After a late night out on the town last night, we woke up fairly late for our Day 3 plan in Rio. We still needed to see the Christ the Redeemer statue (i.e. the newly voted “7th Wonder of the Modern World”) and Copacabana Beach.
Luckily for us, the government recently set up a constant bus service that takes you to the Christ the Redeemer statue from 3 different places in Rio for only 51 Brazilian Reals (which includes the round trip fare and the admission fee). The buses come and go on a constant basis to accommodate a continuously growing throng of people:
All you have to do is show up at one of the 3 sites and buy your ticket, line up, and head to the statue. Depending on traffic, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to get to the top. The bus service will take you directly there:
All you have to do when you get up there is to climb a few flights of stairs (or use the newly constructed escalators on your left!):
Take in the other views from the top:
There’s nothing else up here but a handful of gift shops and a few juice bars/snack bars. Also budget some time to get out because there will be long lines to get back on the buses.
A useful tip is that you can get on another line for a different drop off point than where you were originally picked up. We did that to get to Copacabana Beach, which saved us an extra taxi ride!
After about an hour ride back down (traffic), we took a look at and a quick walk along Copacabana Beach, which is famous for being a microcosm of everything Rio has to offer, from favela kids to the ultra-rich:
Afterwards we scrambled to catch our late afternoon flight to Fos de Iguacu. This would be our last day in Rio de Janeiro, and we already know we will dearly miss a few things, namely the views:
…and of course, the unbelievable acai:
- At time of posting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, it was 35 °C - Humidity: 40% | Wind Speed: 12km/hr | Cloud Cover: clear