We'd organized to meet up with Corina & Sandra who were staying at the next beach, Ipanema. Nic came along with us. We caught the bus & hopped off a block away from their hotel. We all Went for lunch at a nice little Italian restaurant before spending an hour or so at the beach. The surf was quite heavy & a side sweep was washing swimmers along the coast. It didn't stop me having a go, but it was hard work & I had to choose my waves very carefully for fear of breaking my neck.
We said good bye to our Swiss friends & headed back to the hotel. We were pretty much sorted, but we had to do our final pack before heading to the airport. Part of it was disposing of some clothing (including my faithful hiking boots) that was beyond help after the abuse over the previous month & a half. It also involved a last ditch effort to try to find the camera that went missing in Bonito. Fortunately it did show up 4 months later back in sunny Perth. Suellen had managed to track it down & send it back to us.
Machu Picchu - Lost City & spectacular valley setting
Lake Titicaca - despite all it's tourist traps & the dreadful home stay
Uyuni Salt flats
Bolivian Southern Desert - Amazing lakes & surprising array of wildlife.
Santa Cruz - Wildlife at the Butterfly Park
The Pantanal - Mind blowing array of Wildlife
Iguazu Falls - Incredible water falls & butterflies
Rio de Janeiro - View & Animals at Christ the Redeemer
The final stop on the city tour was Sugar Loaf. We had looked down on it from the foot of JC earlier in the afternoon, but when we arrived we were looking up at this towering rock.
There are some nice views from the first hump but the weather wasn't being even a bit co-operative. We did take the second cable car to the top, but were shrouded in cloud and saw nothing except what was 3 ft in front of us.
We were returned to our hotel after Sugar Loaf. We had enough time to get organised & re-join the rest of the crew for our final dinner together. It was a smorgasbord meat fest similar to a couple of similar ones we'd been to throughout Brazil, but was a clear winner in the classy stakes. The next day everyone would go their separate ways (and I mean separate!)
Mike was staying on in South America for another 3 months; Nic was heading to New Zealand & Australia for work, Nora & Vincent were headed home to the Emerald Isle; Corina & Sandra, back to Switzerland; Vixy was staying in Rio for a few days then back to the UK; Special K was heading to the UK via New Zealand; and lastly, Hina & Smita were going home to the UK before a trip to India.
It was sad, but I think most of us were ready for a change after spending the last 6 weeks together. Fortunately the Internet makes the world a small place these days. I expect to see at least half of them again at some point.
As for myself, I was done with the trip. I could have hopped a plane back to Calgary that night. After the city tour, Rio didn't hold much interest for me. I'm more a wilderness kinda guy. I was already stressing about trying to get work back in Australia after the news of the economy crashing had filtered to me during the last 2 weeks of the trip. We still had nearly 2 full days to fill in.
Shortly after the stop at carnival we visited the Cathedral of St Sebastian. It looked more like a cooling tower to me & once we were inside, it became apparent that the structure behaves a lot like a cooling tower. There was no air conditioning in the building but it was nice & cool.
The interier of the Cathedral were a quite interesting with huge panels of stained glass & the strange louvers that cool it.
Next stop was Maracana stadium. It's the largest football stadium in the world. Again, not that interesting to a rugby union boy. The stadium does have these weird foot prints set in concrete similar to the hand prints on Hollywood boulevard.
These opportunists have no issues with using people to make their search for food easy.
