Brazillllll… lllaaa llaa laaaa…

South America is the only continent that I have not visited yet. So, we decided to visit the largest country in South America – Brazil, a beautiful country packed with a wide variety of landscapes and experiences. My dream vacation would have been the Amazon rainforest… however, when we saw how expensive the tickets and stay were, we had to forgo that part of the journey. I did not lose hope though and instead we went to the world’s largest wetland – Pantanal, more about that later...

Our itinerary was set, and we were off to explore the 6th inhabitant continent and my last as well. Antarctica is the 7th continent left but I don’t think that I can ever make it there, story for another time. We took the early morning flight from Nairobi at 5am with a stopover at Addis Abba and our flight landed at 8pm in Rio de Janeiro, which gave us enough time to recoup and be fresh for the next morning. I was mighty excited since I was going to finally see my 4th Wonder of the World. On our way from the airport to the hotel, I got a glimpse of Christ the Redeemer perched up on a hill with beautiful lights surrounding it. Seeing it, I was smiling ear to ear and couldn’t wait till the next morning to see it up close and personal. In the morning, we realized that our hotel was very close to the beach, with the ocean peeking at us. After breakfast our open-air jeep was there to pick us up so we could begin our quest to see this beautiful city.

Rio de Janeiro is indeed one of the most beautiful and exciting cities in the world. The city is surrounded by the tropical green granite-based mountains and the deep blue sea, so it has the best of both worlds- beautiful beaches, coves, ridges, hills and is partly covered by tropical forests. Our scenic drive was along Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon beach to visit Santa Teresa. This traditional district has winding, narrow streets, colorful buildings with a view of lush landscape that makes it an inspiring trip for a lot of artists and tourists. On the way we saw beautiful graffiti on the walls. This picture is taken from the moving jeep, the graffiti is so beautifully done that it looks like we are probably somewhere indoors. 

Our first stop was the Selaron Steps, which is the world’s most beautiful staircase that has been decorated with more than 2000 colorful mosaic tiles. This diverse staircase features 60 different countries and is one of Rio de Janeiro’s most vibrant and striking landmarks. After clicking few pictures, we moved to the most awaited part of the trip.

Our next stop was the reason for my visit to Brazil – Christ the Redeemer – my 4^th wonder of the world and also the 4^th largest statue of Jesus Christ in the world in addition the largest art deco style sculpture on the planet. So how could I ever miss this! As we were driving up Corcovado hill, we saw the favelas (slums of Rio) but as we ascended more through the curvy hill, my heart dropped rather quickly for I could see the cloud bank had blessed us and I knew I would not get the view I wanted. Anyway, thanks to our travel agent, who had booked the tickets and time slot in advance, we didn’t have to wait in the long queue. But when we finally reached the top, to my disappointment, the statue was covered with fog, which is expected most of the time.  As you can see, we took whatever partial pictures we could and called it a day as we had to get up early morning to catch a flight to Iguazu. Look out for my next post about Day 2 in Brazil!