Snoop Bond and Pharrell 007

Snoop Bond and Pharrell 007
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

After weeks of having our clothes hung in a wardrobe it was time to pack them back where they belong and to hit the road again. Usually we would be heading into the unknown, but after a somewhat cloudy Rio attempted to spoil our first visit we decided to head back and pretty much do it all again. Our hostel was in a great area, with nice restaurants and we knew what tour we wanted to do, so we basically booked exactly the same hotel and same tour and after a comfy bus from Belo Horizonte found ourselves back in Rio.

Our bus from Belo just happened to be called Haleys Comet, which was an interesting coincidence as our first night in Rio was due to be the much anticipated Blood Moon eclipse. We were lucky in Rio that the eclipse was due between 9pm and 12:30am so a nice civilised time to head to Botofogo beach and watch the magic happen. Sadly Rio had other ideas and at 8:30pm it started to look like the end of the world was happening rather than a blood moon as the clouds rolled in, the moon vanished, thunder shook the city and electric lightening lit the sky every colour except red. We made it back to our hostel before the torrential rain began and all I could do was use my skyview app to see where the moon would be if we could see it. The storm cleared and the moon returned at 1am, just in time for the Blood Moon to have completely been and gone, awesome.

So after a stormy night we woke up to a pretty clear sky which was just as well as we were off for Rio City Tour : Take 2. First stop Big JC. As we drove around the city doing the usual pick ups we could see Big JC towering over the city which was a vast improvement on the last time when we saw absolutely nothing. Unbelievably as we got to the top of the mountain the sun burst through the clouds. It was like one of those angelic ‘daaaa daaaaa’ moments as we were stood on the viewing platform surrounded with twenty times as many tourists as the last time, all in various positions from standing, sitting and even lying on the floor to get the perfect selfie with Big JC, obviously we joined the masses, we can’t come all this way and not get this selfie!

We were so lucky with our tour, not only did we have great weather for the moments that we needed it, we also had the same awesome guide that we had had the first time and had a great group of people on the tour who really made it a lot of fun. Our next stop was the Saint Sebastian Cathedral which had closed early last time because of bad weather, seriously since when are cathedral opening hours weather dependent?! Lucky with the sun still attempting to shine and the cathedral was open and inside this giant Dalek was a truly beautiful building. Four giant stain glass windows on all four sides, all different colours stretch from the entrance doors to the ceiling and cast the most stunning glow over the building.

The rest of the tour was the same as the first time, so I won’t repeat myself, you can just enjoy a few more photos of the same places, the Selaron steps in Lapa and Sugar Loaf Mountain.

There was one addition to our Sugar Loaf Mountain photo album in that Tim had discovered that Moonraker was filmed up Sugar Loaf and so he found the perfect photo for us to recreate with the help of a poor unsuspecting girl on our tour who coped surprisingly well with Tim’s demands to retake the photo 18 times to get the right angle. Tim Bond and Charlotte Goodhead atop Sugar Loaf, boom!

Not content with having recreated the Snoop Dog & Pharrell photo on Lapa Steps, one of the girls at our hostel told us that there was another location that we could get a photo so obviously we had to go. Park Lago in the city, is an amazing building with a pool in the middle and just happens to be an art school with a café which is open to the public. Cue Tim and Charlotte assessing the tourists in the area to find an unsuspecting English Speaker to rope in to take a photo. Amazingly after a few minutes we saw a pair of girls who we were pretty sure were European and unbelievably one of them was even more of a perfectionist than Tim and she retook the photo at least 20 times and even gave me her necklace to wear to perfect the shot, I am glad that there are some people out there as crazy as we are. Pharrell & Snoop on location take 2, done!

With the clouds back and temperatures topping 40 degrees we sought refuge in one of Rio’s many shopping malls to stock up on new flip flops and summer gear now that we were finally leaving winter temperatures and our thermals behind.

Sadly our time in Rio was over way too fast, we love this city and would return again in a heartbeat!

We couldn’t leave without trying one thing, we had been very well behaved eating healthily for our month of cat sitting and then we had been stocking up on salad at the all you can eat buffets, but our last night we decided to try the ‘all you can eat pizza menu’. For £6 each this was not the cheapest meal, but OMG was it worth every penny. They basically just make every pizza on the menu and walk around the restaurant delivering huge slices, there didn’t seem to be any time frame and when we had eaten every savory pizza on the menu they appeared with fresh plates and started to deliver the dessert pizzas. Seriously milk chocolate, white chocolate and strawberry pizza is possibly the best invention, ever.

Full to the point that we probably don’t need to eat for the next three days, we are ready for the off. Off to the largest tropical wetland in the world, The Pantanal.

To say we are excited would be an understatement, this place has it all, every bird you can think of any many you have never heard of, caymen, monkeys, capybara and the elusive jaguar…. Will we be lucky??!!

Fingers crossed, bye bye Rio.