Day 25

RIO....RIO.....RIO.....
FUCKING AWESOME
Beaches, Beaches, Beaches, Mountains, Hot chicks, Christo Rendentor, Sugarloaf, Sushi...Cheap Sushi, BEACHES, lets just say Rio de Janiero is amazing. Sorry for the explosion but so far this is the coolest place yet. People are friendly, everything you need is just around the corner, and the food is amazing. The only real problem is that everything is expensive, for the most part. Instead of paying an average of about $10 to $15 a night we are spending $30. Instead of paying an average of <$1 to maybe $5 a cab ride we are paying about $20 to $40. Lets just say its not the cheapest place in Brazil.
Ok that aside...to begin with we left Manaus about 3a.m. flew to Sao Paulo which was easy to tell as being the 2nd largest city in the world and got a bus to Rio asap. Six hours later we arrived and got a very expensive taxi ride to our hostel. The next day was very cloudy, muggy, and just all around not a nice day. Since we needed a good day for the Christ statue and Sugarloaf we decided to walk 2 blocks to the beach. Even though the sky was cloudy the beach was still wonderful. After strolling a mile or so of white sand beach we went to a "Brazillian Barbeque" called a rodizio. For about 30 reais or $20 these waiters come by with all different cuts of meat from different animals on huge skewers and shave off cuts for you. They had beef, turkey, lamb, sausages, etc. Not to mention a buffet that would rival any in the US. Plus all the freshest sushi you could muster, fresh fruit, fresh veggies. Ichibans and Bennihana eat your heart out. A person could become a millionaire with a resturant like this in the states.
So...this morning we got up, had breakfast, and went to see the man. We took another $$$$cab ride up to one of the seven wonders of the world Christo Rendentor or Christ the Redeemer. Now I am not a religous person but this sure is one hell of statue. The large, exploited Icon measuring 30m. or roughly 150ft is nothing short of a wonder. Literally. From Christ we travelled back down through a small part of Rio to the base of Sugarloaf mt. (For anyone who does´t know what sugarloaf mt. is try Wikipedia it´s free!) From there we took a cable car up to the first small giant rock, took some pictures, wandered around a bit and then hopped on the next cable car up to Sugarloaf itself. We got to the top and hiked around quite a bit. It like most everything else we have seen was Totally Excellent. There is a huge crop of bamboo covering the top with a trail carving through it looking out here and there at the amazing city and beaches below. We encountered some very strange tamarins at sugarloaf and some very evil looking capuchins at the christ statue. At least I think they were capuchins. They were bigger and had huge fangs and tufts of hair that resemble devil horns. I thought it was funny how demonic monkeys lived with a giant Jesus. Anyway that was today, here I am now, nothing left to say except good day. CIAO