Brazil Days 0 and 1: Arrival in Rio de Janeiro

I'll be gradually chronicling my trip to Brazil last week. Woo! Lots of pictures with the SLR!

Day 0 (July 5): Travel Day
The day was mostly uneventful, consisting of plane flights. I packed light, squeezing everything (including my SLR with three lenses) into a backpack. Preparations were pretty extensive (and expensive), which included typhoid and yellow fever vaccines and malaria medication.

Day 1 (July 6): Arrival in Rio
I arrived in Rio de Janeiro around 8:30am. After going through customs and navigating my way out of the airport, I boarded the Rio Ônibus line 2018 to head to the hostel ($R 12). (Some advice on the Ônibus: The bus will stop anywhere on its route, so when your stop is coming up, go and tell the driver where you would like to get off. Also, I would not recommend taking the Ônibus back to the airport since the buses aren't regular and they won't always stop for you.) Instead of taking the Ônibus all the way to Ipanema, I got off in the city and took the metro to Ipanema ($R 3.20 for one ride), saving about 45 minutes on my route to the Hostel Harmonia. I got there in time for the end of breakfast and the end of Roger Federer destroying Djokovic at Wimbledon. After Chao, Evan, and Neal arrived from Teresópolis in the early afternoon, we settled in and headed over to Sugarloaf Mountain (Pão de Açúcar) after a lunch at Galitos. In Rio the buses are pretty interesting. When you board the bus there is someone who sells you a ticket after which you proceed through one of those small rotating gate counters.

The second hill of Sugarloaf (Click to Enlarge)

Sugarloaf consists of two hills: the first hill can be reached by cable car or by foot, and the second hill can be reached by scaling the hill (rock climbing) or by cable car from the first hill. It was a pretty decent climb to the first hill through the densely-forested hill. By the time we reached the first hill it was almost sunset, and it was quite a sight.

Christ the Redeemer from Sugarloaf (Click to Enlarge)

Sunset over Rio (Click to Enlarge)

After returning from Sugarloaf, we stopped at some restaurant next to the hostel for some dinner before an early night.