{"id":1943,"date":"2019-01-25T00:46:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T00:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1943"},"modified":"2020-08-08T17:07:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-08T16:07:16","slug":"rio-day-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/rio-day-two\/","title":{"rendered":"RIO – DAY TWO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was an early start for us this morning. With an all-day tour ahead of us, we had to be up before 7am to give us enough time to grab some breakfast before heading towards the Show Lounge, where the tours were being managed and passengers were to be sent out in groups to the appropriate buses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had coach number 2 and Tracey had coach 3, so I was out the door, and leading my flock down to the gangway on deck 5, first. With two massive ships berthed either side of the Marco Polo, and another ship in the process of parking behind all three, it was no surprise to find the coach meeting place in chaos. In Rio, everyone wants to visit Sugarloaf Mountain and get up close and personal with Christ The Redeemer; with four big ships, that’s a lot of passengers, and a lot of buses required to ferry them about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once I’d filled my coach, with 36 people, we headed out into the busy morning traffic. Our first stop was the cable car that would take us up to the top of Sugerloaf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Actually, it takes two cable cars to make the ascent; the first one takes you part of the way, to a cable car station on top of an adjacent hill, from where a second cable car carries 20 passengers to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain itself. You’ll be familiar with the location if you remember Roger Moore as James Bond in ‘Moonraker’, battling with the baddie, Jaws, in the very same cable car. In fact, the actual cable car that was used in the movie is on view at the middle cable car station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From the middle station, the views are impressive, but they get even better at the very top of the second cable car ride. We had about thirty minutes to enjoy and photograph the view before taking the same cable cars back down to where we started. The whole process took a couple of hours. There was a lot of queuing involved, but nothing compared to the queues that greeted us when we got back to the bottom, of people waiting to catch the first cable car\u2026 it made everyone feel glad, and slightly smug, that we’d managed to get a relatively early start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once back at ground level, we were whisked off to a ‘Barbeque Restaurant’ in the area known as Copacobana. I think everyone expected an actual open-air barbie on the famous beach; instead, we were all crushed into a modest-sized restaurant, where chaos ensued. It was big enough to take two groups at a time, but there were also other guests there too. The queue for the salad didn’t seem to have a proper beginning and end (it just seemed to go around in a perpetual circle), making it difficult to join. The meat, when it came, was served at the table, sliced off under our noses from massive skewers, with a knife that seemed sharp enough to staisfy a Samuri. It looked wonderful, but wasn’t quite as satisfying at it felt it should have been (the first cuts of meat I was given could have re-soled my old trainers, it was so tough), and the fact that there were waiters whizzing about all over the place with skewers of different meat seemed to make the whole process overly complicated, and led to some passengers being overlooked. Having said all that, there didn’t seem to be too many complaints, and when lunch had been completed, a short space of time before the arrival of the buses gave Tracey and I the opportunity to cross the busy road to the beach, just so we could say that we’d stood on Copacobana Beach\u2026 well, you do don’t you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After lunch, our coaches took us to what should have been the star turn for the day; the statue of Christ the Redeemer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The statue stands on a high natural promontary overlooking the city of Rio far below. To reach it requires a 20-minute cog-powered train ride up the mountain. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this would require more queuing\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, the Corcovado Mountain had stubbornly remained hidden in cloud all day, and as folks stepped off the train and climbed the many steps, or took the lift, to the very top, hopes were dashed as they realised that all they could see of the great statue was the plinth at its base. One look at the faces of those hanging around, hoping against hope for the cloud to disappear, was enough to feel the tangible sense of disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I finally arrived at the top, Tracey and her group had already been there for 20 minutes or more, and the statue was a resolute no-show. I took over her position, as she prepared to rally her group ready for the descent, glancing at the bored-looking crowds of people sat around with cameras, who couldn’t even enjoy views over the city, because all you could see was the inside of a cloud\u2026 very disppointing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was stood chatting to a couple next to me, and collectively, after 15 minutes or so of watching the clouds tease us with nothing higher than the statue’s knees, we decided that enough was probably enough\u2026 when suddenly\u2026 as if everyone’s silent prayers might actually have been acknowledged in the relevant department upstairs\u2026 the cloud lifted. I was looking in the opposite direction at that moment, and thought the sudden gasp from those around me was because they had seen the gaps appear in the clouds and enjoyed the same momentary glimpse of Rio far below as I had. It didn’t take many seconds for the penny to drop, however, and as I spun round, there it was, Christo Renetor in all its magnifcent glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What followed was a bizarre burst of energy from everyone stood at the statue’s feet, and a massive selfie-fest. Folks were clambouring about on all fours, or posing like the statue itself, as cameras clicked and whirred, and the collective despression rose to an appropriate gasp of appreciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As I snapped my camera and shot video, the first thing that crossed my mind, knowing that Tracey was on her way back down the steps to the tram station, was ‘she’ll hate me\u2026’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As tours go, all the necessary boxes had dutifully been ticked, and as we herded our passengers back into the train to take us back down the hill to the coaches and back to the ship, that should have been it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the day took an interesting turn\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To say nothing of the fact that Tracey had once again been lumbered with the problem of a missing passenger (who eventually turned up, but not after much palavar), as I got the last of my passengers onto coach 2, the weather took a rather dramatic turn for the worst. Torrential rain, flashes of lightning and booming cracks of thunder turned a 30-minute journey back to the ship into a two-hour grind. Having seen how bad the rush-hour traffic could be yesterday, delays weren’t entirely unexpected. However; what we saw through the windows of the coach was quite amazing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beaches we drove past were in utter turmoil, and large groups of people dressed in only their beachware stood huddled under any shelter they could find. Traffic ground to a near halt for most of the way, and many of the roads we drove along became flooded very quickly. Pedestrians waded through floodwater up to their knees, and we saw at least three large trees that had fallen, blocking roads further, and adding to the general vehicular gridlock. Through it all, ambulances and police cars wailed as they shot past us; goodness knows how they managed to wheedle their way through the packed traffic; motorcycles whizzed through the tiniest of gaps in the traffic, sounding their horns as if to say ‘I’m coming through whether you like it or not, get out of my way’, and in one incident, I even saw a pedestrian who was dashing across the road through the traffic, kocked quite violently sideways as a motorcycle clipped him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are more stories than this; as Tracey says, everyone will have a different story from their day in Rio. After we’d come down from the statue and the storm started, the power on the train cut out and some groups were temporarily stranded at the top of the hill. We even heard from a couple of passengers who had been on Sugerloaf Mountain at the time, and had been told to get out of the cable car quickly, only to see the cable car hit by lightning before their very eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last bizarre twist to the afternoon came when I finally got back to the ship, believing Tracey was still stuck in traffic somewhere, or still trying to locate her missing passenger, only to find her already on board. Despite my coach leaving before hers, and taking two hours to get back to the port (two hours later than the scheduled time, I might add), Tracey’s bus driver had whisked them back in only thirty minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An interesting day, then, and one in which we saw two different sides to Rio De Janeiro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s been fun, but its nice to be back on board the Marco Polo, as the rain continues to fall outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight, we set sail again, towards our next destination, Buenos Aires, in Argentina, where we are due to arrive in three days time. Tomorrow is the first of two sea-days, and I will be back at work in the morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s the last of the Brazil ports, as we head onwards and southwards\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was an early start for us this morning. With an all-day tour ahead of us, we had to be up before 7am to give us enough time to grab some breakfast before heading towards the Show Lounge, where the tours were being managed and passengers were to be sent out in groups to the appropriate buses. I had coach...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1950,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/1950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}