Cristo Redentor

Yesterday was a dark day for me, friends.  I spent most of the day under the covers, my mind occupied with fears of what the unknown future brings.  What had been my joy the day before became my nightmare – being a stranger in a strange land.  I got up to run and realized I had no idea where I should go.  The nearby park didn’t seem amenable to runners, and the waterfront seemed too far.  I already feel like a zoo animal around here, the last thing I felt like doing was stumbling around downtown in my running clothes looking like I didn’t know what I was doing.  This triggered an avalanche of negative things in my mind.  Fatigue suddenly washed over me.  I didn’t leave the apartment all day.

It comes in cycles, you know?  Maybe one day I’ll transcend those cycles (that’s the hope, after all!), but yesterday was not that day.  Meantime, days like yesterday just make days like today that much more magical.

Today, I caught the bus out to see the Christ the Redeemer statue.  Rio has some ~1000 different bus routes, but very little online resources (or any resources, really) for understanding what route each bus takes.  I was able to get some leads on getting to Cristo Redentor because of its popularity, but all that really told me was any bus going to “Cosme Velho” would get me there.  Yes, but which buses in Centro go to Cosme Velho?  And where do I catch them?  That’s the difficult part of riding the bus in the Rio.

The easy part of riding the bus in Rio is that, basically, you go stand on a busy street and wait for a bus that’s going your direction – with ~1000 bus routes, one’s bound to come along.  All the buses have signs in the front window that cycle through their major stops, so when you see one going to the general area where you want to go, you flag it down and hop on.

So, when a bus came along saying it was going to “Cosme Velho,” I hopped on.  Now, I’ve tried my best not to look too much like a tourist and blend in, but I had to pull out my map on the bus.  I wanted to follow the route the bus took.  Knowing where I was, where I was going, and how I was getting there not only made taking the bus less stressful, it also helped me to know where to get off the bus – something I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

The bus dropped me off in Corcovado, right outside the cable car that takes you up the mountain to Cristo Redentor:

The ride took a good 20-25 minutes, with stops to allow the car coming in the opposite direction to pass.  The first time we stopped, men selling water along the railway came walking up and down the sides of the cars, which surprised everyone – you see street vendors everywhere in Rio, you just don’t expect to see them on the side of a mountain, yet there they were.  The scenery on the ride was beautiful.  The cable car cut a path through the forest, occasionally passing by a large, well-hidden mountain home (one had a private tennis court), sometimes passing by shear drops on one side, and sometimes offering gorgeous views of the city as it climbed higher up the mountain.

The view of the city from Cristo Redentor really is incredible:

I saw a handful of folks praying at the base of the statue, but most were there to take in the view and snap pics. Apparently, this is the thing to do when posing for a pic with Cristo:

The weather was really beautiful when I got up there, and then the clouds started rolling in:

They rolled in from the ocean first, then they came rolling up the mountain from underneath:

In just a few minutes, we were totally engulfed:

I loved getting to enjoy the view when the weather was clear and getting to see how the clouds rolled – literally rolled – up the mountain and swirled around the giant statue.  It was spectacular.

I headed back down the mountain with my sights set on the botanical garden.  I had to wait a while for a bus that would take me there and didn’t get there until 4pm – an hour before closing (the sun sets around 5:20 pm, remember).  I decided I would save the R$9 entrance fee for a day when I would have more time.

From the botanical garden, I walked a few blocks to one of the few organic markets in Rio.  It is my lament that whole food is incredibly hard to come by here.  Everything is hyper processed, with lots of added sugars, salt, and preservatives.  There’s no such thing as just “milk” here – all the milk comes with some kind of added preservatives.  Same with yogurt – no plain yogurt.  If there’s any attention paid to free-range, cage-free, or pasture-fed, I haven’t found it.  There are only a handful of organic stores and restaurants in the city, and they’re all located in the tourist beach areas, so I was really looking forward to taking advantage of what they had to offer while I was in the area.

The store I went to is called “Universo Organico,” but “Pluto Organico” might have been a better name given its miniature size.  It wasn’t a market as much as a tiny novelty shop inside a shopping mall.  They had a lot of packaged organic(?) products, but not a lot of fresh produce or dairy.  I grabbed a few things and decided I would try a different market when I was back in the area.

Back to the bus.

*Interesting tidbit on riding the bus in Rio:  the driver doesn’t handle fare collection.  Another employee sits opposite and behind the driver, takes your money and gives you change, and operates an actual turnstile inside the bus that allows you to move from the bus entrance into the body of the bus once you’ve paid.

I headed to the nearest, busiest road and hoped for luck.  A local asked me something in Portuguese, to which I responded that I don’t speak Portuguese.  Fortunately, he spoke English.  He asked if one of the buses that came by that stop went to Centro, and I told him I sure hoped so!  We hopped on a bus and he was kind enough to help me back to Lapa, which I was grateful for since it was getting dark and would soon be difficult to navigate.

TL;DR:  Successfully navigated Rio’s bus system, enjoyed gorgeous city views as reward!