April 7 – Christ the Redeemer and the Botanical Gardens

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.