Her name is Rio

… and she dances on the sand

Just like that river twisting through a dusty land

And when she shines she really shows you all she can

Oh Rio, Rio dance across the Rio Grande

(Rio, Duran Duran)

After 9 months in Brazil we finally made it to Rio de Janeiro! For four days over the Easter weekend we were walking on famous white sand beaches, gazing up at mountains, eating churrascaria, and dreaming of dancing the night away. If you think New York City never sleeps, you need to visit Rio!

We arrived in Rio at midday on Good Friday and with such little time in the city, it was time to get going. First stop: the beach! Copacabana here we come! Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon are neighbourhoods in the South Zone of the city and are famous for their pristine white sand beaches. During our stay we would walk the length of all 3 beach promenades, about 8 km, and some parts more than once. We loved all the palm trees lining the length of the beaches and the black and white geometric wave pattern of the tiles of the promenade, it reminded us so much of Portugal. Although practically next to each other, the beaches can be quite different. Denoted by the number of the nearest post, some sections of the beach are more family oriented, some have a more relaxed atmosphere, others are more sophisticated, some you go to see and be seen, there is a gay section as well as sport oriented sections for football, volleyball and footvolley. Everywhere on the beach it is easy to rent an umbrella and chairs or buy a beer and agua de coco or a sarong and sun block. Our favourite was the Ipanema stretch of beach between posts 7 and 9.

View of Sugar Loaf Mountain coming in to land

Copa, Copacabana!

Looking toward Sugar Loaf

Looking back on the length of Copacabana beach

Palm tree at Ipanema

Once we reached the end of Copacabana underneath Sugar Loaf, we caught a taxi to Praia Vermelha and joined the long queue for the cable car up the mountain. From this point on, it would be the weekend of the long queues! For every attraction, we stood in queues for at least an hour. After 90 minutes we finally had tickets and continued in the queue for the actual cable car.

Sugar Loaf is 396 m high and the cable car to reach the top is in two stages. The stop over point is Urca Mountain at 224 m high. At Urca we enjoyed the first views over the bay and the antics of cheeky monkeys in the trees while queuing for the cable car to the summit. It had been a beautiful clear hot day and we were looking forward to sunset at the top. However, while we were at Urca, the clouds started rolling in. At first there were just a few fluffy clouds that added atmosphere in the pastel sky. But by the time we were on Sugar Loaf it was completely clouded over and quite misty. We still enjoyed our time at the top and after some time the mist passed over revealing a lit up Copacabana and Flamengo beach and a lit up Statue of Christ peering over the clouds. Most of the city remained cloudy but we still enjoyed the views. We consoled ourselves that the best views of Rio were still to come at the top of Corcovado.

Waiting for the cable car at Sugar Loaf

Boibs at Sugar Loaf

Cheeky monkey!

Cloudy sunset over Rio

The next day we were up bright and early and headed off to join the queue for going up Corcovado to the Statue of Christ. We were finally near the front after 90 minutes of patiently queuing when they stopped ticket sales due to traffic at the top of the mountain. None of the park officials present could explain in English but thankfully a kind person in the crowd translated. Apparently ticket sales would resume at 17:00. After a moment of grumping about the situation we decided not to waste the beautiful clear day and headed off for some seeing some sights of the city instead.

We caught a metro to Lapa area near the centre for some exploring. The main sights we were looking for were the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Arches of Lapa and the Selaron Steps. The Cathedral has an interesting conical shape but was unfortunately not open when we were there; it must be more interesting inside with the beautiful stained-glass windows than the concrete façade outside. The Arches of Lapa is an aqueduct completed in 1750 with the purpose of bringing fresh water from the Carioca River to the city. The Selaron Steps were an ordinary street of steps transformed by Chilean-born artist Jorge Selaron. He lived in the street and started renovating the steps by covering them in tiles of blue, yellow and green. The steps became on obsession for him and eventually the entire street was covered in tiles. The walls on either side have also been tiled, mostly in red though. It was definitely worth coming to see the steps, something unique. At night Lapa transforms itself from suspicious day venue to the nightlife hotspot; it is well known that the best Samba clubs are in Lapa. Despite our best intentions we didn’t make it for a night out dancing. After full hot days we were just too smashed in the evenings. We must be getting old!

Flower market at Largo do Machado

Teatro Municipal

The Metropolitan Cathedral

Arcos de Lapa

The arches of the aquaduct are undergoing some restorative work

Selaron Steps

Boibs at Selaron

From Lapa we made our way to the Botanical Gardens where we enjoyed the hot afternoon in the cool shade. We enjoyed the palm tree lined avenues, the grove of mango trees, the antics of the monkeys in a quieter part of the garden and the sun-bathing turtles doing yoga-like stretches. From the gardens we made our way to Leblon beach and walked the entire length of the beach until the end of Ipanema. The beach and promenade were really busy in the late afternoon and it was a lovely time of day to enjoy a few hours at the beach.

We loved our weekend in Rio and had a really great time but we were disappointed and surprised at how difficult it was to obtain correct and accurate tourist information considering that Rio is such a tourist hot spot. For example, we asked our hotel reception where the nearest Kopenhagen Chocolate store was. The guy made it sound like a 20-30 minute mission by taxi and metro to the nearest mall and he wasn’t sure if the store would be open due to it being Easter. We decided to leave it. The next day we walked literally 100 m around the corner from the hotel and stumbled on an open Kopenhagen shop. If the hotel doesn’t know what is in their direct neighbourhood, how can they give advice on the rest of the city? This is really unfortunate though as tourists often rely on the hotel to provide the most up to date information. Our hotel’s lack of good information is what resulted in our bad luck for getting to Corcovado. They should have given us all the options and let us choose what we wanted to do rather than deciding for us.

Palm tree avenues in the botanical gardens

Giant lily pads!

Sunbathing yoga turtles

Ipanema at sunset

Caramel popcorn! 

Sunday and our last full day in Rio arrived and with it more determination to get to the top of Corcovado. We were up even earlier and this time we caught a taxi directly to the train station at the base of the mountain. At 07:30, half an hour before opening time, the queue for tickets was already 30 minute deep. We were on the second train up the mountain at 08:20 and already the base of the statue was completely crowded. Unfortunately the cloud of Friday night had returned and while we could observe the Statue of Christ with blue skies behind, the famed views over Rio city were obscured by cloud. It was still very pretty and worth going up but we were disappointed that we had missed out on the stunning views again. We decided to try wait out the cloud but two hours later it was just as thick and we decided to go down.

Statue of Christ at Corcovado

Boibs at the top of Corcovado

Cloudy view over Rio from Corcovado

At the train station we were directed to a bus that would take us back to Ipanema beach. We mostly used taxis and the metro (really affordable, tourist friendly and quite safe) to get around Rio but we highly recommend this bus trip, it was a lovely and inexpensive way to see a large part of suburban southern Rio. The bus felt quite safe too and on this particular route we were confident that we wouldn’t get lost. At Ipanema we wandered around the Sunday Hippie Fair before deciding that it was lunch time. The time had arrived for us to try the churrascaria’s of Rio.

We made our way to Flamengo by metro and had a long walk on the beach promenade enjoying views of Sugar Loaf in search of Porcao Rio’s. We eventually found it, with the help of a taxi driver after walking in the opposite direction. Porcao is one of Rio’s premium churrascaria’s or barbecue style eateries. Beautifully cooked cuts of meat are brought to your table on giant skewers and carved directly onto your plate. There is also a buffet of salads, pasta, bread, cheese and other accompaniments. We took different approaches to the buffet table: Justin enjoyed a selection while Bron focussed on the meat! We really enjoyed our visit to Porcao and look forward to trying different styles of Brazilian churrascaria. We recommend going fall over hungry.

View of Sugar Loaf from Flamengo beach

Meat! Lunch at Porcao

Monday was another cloudy day and we filled our remaining half day in Rio with a walk on the promenade of Lagao Rodrigo de Freitas in the super posh area of Leblon, a final walk on Ipanema beach, taste-testing Kopenhagen chocolates and eating ice-cream. All too soon it was time to head to the airport and back to Vitoria. As a final goobye and token gesture of Rio, it cleared up enough for us to finally have good views over the city from the air as we flew out.

View of the lagoon

We love you Ipanema!

We felt much safer than we expected to in Rio. We were warned by many people to take care in Rio, which we did, our South African-ness brightly shining through. But we didn’t have any trouble or see anything untoward. However, the Tuesday after we left, there was a huge clash with police in a favela in Copacabana, right near our hotel. We didn’t even notice a favela in Copacabana, never mind nearby. Here’s to hoping for a smooth World Cup Rio.

Thanks for a great weekend Rio xxx