Nov 19th: Monday
We woke up bright and early at 9am for our tour of Rio. I stumbled downstairs to take a shower and grab a quick bite to eat of the free breakfast before the bus showed up. At 10am, our guide, Marillo, showed up full of energy and ready to take us on our adventure. Nobody from any other hostels / hotels signed up for the tour so it was only the five of us from our hostel. Made it feel like a small personal tour.
Our first stop was in the protected forests of Rio for our hike to the top of a mountain thing. I say mountain thing, because there’s a specific name for them… I forgot =).
We were told the night before that the 30 minute climb to the top wouldn’t be a problem and that elderly people do it all the time. Well, I don’t know who these elderly people are, but I imagine there was a bit of fibbing going on. We had to stop for a few breaks, as the girls we having a hard time getting up through the forrest. This wasn’t a nice clean cut low grade path either. There was some steep, mud covered, slopes pretty much the whole way up. Once we got to the top though, the view was amazing and made the hike totally worth it.
This definitely wasn’t a tourist spot. We were standing on top of a giant rock with sheer drops all around us of about 3,000+ feet. We were above the clouds, birds, and hang gliders. One slip and you were toast. If you were careful and slid down a little bit of the slope of the rock, there was a little rock that jutted out that you could stand on and see a straight down drop. Of course I had to see it. Here’s a couple pictures, one of me on the rock, one looking down from it, and another taking a picture of our friends from it (so you can see the slope to slide down to get to it).
While we were up there, the clouds stared coming in from the west and a couple minutes later we couldn’t see anything, not even the edge of the rock! So, we thought best that we leave before it got any worse and someone had an “accident” =).
The hike down was a lot easier, but the guide was moving a tad faster than we could, so we kinda had to guess at some points which way to go. Thankfully, we guess right =). Our next stop was a little ways away and was not part of the tour. We were stopping to see a waterfall in the forrest. We got this bonus stop because the guide said we may have to pay an additional fee to see the Redeeming Christ (the giant Jesus on top of the mountain). Originally it was supposed to be included in the fee of the tour, but the guide said that yesterday, his people had to pay the guards to get in. Oh, Rio has a very corrupt government and police. Cops will actually stop cabs and harass the tourists for all kinds of BS. All they want is some cash. So I always carried around $20 for bribe money in my wallet. I was told by one of the locals that $20 is generally enough to get them off your back. So, back to the waterfall. It was pretty cool. Here’s a photo.
Yeah, on to the Redeeming Christ! It took a little while to get to it, and there were a lot of people there, but it was worth it. Not really for the giant jesus (kinda boring really), but the view was awesome. You could see everything from there. The jesus is the second largest statue in the world. First being the statue of liberty. I tried to get some nice shots of the thing, but with a grey overcast as the background and it being right up in your face, it just didn’t happen. So here’s Nicole throwing the horns, Jesus style:
I was also able to get a nice shot of the Sugar Loaf from here too:
After descending from jesus, we stopped of for some lunch in the history Santa Maria(??) district. Supposed to be the old rich neighborhood. Nothing really worth photographing, but neat to see. We ate at a pay-by-the-weight place again with some authentic Brazilian food. We were definitely eating with the locals here. The bonus… air conditioning =). When we were done with lunch, it was the end of the tour. Because we haven’t seen the sugar loaf yet, our guide dropped us off in front of the entrance and then took Gaz and Lex back to the hostel. This thing had the largest cable car that I’ve ever seen. Each basket(??) held up to 70 or so people and it flew up and down the wires.
It was a series of two rides. The first one was a shorter ride to the shorter hill, and then a longer, steeper one to the top of the taller hill. The main goal for Nicole on this adventure was to see some monkeys. We were told that there a various species of wild monkeys throughout Rio and Nicole had to see a monkey before we left. Before we got into the cable car at the bottom, we ran into a couple people that we stayed with from a previous hostel and they said they saw some monkeys at the top of the sugar loaf. Nicole was ecstatic.
The views from the top of the sugar loaf were really nice. Got to see some great views of the beaches all around us.
After a few shots of the view, it was on to find the monkeys in the jungle below. About 30 minutes of hiking around, we saw no monkeys, and when we were furthest from the cable car, of course, I heard the voice. The one that says, “Hey, your stomach doesn’t like whatever you put in it, and you got about 30-45 seconds before I push the ‘Unleash Fury’ button.” Also, this is the same moment Nicole spots a monkey and needs me to take a photograph of it. Slight panic comes over me. The damn monkey was too far off to get a clear shot, so I took what I could (It’s a “Where’s Waldo” kind of photo looking for a monkey in the jungle) and then bolted back up the steps / ramps / vines, whatever to get to the bathroom.
After fury ended, I went back down into the woods to find Nicole. I figured she’d be where the monkey was. Well, when I got there she was no where to be seen. But, the little monkey was there and closer. Then all his little monkey friends showed up. There were probably about 10-15 little monkeys bouncing through all the trees. A few got even closer, some came right up to me to check me out, so I got some pretty cool shots of the little furry guys.
After hanging out with the monkeys for a while, I headed back up to the top to try and find Nicole so we could head out. I found her by the gift shop and I told her about all the little critters I saw and showed her some of the photos. As we were walking towards the cable car, a bunch of the little monkeys came up one of the sides by the tourist area. So Nicole got to get close up to them and see a bunch as well. On the ride down I got a nice shot of the city and the cable cars.
Once we reached the bottom, we jumped in a cab and headed back to the hostel. We then tried to figure out what to get for dinner. We agreed on something simple and went with pizza. So I asked the guy working the hostel where there’s a good pizza place around. He then replied, “Do you want good pizza or really good pizza?” I wanted simple, so I just said that “good” was fine. After a minute or two of thinking, he told me that he doesn’t know of anything around. So I asked for a place that serves “really good” pizza”. Again, he pondered for a minute or two, and then told me that he doesn’t know of any. I was seriously stunned. I didn’t know what to say. So I just turned around and left. I found a pizza place that got good reviews and had a modest price point in my guide book, so we chose to go there. When we got there, it turned out to be a really fancy restaurant that served pizza. Prices weren’t too bad, so we stayed. Nicole got a plain pizza, and I had a stuffed pizza (which turned out to be a calzone, which I don’t understand, because they had calzones on the menu as a separate dish).
After dinner, we went back to the Leblon mall so that I could pick up a copy of Alien in Portuguese (I’m collecting them from every country I visit. So far I have Germany, Italy, Poland, Chile, and now Brazil. And US of course.). Nicole doesn’t get it, and keeps making fun of me for it, but I don’t care. Some people collect shot glasses or baby spoons. Me, it’s Alien DVDs =)
After our visit to the mall, we headed back to the hostel to meet up with Gaz and Lex to go out for some drinks on the town. We found a place that looked pretty cool right around the corner. Turns out they either don’t like foreigners, or they have really bad service, because it took forever to get our drinks. After a couple hours there, we decided just to head back to the hostel and grab some drinks on the way and just chill out there. Nicole wound up passing out in the hammock, and Lex went to bed, so Gaz and I just stayed up BS’n again. Not sure what time I went to bed, but it wasn’t terribly late.
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