Day 14 & 15 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Today we are in Rio the city known for its annual celebration called Carnival. This is a very modern city with all of the benefits and troubles of a large city. It has a very large poor population that lives in makeshift neighborhoods called favelas. People just find a spot and set up housekeeping and a shack of sorts and in 7 years the land is theirs. Over the years these shanty towns become more substantial as better building materials are used to construct the homes. They are tightly packed shacks that build upon each other so someone's outside wall becomes the inside wall of the neighbor who builds next door. Obviously, there are no building codes enforced so essentially they are like a stack of dominos. This becomes problematic when the rainy season dumps heavy rain on these hillsides and one of these shacks fails and like dominos many shacks below are destroyed as the destruction ripples down the hill. Fortunately, we spent our day visiting the statute of Christ the Redeemer located prominently on a hill overlooking the city and other points of interest. The lines were long to see the statute so most of our tour was spent in the van except for visiting a cathedral and eating lunch in a local restaurant. We drove past the grandstands where the carnival parade takes place. It is an interesting setting since there are opposing sets of grandstands running in parallel about 50 yards apart for a length of 800 meters. They are able to seat over 70 thousand spectators. You would definitely want a seat for this extravaganza since it begins at 10pm and lasts until 5am the next morning. The highlight of the day was the visit to Christ the Redeemer. From that vantage point you can see almost the entire city. The famous beaches of Copacabana and Iponema stand out by virtue of their bright beach sand. Sugarloaf mountain is another prominent feature that seems to erupt from the ocean. We past it this morning as we pulled into the harbor. Rio is a smaller city than São Paulo but at least in my mind Rio is more famous. The beaches used by the people are on the Atlantic Ocean because the water is much cleaner than the beaches in the lagoon situated in the center of town. On Sundays they close the street that runs next to the beach so people can jog, skate, skateboard, walk and play in the street and on the beach. The beaches look to be well maintained and are heavily used for all kinds of activities. We saw volleyball games, beach soccer, some kind of paddle ball along with the sun bathers and sand castle builders. The women are notorious for the small size of their bathing suits. The cathedral we visited was constructed in a very unconventional style. It is shaped like a cone with its top cut off. It is so large that it can accommodate 20 thousand people.