Friday 28 June 2002
Good Morning Rio. We just slept for 12 hours and were a bit fuzzy in our heads. The plan for this day was to climb the Sugar Loaf. At 3pm we leave the hotel as the plane takes off at 4.45pm.
The restaurant served the best coffee we have tasted so far. We felt almost embarrassed asking for an extra cup over and over again. Plus all the exciting fruits and juices. Who invent Cashew nut juice? Funny taste anyway.
We decided to skip the Sugar Loaf as the weather was dizzy. Instead we studied the Rio map to explorer other things. An old viaduct caught our eyes and we asked one of the locals. Portuguese isn't our first language and the lady we asked didn't anything else. Using some Spanish words our hands and at lot of "hmm's" she finally understood and started walking. We had nothing to do than following her.
The trip was fairly long and we passed streets and districts we never would have seen, if it weren't for our l ocal "guide". After some 30 minutes she finally pointed at the viaduct and walked on. Our target turned out to be the train station for the oldest railway in Brazil. The beautiful old trains were from 1896 and the route runs up to the giant Christ statue. Couldn't fit better for our day.
We asked the local Portuguese-speaking guy about which train to catch and he pointed on the map. The "Santa Teresa" train should take us to "Christ". We though.
The train was a funny old steel and wood wagon with manual gear. Everything was shaking while we climb the steep streets. Locals got on and off, using the train as the city bus.
Suddenly the train stopped at a blind track and got off. We continued to walk the road expecting to reach the Christ statue very soon. But we were wrong. The train had stopped at a lower location and the area we walked into was one of the "favellas" the poor neighborhood. We knew what we walked into and need to be cautious, but we were also very curious. After walking stair a while, taking some photos, we were approach by a young local guy who looked angry and shouted something link "paria" after us. Time to leave...
One our way down we got on a bus going downwards and only a few minutes after we got off the bus, we saw the local city bus from yesterday. We were experienced now and jumped into the bus, fetched something to hold and paid our tickets.
One the trip back to the hotel Ane met a German-speaking student from Brazil and Ane realized that she still spoke German very well. We just go succeed another delicious lunch at the hotel before rushing off to the airport heading Lima, Peru.