Day 4
We got to sleep for three glorious hours today. With all that sleep I thought I might just stay up all night tonight. It was our last night, after all.
Izzy showed up, with beach gear, and at that point we convinced her that we might be sunned out. We all went and had some tasty Chinese instead, and set up the plan for the day. Izzy suggested the Christo, on Corcovado Mt. No issues with that.
We took the short cab ride over to the base of the mountain, and entered the train station for the service that would take us up. A guy immediately approached us with a photo album, trying to get us to ditch the usual method of getting up the hill and take a ride with him. He had a good deal, and Izzy got the notion that he was on the up and up, so we walked over to a row of VW vans with "Tourismo" and so on written on them. We walked right past them to a Dodge Duster, and I busted up laughing. "Hell no!" seems to come across in any language.
So the short 20 minutes up the mountain were nice, and houses were planted firmly on the incline up, and a road snaked up to greet the driveways, and to carry the other tourists, maybe in that Duster, up the mountain.
At the top we were greeted with the open arms of Christ the Redeemer. Here is the breakdown: raised on the top of Corvocado Mountain, 710 meters above sea level. It was inaugurated after five years of construction, in 1931, by President Getulio Vargas and Cardinal Sebastiao Leme. It is made of reinforced concrete and covered with small soapstone triangles, that make it glow by the light at the base. Truly beautiful at night, and awesome in size, it measures 30 meters high, and the span of the outstretched arms measures 28 meters.
The view was fantastic. The mountain provided a view of our beach, and a 360° view of all of Rio. Great time.
Back to the rest of the day, Izzy contacted that sister, and set up a meeting for us to go to a street Carnaval, by way of a meeting at her family's house. It was great to meet Glorina and the whole family, very hospitable, wonderful people. They were all smiles, with hearty inviting laughter to compensate for the heavily accented and slanted Portuguese.
After a some time we were off to this Arabic pizza place. I've eaten Turkish pizza before and hated it, but wanted to give it another shot. They make a mean cheese pizza, but there is just something about the meat, blended with who knows what, that makes it taste like Alpo smells ( and all right, I've tasted Alpo – this tastes amazingly similar).
Communication with Glorina was next to impossible. Couldn't get the Spanish, she spoke only at 2x speed in slang. Sensing defeat somewhere along the way, I threw in the towel and asked for help from Izzy. Wrenched a few tidbits of info from the girl, and they broke down to me that Glorina was shy (chimida, sp?). A few other words came to mind, so we packed it up on dinner, and headed over to Ilha Do Governador for the street Carnaval.
After a suicidal bus ride at about 60 mph through inner city traffic, our stop seemed to be the highlight of the trip. We hopped off, wandered down the streets to the lights and sounds of Samba music, side booths selling every food imaginable, every drink known to man, and tons of people milling around in this Christmas-esque lit, warm party spot. It was still early, but there were many people there. Children were in some sort of costume/dance competition on the stage, and they were dressed as everything, from rabbits to tiny imitations of the Sambadromo costumes we had seen the night before, and everything in between.
We all danced and were taught some Samba line dances, and just laughed and had a good time. Chris and Izzy were having a wonderful time, and after getting a couple of drinks into Glorina she loosened up, stopped being chimida and began to stop speaking in slang, so I could communicate. By 11 or so the place was completely packed, with dancing, singing and just having a blast all around. The great thing was the inclusiveness of the party. Young and old alike were side by side, up on shoulders, throwing confetti at each other; getting sprayed with this silly string meets spray snow stuff. I think that everyone at that party was covered at least a little by that stuff. Children chased children, adults chased each other, put it in each other's hair, etc. Dancing for about three hours, it was decided that everyone was a little tired and needed to get back over to the beachside to relax from the night's events.
Read all of the adventures!
