Rio De Janeiro

16 Jan 08

Rio De Janeiro
1330 hours


Well holy hell on a stick .. this is what it is all about! Worked this morning, then got off the ship about 10.30am and caught a cab up to SugarLoaf Mountain. I had watched the Shore Excursions Channel last night and decided that was what I wanted to do. I would have loved to go to Copacabana Beach or Ipanema, but I needed to stay out of the sun today. So Sugar Loaf it was! I was too late to get a tour, as they all left by 9am. So I figured I could do it on my own.

I got over there, paid the cabbie ($30US!) and then got in line for my ticket, which was $20US. They didn’t take Mastercard either (that is twice now) so I need to stick to bringing the Visa, since that is all they would take. Instead I paid them cash and got in line to board the first cable car up to the first mountain (It is a 2 step process; ground to first Mtn, then 1st Mtn to Sugar Loaf Mountain) Took a few pics up on the first mtn and then got in the cable car again. Got up to the top and WOW! What a view .. I took a few pics but looking at them now, they don’t do it any justice. The ones from the 1st mountain you can at least tell what you are looking at. Not more than 5 mins after I got up there, I ran into some pax that visit my café. After chatting with them a few mins, they mentioned their tour was over and the bus was picking them up in 20 mins at the bottom. So I attached myself to them figuring I could get a free ride back to the ship, which I did!! :) I was almost out of US money anyway! LOL

We are going to be pulling out of port shortly and my shift is up in 10 mins, so I will be back soon. I am going to go up and take some pics of us leaving.

P.S. In case you didn’t see my last post, I can’t upload pics to the Blog directly for some reason. I am going to try one other way, or else I am going to load them to Kodak Gallery in stages (first ones will be pics of the ship and my cabin .. then Rio, etc)