Three Days in Rio

After traveling to a handful of small cities in Brazil multiple times over the last nearly 30 years, we finally decided to stop in the much more tourist-centric, Rio de Janeiro. Last week we spent about 3 days exploring some of the top destinations in the city.

Our first stop was the botanical gardens. There were several interesting trees there and many cool animals. We spent a pleasurable half day roaming around the grounds.

This tree that looks like it is covered in cannonballs is a Brazil nut tree. The nuts are in the balls. There were also a lot of jackfruit trees.

We ran into a lot of these cute little guys.

There was an interesting area about the wasp and bee species in a particular area of Brazil. They have some very interesting hives that they guard by blocking the entrances during the day and sealing it with wax at night.

There was a small lake with these huge lily pads. Can you see the bird in the center of the lily pads? There were a lot of large fish as well.

And even though we didn’t see this bird in Rio, I’m going to throw him in here because he was interesting.

On our second day, we visited Christ the Redeemer statue and the Sugarloaf (Pão de Açúcar). We got a lot of really nice views of the city and the harbor. The statue was so, so crowded, but the Sugarloaf was more spacious with lots of shops, attractions and restaurants all over the tops of the mountains (there were two in total that we accessed via cable car).

We also got to see these guys at both locations.

Our apartment was on Copacabana beach, so after visiting the attractions, we went for a little beach time and some food at one of the restaurants. Unlike some beach restaurants, the food at these were pretty good and not overpriced. And, we enjoyed some really good caipirinhas for the equivalent of just a few dollars each.

On our last day, we visited the aquarium and Lage Park. The park was the site of an old mansion and sugar mill on the edge of the Tijuca National Park (a rainforest), so there were some fun animals (the rodent below is an agouti in English) and pretty landscape.

Having traveled to Brazil many times, there aren’t too many foods to still share about, but we did try a couple of things more common to Rio (Bolinhos de bacalhau-fried cod balls, Bobó de camarão-shrimp stew and some Açaí just for fun. Everything was really good and not very expensive!