Woke up early because we wanted to explore the city as much as possible. But getting anywhere with public transportation is pretty difficult here, because there are only 2 subway lines, which obviously cannot cover the whole city. e.g. it is not possible to take it to the touristy places like the Corcovado (the hill with the Christ statue) or to the Sugar Loaf mountain. So the expensive option is to take a cab or the cheap option is to take buses. Traveling on a tight budget we opted for the latter.
However there are a few problems one faces after such a decision: 1: there are no maps with the bus lines and their stops 2: most of the bus stops are not signed, they are only a shed which kind of looks like a bus stop and often there are several of these close to each other, 3: at these often unsigned stops there are no schedules or even the number of the buses are not marked, 4: rough guide has no information whatsoever about the location of the bus stops either and as there are many one way streets one can only guess on which street one should try to catch a bus, 5: even though the locals are friendly and helpful, they basically do not speak English, but start talking to us in Portuguese, in which situation we can only start nodding and smiling and finish the conversation with an obrigado without having understood anything... so after having explained the situation one will not be surprised that it took us about 4 hours to get up to the the Corcovado with public transportation, particularly, because we walked most of the distance.
The problems were the followings: we could not find the bus stop for bus 584 which was supposed to take us to the cog train station which goes up directly to the hill. So we took the metro to downtown and then a tram. The latter was pretty cool, the tram itself is from the 18th century, kind of like which might run in San Fransisco. It was rattling as much as one can imagine, but the surrounding cobblestoned streets and the houses on them looked very impressive. But, the tram only took us about 1 km further, although on our map the tramline was supposed to go to a middle station of the cog train. So we got off the tram and started walking, hoping that still an other tram will catch up with us. But it did not happen, only buses passed us by, which would also have taken us to our destination, but we only figured that out on the way back. After a few hours of walk with some spectacular views to the city from the hillside and in a secondary Atlantic rainforest of the city's national park, we reached the middle station of the train. Only to find out, that the train always goes directly to the top station without stopping anywhere... great... so we started walking up again. On the way a minivan stopped by us and offered a ride to the top for 15 reais each. We took the offer. We stopped at a view point/ had really cool views to the city and then reached the top station for private vehicles. So we started walking again to the statue. However it turned out pretty soon that the statue would be still at least 40 minutes steep uphill walk away and that there is an entrance fee of 14.20 reais, which was not mentioned in the rough guide. So we started arguing with the people, but they would not let us walk up for free, but insisted that we need to pay and after having paid we could take a minivan up to the statue. So we paid and took the ride. So this was the story of our 4 hour journey to the Christ, the Redeemer.
The statue itself is not as impressive as I thought. It is big, it is true (30 meters) but I thought it was bigger... the view from up there is also pretty cool and we were lucky with the weather, so we could see quite far. The nicest thing was the view to the sugar loaf mountain with the Botafogo beach. Behind the mountain there were a few other smaller rocks in the sea, which also looked cool. The ride back to the city was quite uneventful. We simply walked down to the bus stop, where the tram should be running actually. It was only ca 3 km and the cab drivers wanted to charge us a ridiculous 20 reais.
In downtown we walked around a bit, visited a few churches, among with the metropolitan church was the coolest. In that area a guy wanted to grab my camera out of my hand while I was taking a picture, but it was secured to its bag which was hanging around my body, so he did not get lucky, only I was a bit shocked. Was a similar experience in Zambia when the baboon tried to grab our backpack. Both creatures were pulling pretty hard and both attacks came so unexpected. But we stayed safe, this time did not lose even any biscuits as we did with the baboon..
However there are a few problems one faces after such a decision: 1: there are no maps with the bus lines and their stops 2: most of the bus stops are not signed, they are only a shed which kind of looks like a bus stop and often there are several of these close to each other, 3: at these often unsigned stops there are no schedules or even the number of the buses are not marked, 4: rough guide has no information whatsoever about the location of the bus stops either and as there are many one way streets one can only guess on which street one should try to catch a bus, 5: even though the locals are friendly and helpful, they basically do not speak English, but start talking to us in Portuguese, in which situation we can only start nodding and smiling and finish the conversation with an obrigado without having understood anything... so after having explained the situation one will not be surprised that it took us about 4 hours to get up to the the Corcovado with public transportation, particularly, because we walked most of the distance.
The problems were the followings: we could not find the bus stop for bus 584 which was supposed to take us to the cog train station which goes up directly to the hill. So we took the metro to downtown and then a tram. The latter was pretty cool, the tram itself is from the 18th century, kind of like which might run in San Fransisco. It was rattling as much as one can imagine, but the surrounding cobblestoned streets and the houses on them looked very impressive. But, the tram only took us about 1 km further, although on our map the tramline was supposed to go to a middle station of the cog train. So we got off the tram and started walking, hoping that still an other tram will catch up with us. But it did not happen, only buses passed us by, which would also have taken us to our destination, but we only figured that out on the way back. After a few hours of walk with some spectacular views to the city from the hillside and in a secondary Atlantic rainforest of the city's national park, we reached the middle station of the train. Only to find out, that the train always goes directly to the top station without stopping anywhere... great... so we started walking up again. On the way a minivan stopped by us and offered a ride to the top for 15 reais each. We took the offer. We stopped at a view point/ had really cool views to the city and then reached the top station for private vehicles. So we started walking again to the statue. However it turned out pretty soon that the statue would be still at least 40 minutes steep uphill walk away and that there is an entrance fee of 14.20 reais, which was not mentioned in the rough guide. So we started arguing with the people, but they would not let us walk up for free, but insisted that we need to pay and after having paid we could take a minivan up to the statue. So we paid and took the ride. So this was the story of our 4 hour journey to the Christ, the Redeemer.
The statue itself is not as impressive as I thought. It is big, it is true (30 meters) but I thought it was bigger... the view from up there is also pretty cool and we were lucky with the weather, so we could see quite far. The nicest thing was the view to the sugar loaf mountain with the Botafogo beach. Behind the mountain there were a few other smaller rocks in the sea, which also looked cool. The ride back to the city was quite uneventful. We simply walked down to the bus stop, where the tram should be running actually. It was only ca 3 km and the cab drivers wanted to charge us a ridiculous 20 reais.
In downtown we walked around a bit, visited a few churches, among with the metropolitan church was the coolest. In that area a guy wanted to grab my camera out of my hand while I was taking a picture, but it was secured to its bag which was hanging around my body, so he did not get lucky, only I was a bit shocked. Was a similar experience in Zambia when the baboon tried to grab our backpack. Both creatures were pulling pretty hard and both attacks came so unexpected. But we stayed safe, this time did not lose even any biscuits as we did with the baboon..
Take care, guys! We're really glad you're both all right.
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