Christ the Redeemer Statue and Sugarloaf mountain

Daisy rode the bus from Campos to Rio and found us on the beach. We rented a car and off we went. Driving in Brazil is crazy. Not just a little crazy but really crazy. In a lot of places there are no lines on the road. No one seems to follow any rules of the road. Daisy was taking on buses and wouldn't give an inch. We only saw one crash and that was a 3 car pile up on the bridge. If people drove like that in the states there would be crashes everywhere. 

We took a train to see the statue. The statue is one of the most photographed sites in the world. I was excited about seeing it. While we were riding the train Sean pointed at some monkeys. He said "look it's the monkeys that stole the watches in Rio." Sure enough it was the monkeys from the cartoon. How cool is that, we were on the set of a cartoon. It was the same as driving down Route 66 and being on the set of the cartoon Cars.

Too bad we didn't read the no visibility disclaimer on the ticket. There was no visibilty!

It was cold and windy on day one.

These panoramics are from day two.

Day 2 was perfect. Warm and great visibility. The only down side was the place was packed. The statue was built between 1922 and 1931. The landmark is sponsored by Coca Cola. Seeing Coke ads posted above all the Christ posters at the train station was kind of weird. Pepsi must be bummed.

View from Sugarloaf.

This picture is from Sugarloaf mountain, the cable car that takes you u

When we went back the second day we took a van to the top. It was interesting to take the trip via two different routes. This was a brief break in the clouds on trip one. 

The slums or favela as they are called were impressive. They cover the side of the mountain and go on and on. It would be like slums covering the Wasatch front from Ogden to Provo. Such insurmountable poverty. The Brazilians spoke about their poor with a criticism different than the people in Argentina. Argentina had some big slums too but they were nothing compared to Rio. The corruption in Brazil is so huge I don't think anything is being done to help the poor. All the money goes into the pockets of the corrupt. They are trying to increase educational opportunities but generational poverty is almost impossible to overcome under the best of circumstances. I found the way favela's are incorporated into T-shirts and Rio souvenir pictures.