14/02/2020 – Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Another slow morning. No alarms and made some brunch alongside the maid who was maning lunch for the family. Tried to stay out of her way as much as possible, she had her earphones in and kept herself to herself. We got our stuff together and decided to make the most of the break in the clouds and try to do Christ the Redeemer. We got an Uber there and bought our tickets, which is when we were told there would be a 2.5 hour wait until we could get the shuttle up. With nothing we wanted to do more we agreed and headed for the little restaurants with a view of both Christ the Redeemer and out across the ocean. The sun was intermittently shining between passing clouds. There were lots of people waiting around, I suppose all the people who hae been unable to go for the last few days like us. We bought some food and whiled away the time in the little exhibition. By the time it was our call it was freezing (freezing here just means not boiling FYI). We went through the turnstiles and spent a good couple of hours queueing for our shuttle bus up. Once we got to the base we ran up the stairs to see Christ the Redeemer. He was impressively huge. The base was full of people taking all sorts of selfies and group photos from funny angles. If you can’t beat them join them, so that we did! We got a good eyeful and took some pictures, enjoying both the statue and the incredible views over the huge city of Rio de Janeiro. How lucky we are to be here! We did a once round, and then back down to a souvenir shop where Josh bought a couple of magnets. We then had to join another queue for about an hour to get the shuttle bus back down. The sun was setting over the ocean and the clouds were reflecting the pinks and yellows so it was quite a sight! Eventually we were shuttled the 10 minutes back down to the ticket office. Some taxi drivers in the car park tried to hustle us but we saw through them and so used the cheap shuttle buses down the hill to a square where there are buses and taxis. We got on a bus that we thought might go in the right direction of home and sat tight for a while, trying to make sense of our surroundings and to work out where we were. Eventually we saw a road sign that said Botafogo, and thought we recognised the area vaguely. We hopped out the bus and managed to connect to a street cafes wifi and look up on maps the way home. It wasn’t too far so we decided to walk. The streets of Botafogo were buzzing, it is a Friday night and everyone is out drinking beers from the small side shops with little collapsible chairs tables lining the pavements. Not a bad way to see the weekend in! We enjoyed our last little stroll through Rio, bought some food from the supermarket and went in and had a gnocchi dinner (its been a while!) We packed up and had another early night.