Graffiti

I've mentioned before that South American cities seem to have a lot of graffiti, some of it very artistic. Here's one in Rio that is quite striking in just black and white.

Smile!

A happy bus in Rio de Janeiro

Fiscal Island Palace

Built as a Customs building in 1889, this green palace is on Fiscal Island in Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro. It was designed by Adolfo del Vecchio and built under the direction of Dom Pedro II, the second and last emperor of Brazil. It was also the site of the last Imperial Ball. A military coup d'etat on November 15, 1889 overthrew the monarchy. The Emperor and his family went into exile in Portugal, and Brazil created a new federalist, republican government under the Brazilian Constitution of 1891.

Rio restaurant

In Rio we had lunch in a most fantastically decorated restaurant: the ceiling was covered with anything and everything! Then the women's restroom - the floor was sparkly loose gravel and the lavatories were half-filled with loose gravel. There was no explanation so I can't give any enlightenment on this score. It was just a little hard to walk on the floor and I wondered how they cleaned it all!

Marmoset

Marmosets are monkeys and this one is about the size of a small cat, sighted at the tram station on Sugar Loaf. It was climbing all over the food vendors' cases, but the vendors must be used to it since they didn't shoo it away. But it couldn't get at the food either. A little cutie!

Copacabana

The view from Sugar Loaf is spectacular and as you can see Rio is worth seeing from a height! This is beautiful Copacabana Beach; not only did we see it from here, we saw it up close because our hotel was right on the beach. More about that later.

Roundabout

To get to the top of Sugar Loaf, one has to take two trams, one from the street level and a second one from an intermediate station. Yesterday's photo was taken at the intermediate station. So is today's photo looking back down to the roundabout next to the big parking lot for the mountain tram.

Sugar Loaf

We spent two days in Rio and on the first day we took the tram to the top of Sugar Loaf.

You may recall that 4 weeks ago I took a couple of days off to have corrective hammertoe surgery. Today the pins were removed from the two pinned toes and it was slick as a whistle or smooth as silk or something like that! I still have to wear the boot for a while longer because of course bones and tendons don't heal in 4 weeks. So far so good - I have straight toes. My job is to see that they stay straight until they are healed. And with minimal pain meds, I've had no pain throughout.

First sight of Rio

We came into Rio de Janeiro in the late evening, so this is a photo of our first sight, taken from the ship. The central feature is Sugar Loaf Mountain and the bright light on the peak to the left of Sugar Loaf is Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) on Corcovado Mountain.

Back in the late 60's I had a Harvey Mandel LP that I loved called Cristo Redentor. Ignorant of Portuguese (Redentor is Spanish too) as I am, I thought he had made up that name!

Moon over Rio

As we approached Rio de Janeiro the moon was rising through the clouds.

Sunset

We spent two days at sea between Montevideo and Rio de Janiero and on the second evening there was a beautiful sky. Many ship's passengers were out taking photos and I took a bunch. It was hard to choose which one to show you!

Sunset

Goodbye, Montevideo.

Antel Tower

This is Montevideo's Torre de las Telecomunicaciones (Telecommunications Tower) or Torre Antel (Antel Tower). It is by Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott. If it looks familiar, it's probably because you have seen photos of several buildings he designed in Dubai and other oil-rich Middle-Eastern countries..

Stagecoach Monument

La Diligencia, the Stagecoach Monument, by Jose Belloni was installed in 1952 in Montevideo. It commemorates the transportation struggles of the stagecoach era.

Shady street

A tranquil shady street in Montevideo.

Tears

Is this a being from outer space who landed in Montevideo to gather information about earthlings and then got stuck on top of this building? He must be homesick, shedding rusty tears.

Brick building

What do you suppose this brick building is? A restaurant, a residence, a museum? There's no sign on it though there is a space where a sign may appear later. It's sandwiched between two residential high rises. I took the photo from the bus and in twisting around to get it before the building was out of sight, it was way off level! If I cropped it, you wouldn't get the full flavor of its location, so I merely leveled it.

Blue building #2

Torre Ejecutiva is the seat of the Uruguayan government; it's a blue glass-clad building on Plaza Independence, very near the massive residential building we saw yesterday. My research shows the building was under construction in 2008 and may have been completed in 2009 - pretty new!

Blue building

This multi-story blue apartment building is on Montevideo's Plaza Independence. Note that the street apparently goes under it. I hope those pillars are sturdy!

Beachfront Property

I had to take this picture from the bus, but I want you to see the long curving beachfront of Montevideo. This is just a portion; it could be as long as 3 miles, all lined with hotels and apartment buildings. Just beautiful!

Montevideo

After Buenos Aires we sailed to Montevideo, Uruguay, and here are the buses waiting for our ship to dock. Note the size of the crane in the left of the photo; the little red things at the bottom of the crane are people.

Sunset

Good-bye, Buenos Aires!

Fishing pier

As our ship left the harbor in Buenos Aires, we passed a long fishing pier with apparently many conveniences including electric lights. Each of the little compartments you can see was occupied by one or two people cleaning fish or performing other fishy activities.

Vehiculo Especial

As we passed through a highway toll booth, we spotted this vehiculo. It's probably a road maintenance vehiculo and I'm certain it is especial.

Portrait

On our second day in Buenos Aires we took a drive to a ranch where we saw gaucho demonstrations and had a typical gaucho lunch - lots of meat and few vegetables. And there I took this sour-looking creature's portrait. No doubt he was a vegetarian and was still hungry after lunch!