Travel and Photography

Day two in Rio started brighter. The sun was shining. Even the birds seemed to be enjoying the sunshine. Hundreds of Frigate birds soared in the blue sky, vultures hung on the up draughts and big flocks of different birds flew in their V formations in all directions. I got off the boat to discover a colourful, yellow night-heron fishing off the hawser.

We’d decided to have a saunter over to the square again, check out the museum, which had just been built and had a remarkable architecture, and have a look round in the sun. That involved a beer at a café and one of those deliciously refreshing coconuts.

The Square looked different in sunshine. Rio was due to host the Olympics and there was a brightly painted block of letters to prove it in the square. Like good tourists we photographed ourselves with the blocks of letters. Then we set off for Sugarloaf Mountain. It wasn’t the one that Neil Young was singing about but it looked just as enchanted.

  The redeemer with microlytes

We boarded our cable-car and headed up into the sky with incredible views over Rio, Corcovado, the beaches and islands. The sky was blue, sun blazed, tropical jungle lay lush and green, sea blue, beaches yellow and the views were spectacular.

Up at the top we were level with the vultures and frigate birds. There were monkeys in the jungle, butterflies and flowers. It was just how I had imagined. I immediately wanted to go down and go back up Corcovado to see the views of Sugarloaf from there but we decided that the queues were too long. I contented myself by taking lots of shots of panoramic views that were all identical and having a close look at the vultures perching in the trees.

As the ship slipped out of the harbour that evening, I was on deck taking shots of the city and mountains in the evening glow. They were awesome.

Rio was grand.

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