Day 5. Chris

Today's full day tour of Rio was amazing. We were picked up at 7.00 am by our personal guide for the day. He had recommended an early start to get to Christ the Redeemer before the crowds and queues started to build. The plan worked to perfection and Mal and I were the very first visitors to the statue today. By the time we left there were about 150 people there. Later in the day this figure is much higher. The statue was great to see, but the views were equally spectacular.

Next, we went to Sugarloaf Mountain, via 2 cable car rides. Again, this was all about the views, which were spectacular.

Following this, we went to the Selaron steps, which are apparently more visited than Sugarloaf mountain. In 1990, Selarón began renovating dilapidated steps that ran along the front of his house. At first, neighbours mocked him for his choice of colours as he covered the steps in fragments of blue, green and yellow tiles - the colours of the Brazilian flag. It started out as a side-project to his main passion, painting, but soon became an obsession. He found he was constantly out of money, so Selarón sold paintings to fund his work. It was long and exhausting work but he continued on and eventually covered the entire set of steps in tiles, ceramics and mirrors.There are 215 steps measuring 125 metres long which are covered in over 2000 tiles collected from over 60 countries around the world. No sooner than one section of the steps were 'finished', Selarón started work on another section, constantly changing it so that it was an ever evolving piece of art.

Originally, tiles for the work were scavenged from various construction sites and piles of urban waste found on the Rio streets. But in later years most of the tiles were donated by visitors from all around the world. Of the 2000+ tiles, 300-odd are hand painted by Selarón depicting a pregnant African woman. Selarón didn't comment on this except to say that it was a "Personal problem from my past".

Many of the tiles represent countries or cities, but some are of celebrities, or just artwork.

From there we visited the cathedral, which is not universally popular, being inspired in part by the Apollo spacecraft.

We then saw the Sambadrome, which we will hopefully be visiting for the carnival in a few weeks.

Having started so early, we still had time for an afternoon by the pool. Evening as always, we found a local restaurant opposite the beach.