We landed in Rio after a short flight from Florianopolis. A Uber dropped us at our AirBnB where we realized that we would only have about 1.5 sunny days in Rio (out of our 3.5 days). So no time to lose – on to the Sugarloaf mountain! There’s 2 cable cars that take you up first to a smaller hill, from where you already have great views, and then further to the top of the rocky mountain.
The views in all directions were really beautiful – we could see many beaches such as Copacabana and Ipanema, the center of Rio and the surrounding other mountains and hills, including Corvocado with the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer.
What was not a great, was the light we got… basically the view back to Christ the Redeemer and over the city were completely against the sun! Too bad… We also quickly realized that we had made the wrong decision by buying tickets for the train up Corvocado for next morning. Afternoon would have been much better, like this we would have the same light issue again for taking photos. Too bad, too bad… That being said, Sugarloaf was still really nice and well worth the visit. We took our time here, waiting until the sun went down a bit more, and visited all viewpoints about three times. Lol.
As mentioned, next day we woke up early and took the train up to Corvocado to see Christ the Redeemer and more views over the city and bays. We got a bit unlucky with the weather though (in addition to the light), as clouds started to come in suddenly and we almost didn’t have any view at first! Fortunately, it got better again and the clouds moved a bit during our stay up there. But still… the sun was just in the completely wrong spot for any decent photos.
Later, we made our way to the famous beach of Copacabana which was covered with hundreds of people. We walked along the beach, seeing no need to go swimming among the masses. Then we visited Copacabana fort, which was by itself nothing special, but offered good views over Copacabana and some smaller beaches on the other side.
We continued our walk to Ponta do Aproador, a rocky viewpoint at the one end of Ipanema beach and then walked along Ipanema for quite a bit too. It was just as busy as Copacabana, but in our opinion offered better views with the mountain Dois Irmãos at the end of it.
After some beach time, we went on a shopping mission: we were still missing some camping gear that had been stolen in Buenos Aires, so we unsuccessfully visited one smaller store and then Decathlon, where we found quite some stuff – having to accept that the quality will be lower than what we had before…
Next day, we woke up to grey weather (as predicted) and decided to see the city center a bit. We first went to the Museum of Tomorrow – only to see it from the outside since it’s closed Mondays. Then we passed by the Theater and the white arches of Lapa.
We continued to the famous staircase Escadaria Selarón, which is a staircase full of colourful tiles created by an artist. Full of tiles…and full of tourists! In some parts, you couldn’t even see the stairs anymore because there were so many people. Lol. If you climbed up higher, there were less people though, so that’s what we did!
From the top of the stairs, we continued up the hills until we found a good viewpoint over the city. We had wanted to visit Parque das Ruinas, but found out it was closed (Mondays?), so the other viewpoint had to do.
On our last day, weather was even worse, so we opted to go back to the Museum of Tomorrow for an inside visit this time. Honestly, it was good it was free on Tuesdays, since we didn’t find it that special. The museum aims to make you aware of the humans‘ influence on planet Earth, but for us there was not much new information.
In a short dry period, we managed to visit Parque Lage still – which was nicer than expected with some cool views! It didn’t need much time to be visited though, so later we were off to some more shopping at Decathlon. At least, now we’re done with it and can leave this whole shitty story behind us I hope.
We left Rio for Ilha Grande and later on Paraty, from where – as a last stop – we continued to Sao Paulo.
When we arrived in Sao Paulo, we were straight away fascinated by the city’s pure ugliness. Seriously, we have never seen such an ugly city! Grey, ugly buildings wherever you looked. We are also calling it „city of the homeless“ as we have never ever seen that many people living on the streets. It was crazy!
We had two full days for the city, and started our exploration next day with little hopes to see anything remotely pretty. And right we were! We walked and uber-ed our way through the central areas, checked out a couple of churches and squares, but it was nothing to write home about.
The best part was still Liberdade, the Asian neighborhood, where they at least hang some lanterns in the street and some houses had Asian roofs. Here we got some nice noodles, which was probably our highlight of Sao Paulo.
Next day, we went to see Batman’s Alley – a street full of really cool graffiti. Ok, actually this might have been our one and only highlight of this ugly city! So, if you have to spend time in Sao Paulo, go see the graffiti and have food at Liberdade, spend the rest of the time in your hotel room. You won’t be missing out…
And with this lowlight of our whole time in South America, we said goodbye to the American continent and started our flight marathon across the ocean: Sao Paulo – Lisbon – Madrid – Addis Abeba. On to new adventures!
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