Rio de Janeiro

View from Pão de Açúcar to Copacabana beach, April 2019

I pondered whether to write this for you, the reader, or for me. Written for me it would be a long account of where I went, what I did, how it looked and felt - so I could look back and remember how it was. That, however, would be tedious to for anyone else to read, and this is a public blog after all, not my journal. So it will be an edited account of the highlights, with a great deal missing to try and entertain as well as recall the experience.

Catedral Metropolitana

It's a long journey from the UK to Brazil, not least because direct flights are disproportionately expensive, so the first leg is eastwards with a long stopover. On arrival in Rio the international airport has surprisingly little assistance for the international traveller. I took a bus into town, and made my first friend - a student who was excited to practise her English as she was studying to be a journalist, and was taking time out of university to visit Rio in order to see her favourite band - the Arctic Monkeys. She was delightful - in the course of the journey we became Facebook friends, her mother invited me to stay in her home town (which I would not be visiting on this trip), I invited her to stay in Leamington Spa (which I very much doubt she will ever visit), and she helped me to negotiate my bus stop in town with the driver. A good start.

Teatro Municipal

The weather in Rio in April is not unbearably hot but it is very humid. By the time I reached the hotel I was definitely in need of a shower. Luckily the room was ready, I could shower and change, and there was wifi and air conditioning. I booked a van up to the summit of Corcovado mountain where the Christ the Redeemer statue is, and made my way to the Metro via the Cathedral, which is in the shape of a cone made of grey concrete and is probably the ugliest cathedral I have ever seen, aside from its four enormous stained glass windows. I also passed through Cinelandia square, where the gilded and domed Municipal Theatre is located.

Cristo Redentor

The journey to Cristo Redentor from the Metro station takes two vans, a lift and an escalator or steps. The view from the summit is 360 degrees of Rio de Janeiro, and served as useful orientation as I planned the next two days. I was lucky that the weather was fine - when I passed through Rio on my way back the summit was hidden in the clouds. There isn't much to do at the top after you've looked at the statue and the view, but I had some lunch with that view, and at the next level down I went round a small museum about the local geology, flora and fauna, and then took the van and Metro back.

The hotel breakfast was buffet style, including normal breakfast cereal, bread, cheese and meats, sausage and egg, but also a variety of buns and cakes. Of course I felt obliged to try everything, and collected enough to take with me for lunches as well. The heat and humidity meant that I wasn't all that hungry, and going out alone in the evening to a restaurant didn't appeal, so it was pleasant to indulge at breakfast.

Sugarloaf ascent

After breakfast on Monday I was notified by the walking tour company that the tour I'd booked for that morning was cancelled, so I booked up for the following day and went to the Sugarloaf mountain instead. This time I attempted to catch a local bus, which went pretty well although I overshot my stop and had to walk back.

The ascent is in two stages both served by cable cars, but you can walk up to the middle station through the forest if you like, so obviously that's what I did. Apart from the views of the bay and Copacabana and Ipanema beaches at the top there's a nature trail through a bit more forest. There are notices all over the place about not feeding the marmosets which are a bit of a pest, and I was delighted on the walk up when a few of the them appeared and ran along the fence alongside the path. I was less delighted on the way down when I stopped to eat my lunch, and was pestered by two marmosets with an eye on my sandwich. They have quite mean little faces and spooked me to the extent that I packed up and moved on.

Marmoset, a bit too close

I did some more exploring on foot on the way back to the hotel, just getting a feel for the atmosphere. I also checked out a supermarket, both for supplies and because I love a supermarket - all the unfamiliar and tantalising produce. It became clear that I would be spending two weeks without chocolate - apart from it being too hot for solid chocolate to survive, there seemed to be only Hershey's on offer, which hardly deserves the description of chocolate. What I actually bought were interesting packet soups, which seem to be very different in every country I visit.

On Tuesday I wandered around the Selarón Steps first thing - a tourist attraction formed of steps that have been covered in tiles by the Chilean artist Jorge Selarón.

Selarón Steps

The guided walk did go ahead after that. There were only three customers - me, and a couple who had been working in Hong Kong for six years and were returning to London the long way round. We had three guides - one to supervise, and another two who were trainees. It was a good three hours walking round, and actually there wasn't a whole lot to see but I learned a bit about the history of Brazil, visited a historic cake shop, and tasted cachaça, which is a version of rum used in the classic Brazilian caipirinha cocktail.

Confeitaria Colombo

Then I took a taxi to the Botanic Gardens, got out before we arrived because the traffic was at a standstill and walked the final section. The orchid house and bromeliad house were the most interesting part of the gardens, along with an avenue of majestic palm trees. You can expect orchid and bromeliad pictures at the top of my blog posts for a good few months to come.

So that was Rio. Next morning I flew to Manaus for the Amazonian experience.

There's lots more that could be seen and done in Rio but I focussed on out of doors, skipping the museums and art galleries. I was somewhat limited by being on my own, risk-averse, and not very tolerant of heat and humidity. Google Maps and Google Translate were wonderful companions - the best feature of Maps is that it pinpoints your location - ideal for following bus routes and finding the way to destinations.

I should have used Google Translate a whole lot more because it can give you a clue to Portuguese pronunciation as well as translating to English. Note on pronunciation - a leading 'r' or 'rr' within a word are pronounced 'h', 'c' can sound like 'k' or 's' depending on various factors, 't' followed by 'e' at the end of a word is 'tch', 'm' sounds more like 'ng', 'de' at the end of the word is more like 'je', 's' at the end sounds like 'sh'... what this all means is that the written word rarely sounded as I expected and nobody understood a word I tried to say in Portuguese. Luckily you can get a long way by smiling, pointing, miming and speaking English.

View from Pão de Açúcar to Corcovado mountain, April 2019