Christ the Redeemer & Sugar Loaf Mountain

It was a whistle stop tour to see Christ the Redeemer, we arrived at the train station at 10am and were told there weren't any tickets until 11:30 but we hung around as it's on my bucket list. I wondered off down the road to stock up on coconut water to keep hydrated and before I knew it we were bundled on the train through the rainforest up corcavado, just before the top the train stopped and a samba band crammed themselves in and serenaded us the rest of the way up. And there he was, stood on his plinth head in the clouds, one of the most famous statues in the world. Strangely it's only the 5th biggest statue of JC in the world, the biggest being Christ the King in Poland, but it is the largest Art Deco statue in the world. 

After battling our way back through the crowds at Corcavado we headed to Sugar Loaf mountain another one of Rio's big tourist attractions. You can climb Sugar Loaf, and Corcavado in fact, but that's way too much like hard work so we went for cable cars, which is just as petrifying especially when they stop at random mid way leaving you dangling 100s of metres above the ground, we made it though without any loss of limb. The birds you can see in one of the photos are Frigate or Man of war birds, which are in abundance in Rio, they remind me of pterodactyls. There's also a friendly family of monkeys living in the trees around the mountain who occasionally visit the tourists to pinch lunch. The views were incredible, we found a lovely spot, stocked up on acai and juice and waited for sunset.

Then it was back to the pousada for home made pizza, photo sharing and gossiping about the beach and the mano a mano with the boys ( the beach race on copacabana with Usain Bolt - see previous post!).

xox