Rio de Janeiro

Marco Whyte|2023-11-16 (1 year ago)55 views

Go Back

Welcome to Rio de Janeiro! Sunny warm weather, happy people, mountains and beaches, what more could you want. I was here for over a month, working remotely and spending every free second exploring the city.

I spent most my time here with my friend Robert, we went to school together in Heidelberg, Germany. One fun thing we did here was check out the botanical garden. We saw many interesting plants, trees and animals. We had a goal to see a toucan on this trip, and it happened very early here!

The garden also has a beautiful view of Christ the Redeemer.

This is the view from the bottom, but we actually went up on a different day as well. This was a lot of fun and the view at the top was incredible.

The Christ the Redeemer is one of the new world wonders, so seeing it up close crossed off a bucket list item.

On a different day, we did a hike which starts at the top of the Vidigal Favela. This was an amazing experience, you hop on a motorbike taxi (cars can't go up the narrow roads) and get to see the way people live in this Favela. Note that there are very specific Favelas tourists are recommended to go to, as others may not welcome guests or be safe to enter. From the top of the favela, the hike began. The first viewpoint was of the favela:

The hike continued and once we reached the very top, this was the viewpoint.

A final memorable experience in Rio was seeing a world cup qualifier game. It was Brazil vs Argentina, which always has a lot of tension. It was even better because I got to see Messi play, a goal of mine for a while. However before the game even started, there was a big fight that started. The Argentinian section was very small compared to Brazil and quickly broke out into a fight, throwing bottles and even chairs between the two sides. After a couple minutes, Brazilian police came out and brutally hit the Argentinian fans. It was pretty shocking how they only targeted the enemy team and went with full force. A couple of the Argentinian fans needed to be carried out by strechers. Once this happened, everyone calmed down and the game began.