By Silvie and Stefan

This day was the first day that we could really have a long nap, until the alarm rang at 8 o’clock. So an early wakeup to have a hike to Christ the Redeemer, the Jesus statue on top of the mountain. By taxi we went to Lage Park, the starting point of the hike. After we checked our group in at the park and the monkeys were fed from our hands,we finally left on the hike to Christ the Redeemer. A journey of 2.5 hours through the rain forest, a lot of climbing and eventually a nice view,hopefully. The first part of the trip went well: lots of nature, not too steep, very warm and occasionally we saw the sun through the clouds. Unfortunately it started to rain after half an hour and this continued throughout the rest of the hike . Finally we climbed up in the pouring rain.

This was quite hard because the route was a lot harder than we expected in some places, due to a lot of slippery rocks and the climbing along a chain.

When we finally arrived on the mountain, everyone was soaked to their underwear and it was extra cold due to the wind. The thick fog that hung above the mountain blocked our view to the Christ the Redeemer statue. It was barely visible, so was the view. However, sometimes there was a clearing of the fog and that was the moment we took a group photo with Christ the Redeemer. We had a Jägermeister shot on the achievement of the summit.

Wrapped in towels, brought with us to take them to the beach, we waited for the cable car going down from Christ the Redeemer. The taxi drivers probably weren’t too happy with all the wet people in their cabs and we were not happy with the cold of their air conditioners. When we were in the hostel, we warmed up in the shower, unfortunately a cold one, and recovered from the journey. After everyone warmed up, we went to the restaurant for dinner. This proved to be a much too fancy grill restaurant which was really far above our budget. So there was no choice but to look for another restaurant. After some searching we eventually ended up with a ‘kilo’ restaurant. This is a restaurant where you pay for the weight that you load on your plate. At first, the owner was a bit reluctant, until we said we were a group of 20 people. We had a great dinner over here, for a really good price!

Since we were close to the famous Copacabana, we wanted to walk on the beach, go to the night market and have a drink. The beach was a bit disappointing because the weather wasn’t that great, but the night market was fun with lots of small stalls. There were sculptures, paintings, magnets and all kinds of other souvenirs. After this we did have a drink at the Copacabana until we it was raining very hard, so we fled to the small kitchen of the pub. But the evening was not over, and at the suggestion of the hostel a part of the group went to a ‘girls night out’. Men were also allowed to join, so it wasn’t really a ‘girls night out’. However, in the night the rest of the group noticed that they had a great time.