Day 3

Thursday 4^th November 2010 @ 06:21 (the following day)

Another early rise for the Frank’s, we had some juice and some homemade sausage sandwiches, when in Rio, have a sausage butty… as they say!

We walked the length of Copacabana beach in the scorching heat, it was so hot at 10am “even my ears were sweating” Pilkington (2010). There are a lot of old people on the Copacabana side, but fair play to em, the older lady still abides by the Rio rule of triangular bits of material covering the nipples and a thong up the bottom. Some how the sausage sandwiches remained in my belly and we strode on.

As we neared the end of the beach we decided to take a cab to the foot of Sugar Loaf mountain or Pao de Acucar that sits at the mouth of Guanabara Bay. The mountains sides are shrouded in the remnants of the forest that once covered the whole of Rio de Janerio, it still provides shelter and refuge for loads of birds and stuff.

Standing at 1312ft it was gonna be a bit of a challenging trek to the summit, but luckily they have a cable car that takes about five mins so we opted for that. The mountain is split into two bits, the first stop on the cable car is called Morro da Urca and has loads of memorabilia like old cable cars and statues etc, the views are great and give you a real sense of the unbelievable size of the city and where things are.

The second cable car takes you to the summit of Sugar Loaf (the name, as I am sure you're wondering, was adopted in the 19^th century and comes from the rocks shape which resembles the conical clay moulds they once used to refine sugar). As you would expect the views from up there are unbelievable,

We also bumped into a couple of South African blokes whose wives believe they are out here on “business” or closer to the truth, the Sao Paulo Grand Prix this weekend. It was quarter past twelve and these two were a little tipsy! They were raving on about a drink called “Caipirinhas” which is essentially made up of ice, lemon and liquor. We shall be sampling some soon I imagine.

Anyway we left these two after the standard whinge about fat Americans and condescending Auzzies and went for one of the meandering walks around the summit. You walk through shady forests and theres lots of birds and flowers etc, but also Ghekos.

We headed back down for a spot of lunch, and then headed off to Cocovado Mountain. It's another taxi ride to the other side of town and then you take the Funicular Railway which runs from the bottom of the mountain to the top, we had to wait an hour as some fat Americans had booked the whole of the next train out for a conference (on Cocovado Mountain!! For guess what??? TUPPERWARE!!! Grrrrr)

So we had a beer and learnt some more stuff, like this…… The iconic statue of Christo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) that watches over the city was actually the winning design in a competition for a grand monument that would reflect the spirit of the city, they started building it in 1921 and it took them ten years to complete. The statue itself stands at 98ft and draws inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous study of the human body (see - I told you we were learning stuff!)

When the train dropped us off a queue of, yep, fat Americans formed for the LIFT!! The lift to the top!! That wasn’t even the worst of it, when you get out of the lift there are two escalators that take right to the statue. Unbelievable!! (We opted for the stairs in disgust!)

Up to the top and the views are truly staggering!!

We took a few shots

... but the sun was right behind the statue at this point so we decided we would hang around taking in the views and having a couple of beers until sunset, seeing as we would probably never come back! And it was a good excuse for a beer!

We're glad we did as we got some really nice shots as the crowds had cleared.

We didn’t really want to come down, its hard to explain in words or show in pictures but it was breathtaking up there.

so we got one more snap of us both with the big guy...

We left and caught the train back down and from there we got a cab back home. It was half seven when we got back to the apartment so the plan was to have a quick nap, get up, get some tea and go out for the night. What actually happened was we fell asleep, really asleep and woke up at 6am this morning!!! So now we're off to the beach for some brekky and a Caipirinha or 6 (we have last night to make up for).