained and sophisticated.  We stopped off for a ice cream  in a vintage patissereie, very similar to the tango club, with huge carved framed mirrors and mosaic floors.

Our last stop was the Sambadrome.  It was specially built for the first division teams which usually represent a local church or favela.  It's like a wide street with raked seating on each side and the top seats command up to 600 dollars. Lynn and I couldn't resist and donned costumes for a samba fest of our own.

Our last stop was a favela.  Very densly packed chaotic self build on steep slopes where the poor live.  However they are putting in lifts up the side of the mountains to help the residents to get about.  About 90 % are law abiding and have jobs and it is now not politically correct to say favela (ghetto). They are now called communities. 

One of the favelas tumbling down the mountainside.

A street in the favela

In the evening, we went into a bustling restaurant on the promenade where we mulled over our choice of meal with a cuprihaina(?) and crushed fruit.  I had strawberry and Lynn had lime, it was just a tumbler of neat Brazilian rum with fruit and ice.  We did not make the same mistake as last night and only ordered one starter and one main and we couldn't even finish that.