Rio

Rio was about a month ago now so I’m just going to give a quick overview.  If y’all remember from my Amazon entry, right before we left I decided to go swimming. Badddd decision. I felt fine for about 24 hours but the next day I got SICK. Rio was still cool, but that definitely put a damper on everything.

We got there around 9am after flying all night and went right into tourism Israel-style.  We started by getting breakfast at a little café but I couldn’t keep anything down so that was kind of a fail, but the beach was gorgeous. After that we took jeep rides up to see the Christ the Redeemer status which was EPIC. If nothing else has ever been epic, the Jesus statue is.  The ride was pretty bumpy but we got to see a lot of Rio which was cool too. The view from the top of the mountain is amazing. Rio is such a beautiful city.

After teaching everyone how to lay on the ground and get the full statue in the picture I was feeling exhausted from the heat and being sick so I went to get some juice and ice cream from the snack bar there. I ended up sitting with a few people who didn’t speak English and we had a lot of fun signing back and forth and trying to figure out what the other person was saying.

Around 1pm we left and continued to drive around Rio seeing different things. A couple of pretty views, some monkeys and some waterfalls.  I ended up passing out in the jeep at one point so that was kind of it for me.  We eventually got back to the hotel and I spent the rest of the night in bed watching BBC World News as it was the only thing in English.

The next day I woke up feeling all right probably because I hadn’t eaten anything so there was nothing to upset my stomach.  We were supposed to go to a ropes course and I was anxious to participate so I took some pepto bismol and headed out with the group.

Here is the thing about ropes courses. They TERRIFY ME. For anyone who doesn’t know, a ropes course is a series of obstacles 30+ feet in the air that you do while attached to a caribener and a harness.  For someone afraid of heights it is terrifying. Google it.

They used to have these at camps I went to when I was younger and not only have I never completed one, but I have never even been on one where I didn’t cry at some point. I am happy and proud to say that I successfully completed the entire ropes course with a smile on my face! I was shaking for a while but as I got farther and farther into it my adrenaline picked up and I finished rather quickly.  It ended up with a zip line which was great as well.

After the ropes course I went with a girl from my group to Parque Loge which is basically a super epic Italian garden/castle type thing that this guy built for his Italian opera singer wife so she would feel more at home in Rio. They had turned it into a café/modern art museum and it was really interesting to see. My favorite exhibit were all of these paintings and cacti floating in the pool but there were some other cool ones too.

Sadly I couldn’t avoid eating any longer because I was getting closed to fainting so I had a grilled cheese.  I made it through the rest of the museum and about five minutes of shopping before I got sick again so I had to head back to the hotel for the rest of the day. 

The next morning we went to the airport around 5 am, flew back to Manaus and got back on the boat where I was able to recover in peace.

I liked Rio but being sick definitely put a damper on it and I would like to go back some day.