My last few days before the next few are being spent in Rio de Janeiro. The Portuguese named it after 'Rio', meaning 'River', and 'Janeiro', meaning 'January'. They're not very good at names, because there isn't a river here, and it's not January most of the time. It's a lively but cool place, though, full of beaches and bars and people ambling round in sandals and shorts being, well, lively but cool. Its most famous site is the statue of Christ the Redeemer (pic) on the top of Corcovado, one of the many very pointy, forested mountains that surround the city. Even he's wearing sandals.
I went up there today, on the electric cog railway. It's very very steep, and that's just the ticket price. It crawls up 1 in 4 slopes to the top, too. However, the sight of the statue at the top, and of people taking bad selfies (pic), is worth it.
The view down to the city is pretty spectacular, too (pic) – the summit is 700m high. That pinnacle down there is Pão de Açúcar, or 'Sugarloaf'. Brazilians evidently have a sweet tooth, as anyone who's had their oversugared breakfasts and coffees will know.
Back at sea level I enjoyed an afternoon stroll along the bustling beaches of Ipanema, made famous by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes's song The Girl from Ipanema. Brazilians are a bit fatter than when they wrote it over 50 years ago, so now the words might go Short, and fat, and slow and dumpy, / The girl from Ipanema goes waddling, / And when she passes, / Each one she passes goes, / 'Aaargh!'. The red flags were up and you couldn't swim, but the sand was still packed, with locals doing the traditional Brazilian activities of (a) volleyball (sometimes hands-free, football-style), (b) football, and (c) posing.
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