Leah in Rio: Jesus Christ!

So I was one of the last people here to go see the huge Christ the Redeemer statue up close. My logic was that I had 4/3/2 more weeks so why rush it etc etc, BUT this is Max's last week, so he and Sally and I (and a boy that just moved in named Russell) decided a while ago to go Tuesday morning. Except... we went out Monday, so we all slept in, then Sally and I went to the beach until about 1:00, then Max made lunch, then we had to go to the bank so really we didn't leave until 2:30.

Christo is the highest point in the city, and the views of all of Rio are supposed to be amazing from there, so the best time to go is when the sun is bright and the clouds are few. Of course, we got there around sunset with a lot of clouds. The way to get all the way up to the top of Corcovado (means hunchback, descriptive name of the hill Christ is on) is with a special van/taxi that costs something like R$36 each to take you up, stop three times on the way, wait for you for an hour, and take you back home (in our case, all the way back to Gloria). It's quite a ripoff. We were afraid of missing Christ by daylight, so we only stopped at one of the helipad photo-op spots and only for five of the twenty minutes we were alotted (the bus driver seemed quite shocked at this decision).

I expected this excursion to be underwhelming (that may have been why I waited so long); however, even though we came at the wrong time of day and even though I've been seeing Christ peripherally for weeks now, seeing really large things up close is always gonna be pretty cool, and this was no exception. What's even more incredible that I didn't really anticipate is how HIGH UP this mountain is; we were above clouds, and even through the clouds, the view of the city from that height was really breathtaking.

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