We booked the city tour online & we got picked up from the hotel at 10am after breakfast thankfully the weather had brightened up, Filippo was our guide he was from Rio but spoke Portuguese Spanish & english easily! The first part of the tour was to visit a popular hang gliding spot near Barra Tijuca this is an up & coming part of Rio where all the new hotels are being built, it has lots of smart exclusive cocktail bars. We passed through the largest favela in the centre of Rio & the guide told us about how the city was divided with the extreme rich to the unbelievably poor. It was hard to see how some of the families lived especially being so close to the more exclusive neighbourhoods which is where the crime filters down from the favelas. It was really windy so we didn’t get to see any of the hand gliders in flight! Next we drove up into the forest of tijuca, we drove past peles summer house which was a lovely large wooden traditional house just inside the forest. We pulled over at a viewing point which looked down over the south of the city & the islands out to sea, there was a baby monkey & it’s mum watching the crowd from the trees. The baby climbed down & followed some of our group who had peanuts, the guide asked us not to feed them as they don’t learn their natural way of hunting food. I managed to get a few pictures of the baby monkey in with the great scenery. We carried on into the forest & went on a short jungle trek to a waterfall, there were some local Brazilians having picnics & swimming in the water. We went back down to the Leblon area after for lunch to a comida-a-quilo restaurant where you serve yourself and pay by weight.
It was a good way to try all different foods it was really busy with locals & business people. After lunch we made our way up the Corcovado mountain to the “big man” Christ the redeemer the world famous statue which has its arms outstretched facing the bay welcoming visitors to the city! The coach took us up to the entrance area where we got our wristbands & changed into a smaller vehicle, the minibus wound around the small cliff top to the base of the statue, we climbed the steps & admired the views the weather was perfect you could see for miles across the whole city. Luckily it wasn’t too busy on the viewing point but it was still a fight for the best selfie spots which Kurt got really frustrated with ha! One girl was even led on her back taking photos of people underneath the statue I asked her to take a photo of me whilst she was down there. The views seemed fake they were that perfect, it felt like our whole trip had come to climax here this place was what dreams were made of! The panoramic view of the bays with sugarloaf, skyscrapers & favelas really was something else! We got back to the coach & went down into the Santa Teresa neighbourhood which was beautiful, it had traditional tavernas next to modern buildings with quirky street art everywhere, the old trams in the city still ran here more for the tourists but it had a great feel to the area. We visited the metropolitan cathedral which had architecture inspired by the Mayan pyramids of Mexico, the conical shape is believed to give proximity to God. Four stained glass windows run from floor to ceiling forming a cross at the top. It was a really ugly building from the outside but the inside was stunning with the patterned colours of stained glass all the way up to the top. After that we stopped at the escadaria seleron also known as the 'Selaron Steps', They are the work of Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón who claimed it as "my tribute to the Brazilian people” these famous stairs are covered in thousands of different tiles, they straddle the Lapa neighbourhood and Santa Teresa. We got dropped off back at the hotel we had such a great day. From the favelas to the top of the city viewing it from such a vantage point was the icing on the cake of the trip for us both!