Rio De Janeiro
Travel Location: Rio-de-Janeiro,Brazil
Flew into Rio and decided after 10 months of roughing it we could spoil ourselves for the last four days of our trip so checked into a very nice hotel on the beach in Ipanema.
Spent a fair bit of time watching pay TV in our room and ordering room service partly due to the fact it started pissing down rain the first day we got to Rio and didn’t stop for about a day and a half.
Managed to catch the final of the Cricket World Cup and cheered on with a few other Aussies in the pub as Gilly dismantled the Sri Lankan attack….although we did catch Jo a couple of times having a bit each way and cheering for Sri Lanka as well.
For our penultimate day in Rio (and South America for that matter) we thought we better round the trip off with some touristy things which we have been so notoriously bad at so far. Booked a tour to see Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf Mountain (or bread mountain as we had been calling it). Both were great, The hill of Christ the Redeemer at 700m high gives a truly great view of all of Rio which can only be truly appreciated from on high with the huge bay, hundreds of ritzy high rises, Favela’s sprawling over the surrounding slopes and of course the iconic bread moun…Sugar Loaf Mountain. The statue itself at 38m aint bad either, too bad there is a constant stream of tourists all trying to take the same photos up there as well.
Next stop was two different cable car rides up to the top of Sugar Loaf which affords a similar view as before except of course now we had a view of the iconic Christ the Redeemer instead, stayed up there for sunset which, due to the slightly overcast weather, was not that spectacular but imagine on a good day it would be pretty bloody nice.
That night went to a fancy restaurant for our final dinner in South America (any excuse to eat like pigs basically). The place was fantastic – a fancy all you can eat place where the waiters walked around with every different type of meat you could imagine (except maybe for cat, rat or dog which they were out of at the time) and providing the little disk they give you at the start is green side up they will keep piling meat on your plate, needless to say mine was on green for nearly the entire time. Jo was actually starting to get a bit shitty about not getting any meat until I explained the highly complicated red/green disk system and a quick flip of the disk to the green side solved the problem.
Well our last day was devastatingly sad and deliriously happy all rolled into one. Sad to be leaving a continent that has been the source of so many new friends, amazing sights and crazy experiences that we will never forget. Being fully aware we probably wont get the chance to do something like this again we can only hope the rest of our lives can be so full of amazingly good times (and a few tough ones to add perspective).
On the flip side we were happy to be heading back to a country that’s native tongue is English, you can walk the streets without fear of being pick pocketed, you can wander the city at night with little fear of being mugged and has sufficient plumbing to allow you to put your toilet paper in the dunny.
Finally would like to thank all the people we’ve met along the way who have literally made the trip and if any of you are actually still reading this….you’re mad and we hope to catch up with you again one day.
Craig and Jo
