Days 2 & 3 - Rio

Since I'm up I decide to forego the hotel breakfast, which starts at 7, and start make my way to the farmers market in Gloria. Making my way through the tunnel from Copacabana to Botafogo and beyond, you start to see the difference in wealth between the tourist zones and the local areas. I take the long way there, along the beachfront. There is exercise equipment every 500 metres or so and what's amazing is the frequency with which it is used by men and women of all ages. The guide books tell you  to expect it at crowded beaches during peak hours, with the beautiful people showing off their muscles to the best advantage by using them. At Parque do Flamengo though, a back suburb really, I walk past two men in their seventies doing inclined sit-ups, and a woman maybe in her fifties being encouraged by her husband to do a few more triceps dips. 

Turning away from the beach I head to the sound of someone on a loud speaker, it turns out to be a buy scouts and girl guide rally, the number of them in their late teens surprises me. Making it to the market i stop for some sugar cane juice and another meat pastel, afterwards I stop and buy some mandarins and mangoes to help round out my diet a little beyond meat, pastry and beer. From there it's onto Selaron's steps  where, in the 90s, the artist covered a couple of hundred steps leading up to Santa Teresa, and the surrounding wall, in brightly coloured tiles. It's now a quick photo stop for all tourists. At this point I call it a morning and buy a metro card for the return trip, as while the long walk there was interesting, I don't want to repeat it. 

I head to the frankly overrated Feira Hippie Ipanema, a market that's been around since the sixties, but sells the same stuff you see at these sort of markets all around the world, leather goods, kids clothes and kitschy handbags. I see a heap of locals eating at the only food stand at the market and order the first item on the menu, acaraje complete, which I googled afterwards, a pea fritter, topped with vatapa (a bread, prawn, peanut, coconut milk and palm oil mash) which tasted vaguely like sweet potato, and a side of prawns, onions, tomato and green chillies. Quite tasty, but I stopped to buy a pack of mentos afterwards, as I wasn't convinced my breath was minty fresh after eating it. A quiet afternoon of reading under the shade of a palm tree at Ipanema followed and an early night. 

I manage to almost sleep through last night, aside from a midnight snack, stoked! I awake refreshed and with blue skies on the forecast decide to go to Corcovado Mountain (710m elevation) and see the Christ the Redeemer statue. One exception though, 99.9% of people either get the bus or train up the mountain, I'm going to walk! There's only two names on the sign in sheet for the day ahead of mine, and their nationality, English, as the guide talks me through the directions in Portuguese with hand gestures, he starts making climbing gestures, this could be harder than I thought. A third of the way up I'm overtaken on a water break by 3 Brazilians who call out "come on Australia, you can do it". I begin to doubt it as I round a corner and the path gets a lot steeper, every fifth or sixth step is so tall, nearly as long as my leg, and I grab exposed tree roots for balance. Then I get to the hard part, loops of reinforced steel have been driven into the rock, the angle indicating some are handholds and some are for feet, a chain-link rope is weaved through them, here's the climbing the guy at the information booth mentioned. I cross the train track the path gets easier from there, and finishes with walking up the road, bus loads of tourists looking at you as they whiz by in air-conditioned comfort. I make it to the top, a sweaty mess, buy another bottle of water and sit on the blessedly cool tile floors to relax for a bit before reaching for the camera. The rules for personal space are broken in the quest for the perfect selfie and I need to put my hands out a few times to stop people bumping into my face while I'm sitting. I take the obligatory selfie, without the standard arms-out pose and get the train back down, where I bump into the 3 Brazilians who call out "Australia, you made it".

I get the bus back down the mountain and home, and after a shower I headed for a meal and of Tilapia Fish and quinoa risotto, at Boteco Belmonte, it was delicious. I followed that with a light-hearted attempt at shopping, which had me trying on a few things and buying nothing. I headed from there to the headland above the beach at Leblon and had a couple of caipiranhas while watching the sunset. They went down very easily, and it was only afterwards, when i left to head home I realized that they packed quite a punch for a little drink!