Where Are The Powells?: Rio de Janeiro

I'm 2 weeks weeks late in publishing our final 9 days in Rio.

At the end of February we caught the overnight bus from Brasilia that was supposed to take 17 hours but instead it was more like 20. The roads weren't the best which meant we didn't get as much sleep as we had hoped but it all added to the experience. We met up with friends Yvonne and Tony who had flown out to join us and it was great to see them.

We visited Sugarloaf Mountain which is at the mouth of Guanabara Bay. It's name refers to the shape of a concentrated refined loaf of sugar. It rises 396m above the harbour and the views from the top of the cable car are amazing.

Copacabana beach (our beach) is to the left of the hill

We celebrated Yvonne's birthday (over many days) with a number of Caipirinha's :-)

Then there was the carnival parade in the Sambadromo, a purpose built venue designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1983. The parade ground consists of a 700m (2,300ft) street with grandstands and seating for 90,000 spectators. There are 12 - 14 samba schools that participate each year and they are highly competitive (equivalent to the various divisions in European football) with each school presenting thousands of dancers in exotic costumes, its drummers and many floats. Each school has a preset amount of time, supposedly 75 minutes, but it took longer as the night progressed.
I had originally booked grandstand seats for us as tickets were quite expensive, however, there was a problem with the ticket agency as they ran out of the assigned seating, so they upgraded us to a box, only 10 feet away from the runway - result!

The parade started at 9,30pm and we watched 6 schools and all of them were fantastic. We didn't have the energy to stay for the last one and left at 6.30am, just as the sun was coming up. It's been a while since we had such a late night but it was totally worth it. Here are just a few of the 300 photos I took that night:

One day we all went on the Corcovado Train, a rack railway, to the summit of the mountain to see Christ the Redeemer and views over the city and beaches of Rio. The statue is Art Deco and was constructed between 1922 and 1931, is 30m high and the arms stretch 28m wide and is made of reinforced concrete and soapstone.