Today we are
going to Corcovado Mountain to take the train up to see Christ the Redeemer,
one of the Seven Modern Wonders of the World.
On the way
through town we saw the a small gothic church…
and the Guanabara
Palace, home of the Portuguese royal family during the 1800’s.
While walking to the train we had a view of the statue.
The waiting area to get on the train.
The line to
board the train up the mountain wasn’t too bad…we were up at the top within a half
hour or 45 minutes of arriving. Once at
the top there were escalators to take us the rest of the way to the platform
around the statue.
There was a
pretty good crowd at the base of the statue but things moved reasonably
well. We first headed out to the viewing
platforms to take in views of the city. We could see the Copacabana and Ipanema areas
 |
| Copacabana on the left and Ipanema on the right |
and the islands
the jockey club
(for horse racing),
a vast cemetery in
the distance,
other views of Rio itself,
and Sugarloaf
Mountain.
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Video from Corcovado Mountain
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Butterflies and a moth on some nearby flowers.
The statue of
Christ the Redeemer is pretty impressive at 98 feet tall with an arm span of 92
feet. The installation was completed in
1931 and is the largest art deco statue in the world.
We eventually
worked our way down to the line to board the train and met our driver at the
bottom. We drove over to Sugarloaf
Mountain where we were to take the cable up to the top. However, the line was very long so we opted
to visit the botanical gardens instead.
We’ll do Sugarloaf another day.
The gardens
featured mostly tropical plants from around the world.
There was a
large lily pond with many small water lilies and a number of Victoria waterlilies,
the gigantic ones from the Amazon that can get a large as 10 feet wide. These were much smaller…maybe 3 or 4 feet.
Some were in bloom.
Saw a Great
Kiskadee
and some small brown
birds that I was never able to identify (and the guide wasn't much on birds). I'm pretty sure it is some type of sparrow.
The cannonball tree
had some fruit (that look like cannon balls) and a very few of their gorgeous
flowers that they are known for.
We also stopped
at the orchid house. There were a lot of
orchids in bloom and they came in all sizes…what we would consider "normal",
spidery ones,
really tiny
ones,
and all types of interesting ones.
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More Orchids
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Just outside
the orchid house we were met by a very large family of Macaco Prego
monkeys. They were everywhere. The first ones we saw were high in a tree working
on breaking into a giant jack fruit.
There were also
a lot running around on the ground.
Nearby we
stopped at a building that had housed some of the production of gunpowder here
in the 1800’s. The work was done by
slaves. Estimates were that between 4
and 5 million African’s were brought to Brazil as slaves. Brazil was the last country to abolish
slavery in 1888.
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More Botanical Gardens
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That was the
end of our touring today so we headed back to the hotel. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon so we
decided to skip lunch and have an early dinner.
We found a nearby shop that served a type of empanadas.
We each had one and a soda…very cheap.
Then walked to a nearby gelato shop for dessert. The gelato was more expensive than dinner. It was rather wet out…not quite a real rain
but definitely some precipitation.
We both decided
it was an interesting day.
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