ahka | Day 5 in Rio (Reply)

This morning we woke up early, to eat breakfast and go on the city tour. The weather was perfect! The sun was shining, the sky were clear, the ocean was blue and it was pretty hot. On Saturdays, they closed the Atlantica Avenue that runs along the Copacabana beach and there were so many people walking on the roads and on the beach. It was a perfect beach day too.

We met our tour guide who greeted us happily saying “Hi Mr. Boris!” We got on the airconditioned tour bus and went to collect more people for the tour. Most of the people were from Brazil. There was only one family from Buenos Aires, Argentina and we were telling everyone that we are Russian tourists.

The tour guide’s name is Rodrigo. He was trying to talk in Portuguese, Spanish and English. He spoke more in Portuguese and only gave us a few words in English. We had a nice group of people. The tour took us to several important Rio’s sites. The only site we did not go was the statue of the Christ. We actually did not really want to go there anyway, so it worked out great. The statue was closed because of the rains. So, we even got our money back because we didn’t go there.

The first stop was at the weirdly shaped building that appeared to be The Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro. At the time we stopped there, there was service going on. It actually looked more like Egyptian pyramid rather then a cathedral.

After the Cathedral, we went to the Sambadrome – the place where they have annual Rio Carnival. They have a little shop where you can put on a costume for R$5 and take a picture in it. We did not spend much time there. It was kind of cool to see the area. It looked like a street with built-in tribunes for the audience. On one side the tribunes included seats like at any sport event and on the other side there were suites that are probably much more expensive.

After Sambadrom we went to the Maracana stadium. This is their most famous stadium where all soccer games occur. This stadium fits 100,000 people. In one area of the stadium they have a hall of fame where soccer stars left their foot prints and signed their names on the floor. Similar to the Hollywood. We took some cool pictures there with prints of Pele, Kaka, Ranaldo and Marta.

After the stadium our tour took us to the Sugar Loaf. It was my favorite site. We took two cable cars to get on top of that mountain. We kept going up and up. At first we got on top of the Urca mountain from which we took another cable car to go higher to the Sugar Loaf. The skies were clear and we could see the whole Rio and other cities nearby. We could see the statue of Christ from far away. The views were breathtaking. The weather was just perfect!

On top of the mountains there were wild animals and we saw three little monkeys in the trees. I videotaped them and took one picture. One jumped from the tree to the walk area where we were and it somewhat scared me, so I immediately walked away from that area.

After we got back down, our tourbus took us to the restaurant to eat “lunch” it was more of a dinner time though. It was Brazilian buffet and the food was great! All you can eat was included in our tour. We just had to pay for the drinks. At this restaurant we met two Russian speaking people, Nikolay and his mother Elena. Nikolay told us that he has been living in Brazil for 50 years and his mother for 60. I was curious to learn more about these people but we decided to leave them alone. They were speaking Russian with typical Odessa accent. They asked me if we are on the tour with some Galina. Apparently, there is some Galina that does Rio tours for Russian speaking tourists.

The last point of our tour was watching sunset at the Ipanema beach where we took picture of our group. It was a lot of fun. We even got to talk some Spanish with the family from Argentina. Well, we don’t really speak Spanish, but Boris knows a lot of Spanish words and phrases that he learned while playing soccer with Hispanic guys. Some phrases appropriate and some are not. I hope he did not offend our tour-mates.

By the time we dropped everyone at their hotels and got to our hotel it was very dark. We got some rest and some food.
We decided to end our evening by going back to the Copacabana market. We purchased more jewelry and said good bye to Krishna, since tomorrow is our last day here. Also, we met our tour-mates from Argentina and had a laugh about the way we communicated with each other using Spanish, Portuguese, English and some non-verbal communication.

It looks like it is going to be a sunny day again. We plan to spend the day at the beach tomorrow before we catch the plane back home.