Sep 3rd, 2008
Christ the Redeemer
Yesterday morning, George and I grabbed breakfast at the hotel and then hopped in a taxi and headed to Corcovado to check out Chris the Redeemer. We each brought about 50 or so real with us and this left us in a somewhat problematic situation when we arrived to find that tickets on the tram up the mountain would cost about 36 real each.
After paying for the taxi, paying for the tram would have left us with a collective sum of about 3.75 real but we decided to worry about that later.
The 30-minute tram ride up was quite enjoyable and offered some truly amazing views of Rio. We were also entertained by a samba group that came into our train and performed several songs. I gave them a real at the end of the set to George’s dismay and that left us with a grand total of 2.75 real.
The statue itself is also quite a spectacle and well worth the trip up.
It is worth noting that George mockingly asked “Who is that?” in reference to the statue as we arrived on top of Corcovado. “Is that the president of Brazil?”
The questions resulted in a few dirty looks from some Canadian tourists within earshot.
Regarding the statue itself, I won’t go into that much detail but Wikipedia has a pretty solid article on Christ the Redeemer if you are interested.
After about thirty minutes of snapping photos and mocking other tourists, we decided it was time to go so we headed back down on the tram and discussed our options for getting back to Copacabana.
We came up with the following list:
- Hike five miles back to Copacabana
- Beg for money on the streets near Corcovado to cover bus fare
- I use our pooled resources to pay for 1 bus ticket and then come back in a taxi to pick George up (we promptly realized that this was no longer a viable option after I gave that real to the samba group)
- Take a cab back and simply pay him when we got to our hotel
Clearly, the final option was the most intelligent but we decided to try option #1 and began walking back to Copacabana despite having a pretty shoddy tourist map and no spatial understanding of Rio.
From the top of Corcovado I thought I had figured out a route back but we quickly got lost and it took some help from a sympathetic pedestrian to get us back on course.
After about two hours of serious walking we finally emerged onto Copacabana beach, starving and exhausted, but unscathed.
