Day 3 in Rio..... We saw the face of Christ!!!

We woke early with a plan that if it was blue sky we would head to Christ the Redeemer. It was blue out with a few clouds but nothing major, so we were all systems go!!

We had breakfast at the apartment and then headed to the metro to catch the train to down town.

When we got there the clouds had already started to form a bit more, so we went down towards the beach to take some pics of Sugarloaf mountain and also get a view of Christ the Redeemer to see whether the statue was visible.

By this time there was actually quite a dark cloud surrounding the statue. We did get some great pics of Sugarloaf though, would have been a perfect time to go up the cable car, we just timed it so badly!

We went for a coffee and decided that regardless of weather we did not come all this way not to visit the statue so we headed over to the place where you catch a shuttle.

It was around 11:30 when we bought our tickets. We had to wait just under an hour for the shuttle, tickets are sold in groups and you have to wait for your group before being able to travel. There was a lot of people, particularly being that it was Good Friday.

We made our way up the mountain, the driver drives at breakneck speed up the windy cobblestone streets, at the top you get off the bus, only to the have to take another bus up to the statue. Of course that means another queue, but it moves very quickly and we were in our way!

At the top, the statue was barely visible as we made our way up the stairs to the viewing terrace. Clouds were literally at the base of the statue! We had to laugh otherwise we would have cried!

People were taking selfies with the cloud covered statue, there was loads of people waiting patiently, as if hoping for a miracle that the cloud would clear. We waited with the masses taking some pics and making jokes, it was the only way to get through this! Who would have thought we'd come all this way to Rio and not get a picture of Christ the Redeemer!

All of a sudden, someone in the crowd started making a cheering sound we looked up and we could see his face, everyone started cheering and clicking of cameras could be heard, selfie sticks flying everywhere!

Then more cloud, we were still excited that we got some pics, but decided to wait a bit
longer and we moved to a better viewing point.

We waited around 15 minutes, when finally, the cloud cleared slowly revealing the whole statue!! More cheering and quickly taking photos, we managed to get a decent selfie of 2! We were stoked!!! It was an Easter miracle - lol

We decided after that we would head back down to get our shuttle back, it had been a successful day and needed to be celebrated with beer!!

Once the shuttle got back to the drop off point we caught the metro back to Ipanema and walked to the apartment. Time to freshen up and then head out for beers.

As it was Good Friday it was pretty busy, we went to a bar across the road and then decided for dinner to go back to the Mexican place, although we are not religious we still stick with no meat on Good Friday and we had vego nachos and a vego burrito! It was really good!!!!

We did a bit of grocery shopping for tomorrow's breakfast. Our flight to Buenos Aires is at 11:50am so we will eat before we head to the airport!

It was a good day, despite the cloud, I actually think the experience of seeing the statue emerge from the cloud was better than if we'd gone up there to see him in the blue skies! Everyone was so excited when he came out of the clouds, it was like he had put on a show for us! Very cool, just like Rio!!