Brazil: Rio

March 16, 2023

Friday, March 3 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio was one of the places I was most looking forward to seeing. I expected to love Rio. We were told to be up on deck the morning we sailed into the harbor—it was a once in a lifetime experience they said. The thing that struck me that morning was the brown haze of smog that engulfed the Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain. I was not expecting that.

Smog coming into Rio

More smog

The other thing about Rio on that particular day—and this can’t be overstated—the heat and humidity. It was 95 degrees and 95 percent humidity. As predicted a week ago, instead of whining about the cold we were now whining about the heat. Thankfully we were signed up for a “Highlights of Rio” tour through the cruise line on an air conditioned bus. And the smog from earlier had dissipated.

I was prematurely optimistic. Our tour guide, while fluent in English, made Rio de Janeiro seem dull. The bus wound its cumbersome way up toward Corcovado Mountain as the tour guide droned on in a monotone. We exited the bus near the train that would take us to the top of Corcovado. Let’s just say there were a lot of other buses with other tourists doing the exact same thing. We were soon packed like sardines on the sweltering train heading up the mountain. Periodically the train would stop on the way up to let the descending train pass. Once at the top of the mountain, we took turns packing into an elevator, riding up a couple of open-air escalators (something I’ve never seen before), and arriving at the base of the Christ the Redeemer statue. The view was spectacular, and there was a much-appreciated breeze at the top. Despite the chaotic process to get there, it was possibly worth the trip up. A world class view.

Our bus with A/C

We breezed through the ticket line since our tour included tickets

Waiting in line for the train

The sweltering train

The elevator up

Our reward

Boats on a lake below

Going down was another matter. In addition to being dull, our tour guide was also not adept at positioning a group for the train ride back down. To be fair, I would not want to be a tour guide keeping track of 30 people in that huge crowd. However, there were groups who arrived after us going down ahead of us. She could not figure it out. We eventually made it through the giant queue back onto the sweltering train—this time going down.

At the bottom, we found our bus in a long queue of buses and re-boarded. That was the last time we left the bus until Copacabana Beach where, because of the congestion getting to and from Corcovado Mountain, we had 5 minutes take photos. By then, I had lost my will to live. The beach looked lovely (if hot and crowded) and I took a lot of photos from the bus. I watched some young men playing with a ping pong table using a soccer ball, and their heads for paddles. Pretty amusing!

Once we were back at the ship, the tour guide asked us to complete a review. We declined—we have not found “Destination Services” staff receptive to negative comments about their expensive excursions.

Saturday, March 4, 2023

Another oppressively hot day in Rio. We had planned to spend a few hours at Copacabana Beach, and were thinking twice about it. It would involve taking turns getting into the water while the other person sweltered on the beach watching our stuff. Instead, we went to a couple of nearby attractions. For one thing, they were air conditioned.

We started with the aquarium. Being Saturday, there were a lot of families there. It was up there with the best of them we’ve ever seen.

Next was a fine art museum with some interesting modern pieces, a wonderful photo exhibit, and a large collection of wood sculptures by Agnaldo Manuel dos Santos, a Brazilian artist who was extremely prolific in the early 1960s and lived a very short life. Pieces from private collections were tracked down and they managed to have them together in a single exhibition.

Agnaldo Manuel dos Santos piece. And Charlie.

Last but not least was the museum of the future. The building itself was an attraction. This quirky idea gave museum-goers a card that interpreted many of the exhibits in their own languages, so it was possible to get some of the information in English. Not much of that going on in Brazil so far. Anyhow it presented information about the solar system, chemistry, physics, anatomy, and our natural ecosystems in different formats. One exhibit depicted the discoveries that have sped up communication and manufacturing in the last 100 years. It was deeply disturbing.