Today we were excited to go and see the statue of "Christ the redeemer", the iconic statue on the hill in Corcovado overlooking Rio. Kevin, a guy staying in our hostel from the UK, had arrived late the previous night so he hadn't seen the statue yet either and decided to come with us. We chose to take the local bus to the statue instead of a cab which would cost $3 Reals vs $40 Reals. We had to wait a while, but finally our bus showed up and we all piled on board. We had travelled about 3 minutes down the road when our bus pulled over and the driver got out. Of course, the bus had broken down! All 30 passengers stood on the side of the road waiting for another bus to come. We debated taking a cab then but the bus driver said that as soon as a cab driver heard us speak English, he would charge us 3x the actual price. That said, we decided to wait for the bus. Finally one came and the driver flagged it down so that we all could get on board without paying again.
We opted to take the van service to the top of the hill instead of the train because it was cheaper and you didn't have to wait for a couple of hours in line. The van operators were waiting right where the bus dropped us off and swept us up to the statue.
It was an amazing view of Rio from the top of the hill and we spent a while just admiring the scenery and watching all of the paragliders that descend from the surrounding hills.
It was incredibly crowded around the statue and it was hard to get decent pictures without a ton of people in them. We spent a little while trying to get "Christ" pictures with our arms out to the side like the statue. Total tourists!
After we'd taken our fill of pictures, we headed back down the hill to catch our bus. The bus stop was right in front of a "Bob's", which is a burger chain that was playing Black Eyed Peas, so we grabbed ice cream cones and danced out front while we waited.
Once we got back to Copacabana, we decided to get some lunch. Kevin is a personal trainer so he was only eating healthy meals, but he did try his first caipirinha (Brazil'snational cocktail of cachaca, sugar and lime) which he loved. After lunch, Alyssa and I decided to go shopping since I had to get some new shoes for going out at night since my sandals had been previously rejected by a club.I was able to find some shoes for $12 which I thought was a great deal. We then went out in search of some new dresses but after two hours of searching, we hadn't found anything so we headed back to the hostel.
Martinho and Thomas were staying at some fancy hotel on the beach so we agreed to meet them for drink at the rooftop pool before going out to dinner. It was a really beautiful view and I was a little jealous that we couldn't stay somewhere nice like that, lol. Good thing we have some rich friends to hang out with!
We went to a restaurant in Lata, which is an area of town with a lot of open air restaurants and clubs. The bar was packed and although we got there at 8:00pm to do some dancing before dinner, Martinho was having such a great time dancing that we never actually made it to dinner and had to eat bar food for the second night in a row. I had completely had it with trying to translate the French/Spanish/English that Thomas was trying to speak, so we mostly sat in silence and people watched while Martinho pushed Alyssa around the dance floor. The club was hoping and the boys tried to order the most expensive bottle of champagne on the menu, which the club charged us for in advance and then discovered they didn't have it in stock. They tried to give us a different, shitty bottle of champagne but being that these boys were from France, they knew good champagne and refused. We stayed until at least 3:00am drinking, dancing and watching the acrobatic performers. When we went to leave, the club tried to scam Martinho and charge him $1200 on hiscredit card for our food and drinks (the total tab was only $250). Luckily Martinho speaks perfect Portugese and fought the manager on it. The manager tried to blame it on Thomas which made no sense and for the first time, I saw Martinho really angry. We got out of there right after that and things calmed down on the cab ride home.
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