Although cloudy there was no rain this morning so the boys decided to visit some landmarks in Rio de janeiro with the most famous being the statute of Chris the Redeemer
A symbol of Christianity across the world, the statue has also become a cultural icon of both Rio de Janeiro and Brazil, and is listed as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
Christ the Redeemer is an Art Decostatue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, created by French sculptor Paul Landowski and built by the Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, in collaboration with the French engineer Albert Caquot. Romanian sculptor Gheorghe Leonida fashioned the face. Constructed between 1922 and 1931, the statue is 30 metres tall, excluding its 8-metre pedestal. The arms stretch 28 metres wide.
As Lipstick was still parked in a parking garage the boys decided to make use of an Uber Taxi to climb up to Mount Corcovado which actually is a very steep uphill road and paved with cobble stones.
The road is going through a forest area and stop at a base station from where one can buy tickets and is then transported up by bus to the base of the statute and then some escalators take visitors to the actual statute platform.
Wow – what a sight from up there over Rio de Janeiro with its many fragmented areas divided by hills, lakes and the ocean.
Being Friday, the boys decided to greet their fellow T58 friends (like on every Friday when being away)
And so, the boys decided to rather carry on with their trip towards Itajaí from where Lipstick
would be shipped back to South Africa and although it was already past midday they decided to push for as many km as possible rather than spending another rainy afternoon in Rio.
So, they packet the suitcases and went back on the highway towards Sao Paolo and were thankful for the double lanes which made it easier to overtake the many trucks they faced – although sometimes there was no way through even on a triple lane patch of the road
On approach to Sao Paolo the boys really faced heavy traffic with lots of parallel roads and forks especially since daylight was gone as the sun settled down and seemingly everyone wanted to be on the same road like Lipstick.
To miss the right exit or going left instead of right on a fork would mean a time-consuming U-Turn manoeuvre and twice such a situation gave the boys a huge amount of Adrenalin rush.
It took Team Lipstick over an hour to get through this highly populated City of Sao Paolo before reaching the outskirts where traffic became more bearable and higher speed could be attained.
Eventually the boys decided to stop at a Town named Registro where they could also find a motel with a simple restaurant attached.