Rio de Janeiro baby

Jan 30 - Feb 03 2012Rio de JaneiroThe first sights of Rio on the bus travelling through the outer impoverished suburbs, worse than slums seen in south east Asia, paints a grim picture of what is truly one of the most stunning cities in the world. Huge granite mountains, beautiful beaches, and a city that is somehow squeezed in between is an amazing place.Once surviving our first taxi ride with no mugging, or kidnapping, and settling into our studio flat 2 blocks from Copacabana beach, we were ready to explore... This was until my guts decided that the cheese and ham pastry (looked a little white ham) we had on the bus needed urgent evacuation. After a little lying around I decided to have a quick look at the beach. Followed by a brisk walk back to the marvellous view of the toilet. The following day after a pretty settled night, it was raining, but we were able to walk to the nearby beach Ipanema, which is towered over by the granite mountains Pedra Dois Irmãos (Two Brothers Rock). In the afternoon we walked around to Urca to see Sugarloaf, the mountain with the cable car, which stands at the entrance to the harbour and towers over the beaches and city. It was cloudy so decided to save going up for another day.We woke the next day to bright blue skies and quickly decided to give the hike up to Corcovado and the statue of Christ overlooking the city. After a bit of googling I was pretty sure there was a track starting from the neighbourhood directly below the mountain in the suburb of Jardim Botânical. The entrance was through the gardens of this amazing old building, with the only directions being, walk through the garden until you find a ruin in the far back right, the track starts behind it... Not being put of by the numerous security guards wandering through the gardens forest, and checking out some cool caves, we found a guard sitting in a ruin and the start of the track. The track heads up, and up through the rainforest Tijuca National Park, the largest urban forest in the world. After climbing 700m, past walter falls, deadly snakes ( well one), no monkeys, or muggings, and a little rock climbing, you hit the railway line, and road transporting thousands of tourist to the top, so they can take lame photos of themselves mimicking Christ. The view is amazing, that is if you can manage to get to the edge through the crowds. On our final day we caught the metro subway into Santa Teresa followed by another swim, before heading up the cable cars to the summit of Sugarloaf in the evening to watch the sunset over the city. This is a must do!Rio will be a great city for the World Cup Football and the Olympics. They seem to be sorting out their security problems of the last few decades, police everywhere, and we never felt to insecure.