Now John always tells me that stories about travel problems are boring, but spending an hour and a half going to every hotel in Ipanema and Copacabana to pick up people until over sixty were crammed into every seat on an open-air bus, begins to suggest what was going to follow. Our guide was named with Rachel. She somewhere on the other side of sixty with bottle-blond hair, a smoker’s voice, and an attitude normally associated with middle-school teachers two or three years before retirement. Despite all that, we liked her. She was the best thing about this miserable adventure.
We drove past some places where I would have like to have stopped — or at least learned a little more about. For example, we zoomed past the residence of the governor of Rio state
and we only briefly paused by the Sambodrome, the Oscar Niemeyer designed stadium for judging Carnival acts.
But we stopped the bus and had to get out at the football stadium
and for some reason this was a hit with many of the passengers on the bus.
It is worth noting here that the majority of the people on this tour spoke Spanish and that Rachel delivered more of her narration en español than in English. Unfortunately, the sound system was about as good as the AM radio on a 1962 Buick so I usually could not make out a single word in either language.
Our major stop for the morning was Mount Corcovado, the site of the famous statue of Cristo Redentor, or Christ the Redeemer. This statue was sculpted by Paul Landowski, a French artist, from a local design. It is 30 meters high and is made out of reinforced concrete covered with soapstone. You get to the top by taking a cog railway, the “Trem do Corcovado.” As we were waiting to get on the train, John posed in front of this photograph.
Probably the ONLY good thing about the tour was the fact that the tickets had been purchased in advance for a specific time and we could therefore shoot ahead of most of the people in line. Despite that, it was a longer than expected climb up the hill to the top. Once we left the train, we had to continue up several flights of stairs, each with its own gift store. Actually seeing the statue was a bit of a letdown, even if you weren’t expecting much. The Savior’s tunic is pleated like your grandmother’s drapes and if you look closely you will see a heart on the middle of his chest.
Not one of those disturbing-but-vaguely-realistic Sacred Heart images. No, this one looks like Jesus came out of the old Cathy cartoons.
Not surprisingly, most people seemed more interested in taking pictures of themselves with the Rio in the background. And for some odd reason they all thought it was amusing to imitate the statue. John had to get into the act here.
After we went down the hill, we were drive to … another gift shop! “Very, very, very cheap!” Rachel assured us. But most of the passengers decided to stay on the bus despite the alleged fire sale prices. I disembarked just so I could capture a picture of the TOURture instrument itself.
We were taken next to a churrasqueria, one of those places where they walk around with meat on a skewer and shave some off for you. Rachel grew somewhat exasperated with her charges as they tried to walk around to find a better place to sit in the small restaurant. “Sit down! Here! Now!” she yelled at us. We obeyed.
The food was pretty good, and we chatted up a couple of the people at the table. There was a couple from Australia. They had been traveling around South America for several weeks and had a number of destinations to go. We were somewhat curious about where they found the money for this as neither of them seemed exactly like they had a Stanford MBA. There were also two women, one from Puerto Rico and the other from Chile, who were apparently traveling together. They kept rushing outside to smoke. In between the nitrates and the nicotine, I was not sure how long these ladies had left.
We ditched the tour at this point. We were supposed to end the day by taking the aerial tram to the top of Sugarloaf, but it was a hazy day and we had enough pictures of Rio and its stunning natural setting. And we did not relish the idea of another hour or so of dropping everybody off at all those hotels. Instead, we took a cab back to our hotel.
We went up to the pool on the 16th floor rooftop. It had a great view of Leblon as you can see here. Behind us was Ipanema.
John was fascinated by the plants growing above the pool.
At least that’s why he told me he was taking this picture.
In the evening we walked over to Shopping Leblon, one of Rio’s malls, to look for a replacement for the camera we lost. We had read that prices for imported electronics were absurdly high in Brazil, but we will be heading off to the Amazon next and it seemed stupid to try to photograph wildlife with your iPhone. The selection was limited, but prices were not particularly inflated. I picked up a Canon T5, the entry-level DSLR for 1,500 reals, about the same price you would expect to pay for it at Best Buy. And really, since that included the tax, it might have even been cheaper.
On the way out, John posed for a picture.
Indeed, 2015 has been a tough year, so I am hoping 2016 will indeed be happy. And with that, we strolled back to our hotel and to bed.
Tomorrow we have a tour of one of a favela, one of Rio’s slum neighborhoods, I am not quite sure what that will be like.
