Hello chat! It’s Sinan here, and today I am the day couple with Tessa! In a bit, you’ll be reading about our incredible day, which was filled with adventure and culture.
Our day started with a Jeep tour. We got picked up at 7:50 and split into three jeeps, after which we got driven (rather fast) to the national park Tijuca, which means “way to the sea”. It was named that way, because the indigenous people of Brazil would go to the lagoons via this rainforest to go fishing. In the colonization period where the Portugese took hold of Brazil, a lot of deforestation took place, since the colonizers had to return to Portugal with something, and the search for gold or other valuables was not yet successful. The deforestation caused the city of Rio de Janeiro to warm up by an astonishing 7 to 10 degrees Celsius, which, during the summer season especially was truly agonising for the many rich Portugese that moved to Brazil. The rainforest eventually got replanted by 11 slaves, that were forced to work everyday for 12 years in order to reestablish the rainforest. Even though the circumstances for these slaves were truly horrendous, their hard labor paid off. The city cooled back down, and the rainforest of national park Tijuca grew back to be 40 squared kilometers, covering 7% of the city, being the largest rainforest inside a city in the world.
Along the way, the jeeps stopped and we could walk around to see some landmarks and witness monkeys eating fruit. For example, we stopped at the Cascathina Taunay, the main waterval of the national park named after the painter Taunay that used to live close by. Taunay aided in urbanizing the city by designing city views and several buildings. Furthermore, he was a painter who’s bjggest inspiration was the magnificent waterfal. Taunay was also a teacher, whose students would learn the fine art of painting in a schoolbuilding that is still standing there tk this day. The biggest highlight for me(Sinan) was the view of the entire city.
On the road back, we ran into a very specific monkey; Fransiscu. We were warned beforehand that the monkeys recognised the sound of the jeeps, and might jump in to grab the food or any other items straight of of peoples hands. Especially this one monkey, Fransiscu, was really keen on stealing and had just last week stolen a plastic bag with cookies and brand new flipflops. Now, how do the tourguides know it was Fransiscu? Fransiscu was missing both an arm and a leg. This monkey operates solo, likely because his pack left him alone duw to his injuries, and Fransiscu’s main means of survival is eating fruit of the ground (likely rotten) or stealing from tourists. It was very funny that we actually ran into thus one specific monkey after the story was told at the very beginning of the jeep tour.
Afterwards, the jeep dropped us off at the location to take the train up to Christ the Redeemer. Holy moly, the line was long. I would say a solid hour and a half of waiting. But it’s ok, we made it up, and the view was incredible. We could see both sides of the city, sort of like a panoramic image. Oh, and Jesus was there too. After some admiring and taking photos, part of the group went down the mountain to take the bus to Sugarloaf mountain, or go back to the hotel. I ended up going back to the hotel, and then went to a bar nearby to watch the Argentina England semi-finals. It was very exciting! After a few caipirinhas, I decided to call it a day, and went to bed!
On the other hand, I (Tessa) did go to sugarloaf mountain, where we took a 10 minute(lies by the way) walk up which would theoretically be just enough to make it up all the way to the charriota to take you up to the best viewing point to watch the sunset. Well, after 1.6 kilometers of extremely steep climbing, this mission only proved succesful for part of the group. The other part, stopped about 3/4 of the way(after having gone up and back down) where there was also a wonderful vantage point to catch the sundown. This was also a wonderful sight to see. After a shower and some dinner, some people called it a night early where others decided to play some games of “Zweeds Pesten”. All in all, a very full but very wonderful day!