Chilling in Rio

The previous post on this series is here..

After a hectic all day tour of Rio which ended in Sugarloaf, we were all tired. After our Europe trip in 2018 when the kids made a new rule that there will be a "rest day" within the trip if we walk more than 6 miles a day for a few days in a row, San had put in a rest day.. Hell, she put in two rest days before we flew out as that was what was available ticket wise..

So we ended up spending Christmas eve and Christmas day in Rio before flying out on 26th morning. 

We were told that the city shuts down by 1PM and most places close. We didn't care. Our plan was to go see two more sunsets from the two other popular places in Rio.. the first one was the Arpoador rock, the second one was the Copacabana beach and area. 

San had made friends with a lady who worked for the city of Rio on our flight into Brazil from Argentina and she had suggested spending time at a local mall.. eat at a famous Vegan place called Teva..

So we woke up late, took a cab to Teva (we had made reservations) and sat down pretty much as soon as they opened. I ate the pita bread with some side but the family ordered a lot of items and seem to finish everything with relish.. I am allergic to Jackfruit, so had to skip a lot of stuff, but San and the kids said it was mouth watering. 

After the lunch, we went to the mall and walked around for a good 2 hours. The stuff there was at least 50% to 100% more expensive than similar stuff in US malls. We also got the location of the mall wrong at first and ended up being dropped somewhere else.. so we walked around the local tiled streets before finally making to the actual mall location. After enough window shopping and having some ice cream there, we wanted to walk to the carnival area near the lagoon.

We never found the right spot and tickets were all sold out anyways. So we decided to just walk along the water front and took an Uber and came back to the Arpoador area. Got a nice vantage point on the rock to watch the sunset and headed back to the Airbnb. 

We did get great pictures that evening..

There was a photo by Jr. of the little one taking a photo of me taking a photo of San.. that photo I cannot find..

Here are video clips of our chilling in Rio..

the entire area was cordoned off by cops to local traffic for some reason..

had used this picture as the Happy New Year card for 2024.. 

It was time to make some pizza and thachchi mummum.. The kids made it after getting all the ingredients from the local supermarket which was still open! We also got stuff to cook for the next day.. 

Christmas was a laid back day.. we lazed around in the morning and did laundry! Then in the afternoon we decided to visit the Copacabana beach. We were clearly over dressed for this beach as the videos will show. The rain clouds rolled in and there was no way to see the sun set, but we got beautiful family pictures.. and startred walking from there all the way to Ipanema area. It was a long walk and the rains hit before we could walk back. We got cursed by the kids for not taking an uber. We were flying back the next day and wet clothes on the night before was going to be tricky. 

Rio is full of tall trees with wide leaves on all the local streets.. Chennai (Madras used to be like this when I was a kid.. not anymore) .. these streets brought back a lot of great memories..

we saw another painted step as we were going from Copacabana to Ipanema.. we stopped by a pastry store to get some stuff to eat as well..

This was my last shot as it started raining all of a sudden..

To date I have not washed and wrung clothes the way I did that evening. They were almost dry by morning and I ironed the collars and waistbands of what was not dry and got them to dry as well.. one of Daddy Narayanan's proudest moments! "There, see... all dry!!" and all I got in return was some eye rolling from the women.

We got to see the Redeemer one last time on our drive to the airport (you really cannot miss this guy from anywhere in Rio!) and took off.. We got to see a beautiful Panama city skyline and had a 3 hour stop over before heading back home.

Jet lag for a +5 hour time difference was interesting to deal with. We have. never been to a place 5 hours ahead till now. It wore off in two days though. The fact that we went on a break before the rest of the folks went on break was a blessing. 

On a whole we enjoyed the trip to Argentina and Brazil.. We definitely all agreed that Argentina was more welcoming than Brazil but we did have fun in both places.

Have managed to finally finish blogging about a Christmas trip in early March!  That brings me to the next trip..

A day tour of Rio - part 2 : Sugarloaf mountain

The previous post on this series is here..

After lunch we were picked up and the smaller group went to Sugarloaf mountain as part of the afternoon Viator all day Rio trip.

There is a stop in between from the ground level at another mountain called Urca hill with a visitor center in it. This place had some amazing shops with art work and some nice places to eat.

The views from the cable cars were amazing. We met a total of 9 desis on this entire trip, an all time low for our international travels to date! 

It was two different cable car rides, one to the hill and from hill to mountain.

Given the dark clouds, our guide took us straight to the top and said we could always spend time in the first stop on the way back. Urca hill is full of jack fruit trees!!!! San just went nuts seeing them!

Luckily the clouds disappeared and we got to spend a good 45 minutes there, eat ice cream and take more photos. 

We got spectacular views of Rio from both the vista points and the cable car ride was great! Apparently we went on the third generation cable car. The first two cars used were on display at Urca hill

 Vaugely remember the Yellow Santa being there on Urca hill in one of the Panetone bread stores.. Some pictures are already missing from my phone! Yet another reason to blog right after a trip! Summer Christmas in the southern hemisphere is interesting.. Almost 100 degree heat on Christmas eve is a different experience.

Then we were back down to a monument where we waited for our van and were dropped off near our hotel.

San and the kids decided to try a place called Que Quieres en route to our Airbnb..

They were very happy with the food. I steered clear off it for fear of allergies and made and ate grilled cheese sandwiches and thachchi mummum in the Airbnb and we called it a night!

A video of the afternoon tour..

We still had two days, two more beaches to see and nothing else to do.. but we decided to have those last two days as relaxing days. We had done a lot with this all day tour, thanks to Viator!

A day tour of Rio - part 1 : Christ the Redeemer

The previous post in this series is here..

We had signed up for an all day tour of Rio with Viator and it was a good decision. It was in a large van with 15 people. We drove along the beach to pick up folks from different hotels and went to see Christ the Redeemer. We did stop at the visitor center. A different bus takes us to the top from the center through the Tijuca forest.

We were given 45 minutes to climb the steps, take pictures and get back to the bus. Our guide was waiting for us at the base of the steps. 

(that was someone else walking with an umbrella behind us!). This picture is from the visitor center..

It was a zoo out there with  a whole bunch of families waiting to get their kids baptized in the small single room chapel below the statue in 100+ degree heat! Getting clear photos was almost out of the question. We were also sweating profusely and just wanted to get back down to the shade.

Christ statue is majestic. However you cannot get good pictures as the ledge in front of Christ is very short. You can get great shots of his back from most of Rio! Don't think they thought this through when facing him that way.. at least from a photographers point of view..

Once we came down, they sell the pictures taken in front of a poster of the statue.. we were about to pay when we heard someone else bargain.. immediately the entire family jumped in to bargain! The girls have definitely inherited the "bargaining gene" from Madras thatha, which is a good thing!

Someday, will take a better photo of this photo.. this one is a keeper.. might frame it!

After this we visited the Santa Teresa neighborhood and saw the Favelas, got a view of the city and came down to see the area where samba parades are done.

Then we got to see the Maracana stadium for 10 minutes, which meant no time to go in.. we saw it from outside.

This was followed by a trip to the San Sebastian Church which resembles a football stadium more than a church. 

That is the Church building in the shape of a pyramid! Reminded me of churches in Kerala that have dwajasthambams to lure in locals.

The last stop before lunch was the painted steps, which was even more crowded than the Christ statue.. it was impossible to get a clean shot of folks.. even my method to have a frozen smile and take 4-5 shots and average them on Photoshop leaves too many ghosts..

After this the group was dropped off at a place for lunch. We didn't pay or order the lunch but were on the all day tour. A bunch of folks were only on a 1/2 day tour and split. We had packed our leftovers. So the guide and driver were kind enough to drop us off close to the lagoon where the afternoon tour would start.

We sat on the wall near the lagoon and ate under the shade of the trees. It was nice and breezy and we had a great view. 

Right after we finished and took some photos, we were picked up and went the afternoon's trip.

A highlight reel video of the mornings trip..

That post follows..

From waterfalls to beaches

The previous post on this series is here..

We moved on from Buenos Aires to Rio. We got scammed right outside the airport where a fake Uber showed up to pick us up... after some tense moments once in the car, we did get out close to where we needed and after the local Airbnb lady negotiated in Portugese we got out. 

Brazil is a sharp contrast to Argentina. You cannot trust folks on the road. Scammers everywhere. Everything is expensive and the locals are not exactly the welcoming type.

The Airbnb itself was very good. A walking distance from the Ipanema beach and close enough to grocery stores. 

The kids had had enough and decided to stay in after doing groceries. San and me decided to go to the beach for a short time to see the sunset. There was so much fog that we didn't really get orange hues that day and it just started drizzling when we made it back to cook dinner!

We called it a night.. there were a lot of interesting art books in the Airbnb and we just decided to crash early after watching Rebel moon on Netflix!

The next day was going to be spent touring Rio!

We already got a glimpse of the Redeemer statue on the way from the airport. The plan was to see him up close the next day!

The mother of all waterfalls

The previous post on this series is here..

The main highlight of the Argentina- Brazil year end trip was a visit to Iguazu falls. This was the bucket list long awaited visit.

After spending two days in Buenos Aires, we flew to Porto Iguazu airport (which is inside the national park) and had a taxi pick us up and drop us at an Airbnb. Porto Iguazu is a small place with a bunch of hotels, restaurants and shops mainly catering to the falls tourists. It was raining as expected and we were in the middle of the jungle in a small town. We had a good nights rest and were to be picked up at 7AM. 

Our plan was ambitious. See both the Brazilian side and Argentinian side of the falls in one day. Iguazu means "big water" in the local language. 

We waited to get a same day visa to Brazil at Faz Iguazu (Brazil means Portugese becomes the language!) at the gates and after a 30 minute wait we were waved through. We were dropped off at the ticket center for the falls with precise instructions from Martin (our driver for the day). He communicated with us using Google translate on his whatsapp the entire time while trying to improve his English. There were three stops. First stop was a jungle walk (optional) which I did with a sub group from the bus. Second stop was a boat ride to the falls and back which the entire family went on. Third stop was a vista point with a walkway to the edge of the falls (again I went alone). 

The boat ride took us to the Brazilian side of the falls. We were all completely wet anyways after that boat ride. The walkway to the edge of the falls was unbelievable. There is no way to describe this in words or capture my emotions as I wandered through this place. So here are the pictures in slideshows..

 

and some pictures with us ...

After the walk to the vista point we got back on the bus to the ticket center, waited for Martin to pick us up. This place reminds you of the Antarctic penguins documentary where everyone is trying to find their chosen one in a crowd.. unfortunately Martin and us did not have any specific Yaadon ki baaraat type songs to call each other.. in a mad crowd of drivers trying to find their respective tourists, we decided to wait as opposed to get lost. Finally our driver found us and off we went back to the border. 

It was interesting as the Brazilian side had no record of us entering that morning as their computers had an issue updating. So we waited as they made manual passport entries and finally let us go back into Argentina. That cost us another precious 30 mintues. Martin raced us to the Argentinian side of the falls where we were to take yet another bus ride, followed by open jeep looking vehicle ride, a walk down 500 steps, and a boat ride. Given the wet clothes, San and the little one decided to walk and see the falls. It was a 2 plus mile hike and they preferred that to getting wet again. 

Jr. felt bad for daddy and agreed to join me. She later told me it was a great decision as she thoroughly enjoyed the boat ride and falls. This trip to the falls was 10X better than the mornings trip. The highlight of the falls is a place called the "devils throat" where water just gushes out. The Argentina side of the falls is a must see just for this. It is risky as we don't get anything but a life vest and the waters are turbulent. However, all is well that ends well.. definitely recommend going on that boat.

we got gopro videos from both rides. I also took videos using my iPhone and the SLR and have combined them into multiple clips.. 

The videos ..

Bus ride and walk to boat ride on Brazil side

Brazil side boat ride

Vista point walk on Brazil side

Argentina side boat ride including a visit to "devil's throat"

Videos we paid for and got.. again the Brazilian side was a lot less exciting and a lot more expensive..

Was not even able to find the video from the Brazil side. One reason why I should try to blog as soon as trip is done!  

Jr. and me had to walk back a good mile and a half in rain to get back to the entrance and then we made it back to the Airbnb. We got some to go food at one of the local restaurants, rested for the night and were off the next morning. 

We said bye to Martin.. good people come in many shapes and forms.. Martin, is "good people"!

We got to see the falls from the plane and it was magnificent.  

also got to see some beautiful sights from the plane as we flew along the river..

There was still an evening to spend back in Buenos Aires near another airport and we were to fly to Rio from there the following morning..

More on that tomorrow..