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Christ the Redeemer, we'd been waiting all week for a perfect day to go up to see Mr Christ and new years eve was the best so far, so we decided to go for it. Got there at 11am expecting a queue and there was, waited for a good 40 mins only to find out our tram ride to the top wasn't until 3.30pm! We then had to pray, to Christ, that he wouldn't get all clouded up. We sat about in a nearby park keeping an eye on the weather, watching chickens roam free, the usual kind of thing, eventually it was time and the weather was looking, ok. The tram used a tooth mechansim to travel up, the same style has been used since it opened, bit of an engineering fact for you there! Travel up through the jungle for about 20 minutes and we hit the top, and it's just starting to get cloudy so we run about trying to get our photos in, just made it in time, 5 mins later you can't even see his upper half. Half hour later and the clouds start to drift away and we can see the views of the city, beautiful! We travel back down happy that we've ticked Mr Christ off our list.
New Years Eve party on Copacabana beach... Played drinking games with all the boys from the hostel quite early on, with some intriguing hastly made punch, lots of fruit, so two birds one stone! We head out about 8pma and decide to walk it, start to follow a small crowd and then more and more join, people singing and drinking and we haven't even hit the beach yet! Finally get to the beach and it is utter chaos, in a goood way of course, 2 million people supposedly! We zig zag our way down the beach to roughly the middle and find a little spot to take it all in, we meet some brazilian girls who end up being our VIP guides! After much drinking, dancing and larking about the countdown begins. The noise and atmosphere is nothing like I've heard or felt before. 2 million people in unison counting down (I counted down in English but I doubt anyone noticed), when it struck midnight the crowd went crazy, dancing and singing as they do oh so well. Then came the fireworks, and they were something, I'd thought I'd seen it all when it came to fireworks, surely there's only so much a firework can do? Not these ones, they blew me away but not literally of course, that wouldn't be fun! They went on for ages and were being set off all the way along the beach, from barges just offshore, now that's a lot fireworks, the final few minutes, the finale, took my breath away, lost for words type of thing. Some could say, I had a moment!
After the fireworks we headed to Ipanema beach to continue the party with the girls, danced about and i remember singing the beatles with one of the brazilians who, although couldn't speak much English, knew the words to the beatles strangely, the international language of 'the beatles' never fails!
Walk the longest walk home ever known to man at around 4:30am, get into bed at around 7am! Sleep all new years day.
New years in Rio will be hard to beat.
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