Tom and Noel's South America Cruise: Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 2/24

Our arrival into the natural harbor was spectacular. Christ the Redeemer statue is lighted and was a fantastic sight as we sailed in at about 6:30 am. We had a morning tour that included views of Ipanema and Copacabana beaches as we drove through the city. The highlight was riding the tram to the top of Sugar Loaf mountain where there were great views of the different beaches and sections of the city that are separated by mountains. The traffic was very bad as they have many areas of construction while the city prepares for World Cup Soccer in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016.

Christ the Redeemer statue at dawn

Going up the tram to Sugar Loaf

Copacabana Beach

View coming down in the tram

The beaches were all packed with people as many take the entire week off from work as Carnival just ended on Tuesday. Remnants of Carnival can still be seen throughout the city and tomorrow night is the last event, a parade of the top five Samba Clubs. They have a spectacular stadium where the parade is held, it is like a street with permanent grandstands lining both sides. We found out that the parade starts at 8 pm and lasts until 4 am and each of the five top groups have an hour and a half for their part of the event. We were told that tickets can cost $1000 to see the parade, however our ship leaves Rio at six tomorrow night before the parade begins.

After dinner we had a little time before leaving the ship at 9 pm for a Samba show. The show did not start until 10 pm, quite late for us! The costumes were very elaborate with lots of glitter and feathers and not much else, it made up for the ugly bodies in bikinis we saw on the beaches! At the end of the two hour show they paraded in prize winnng costumes from prior years Carnival. On our way back to the port we ran into several road closures as they were moving all the floats for the "Winner's Parade" on Saturday night. At one point we were right by the ship but they would not let our bus go through so we had to continue down the elevated highway for about 10 miles before we could turn around and go back on a different road. We did see several of the floats as they were being moved, they were huge and very impressive. We did not get back to the ship until 1 am, it made for a very short night as we had to be up at 6:30 to be ready in time for our morning tour.

Several of the dancers were over 6 ft tall