Day 11: Climbing Corcovado

For our second day, we decided to do the hike to see Christ the Redeemer. I knew it was a possible and Mari wanted to do a hike in Rio so this was it! I even found a nice TripAdvisor blog with instructions on how to access the trail, so were were like, this will be easy!

First, it was a struggle to catch a bus to the park we needed to go to. There was a bus parked (PARKED) in front of the stop so all the other buses just pretty much went around it or got backed up so it was hard for us to see the bus numbers we were looking for. That should have been our first hint it wasn't going to be as easy as we thought. It was like the universe was saying "just take the train!".

After 10 minutes, we gave up and grabbed a taxi and it let us out a little more than 3/4 mile from the park. Possibly hint #2? But we got to the park without issue, got instructions to the trail-head and we were off! We even stopped and put our names down for the security guard at the bottom of the trail. He kind of laughed at us (potentially hint #3) and told us it would take about 2 hours. No big deal, we thought, the TripAdvisor post said 60-90 minutes so we got this.

And then we began the hike in earnest. It was steep like the review said but nothing unmanageable, so piece of cake! And then we got to the top of the "waterfall". It was then like a ladder it was so steep. Thank goodness for the tree roots that created steps and hand holds for us. We had seen another couple just ahead of us and they must have been cyborgs because this trail seemed to be child's play for them. Not so for us. We went higher and higher and were like, we must be getting close! But alas, Jesus was still far above us.

So you have a visual of the trail, these pictures do an okay job of demonstrating some of what we faced. Like I said, thank goodness for the trees to make sure we maintained our balance. We also came up with a song, to the tune of Barry Manilow's Copacabana. Mine: Her name was Cheryl, she was climbing Corcovado, and she feared she would die as she made her way up high. Mari: Her name was Mari, and it was a struggle, she was careful of the roots, and tried not to toot. Pretty clever if we do say so... but the riotous laughter didn't help us catch our breaths much, oh well!

We could see the statue! But... not quite there yet. We made a friend though! We were excited to see the monkey until he kept getting closer to closer to us, then brought friends, and all we could think of was the crazy monkeys in Hunger Games 2... so then there was extra motivation to move quickly.

Eventually we reached the "rope" the guard told us about, which was a chain that you used to keep yourself steady as you essentially rock climbed for about 20 feet up the mountain. No big deal.

The famous rope chain. We conquered.

As you'll be able to see from the pictures, WE CRUSHED IT! A lot of sweat, some run-ins with monkeys, and maybe some blood from scraping a rock, but we did it! It ended up taking us about 90 minutes (less than the guard estimated for us, so there!), but we were quite proud of the feat. 2329 feet in altitude covered in a little over 3 miles. We're ballers. But clearly not as big of ballers as the couple who scaled it much quicker than us.

The tracks that  the lazy train takers use. We crossed as we were on our journey to climb to the very top. But hey, we got rewarded with this view! And once we chugged water and gatorade... we were looking pretty good if I do say so.

Yep. Started from the very bottom, and then there we are.

Selfie! And then some views of Sugar Loaf

Then we decided to get silly and do some funny poses...

Mostly to imitate the poses we were seeing around us. And the man who took at least 50 selfies (I wish I was joking) while holding prime real estate along the wall. Jerk.

After that feat, we went back to the beach and decided to reward ourselves with some chocolate and relaxation. It was glorious. We then filled up our bodies at a churrascaria because apparently climbing 2329 feet builds up quite the appetite.

I wanted to go to Porcao Rio but apparently it closed some time in the past two years so our hotel recommended Fogo de Chau. I know, I know, it's a chain but when you're hungry, you take what's on offer. And it turned out to be a great decision. We tried all the meat, and I even got Mari to try chicken hearts! And although I finished the ones on her plate for her, she did well and ate an entire one (though to be fair, they are quite small)!

We also had some celebratory caipirinhas, one of which was quite strong. We decided this may have been because we were joking with the waiters and they took a shining to us. This was especially apparent as we were paying the bill. One waiter that we hadn't even seen the entire night came over to tell us he hoped to see us in Lapa later (this is the nightclub district). Um, thanks? And then aswe were leaving, a horde of waiters all told us Boa Noite (good night). It was all extremely random but also flattering. Thanks boys for the ego boost! But we had no intention of meeting them in Lapa. I'm sure they'll recover someday.

Chicken hearts! And I guess who could blame those waiters with us dressed like this ;)