April 8

The past couple days in Rio have been great. Ben and I are staying with a friend from D.C. who has an apartment in Copacabana, so it has been a nice break from the hostel scene. We have explored Ipanema and Copacabana quite a bit just walking around and checking out the beaches and a few restaurants. The weather has been pretty incredible, with the exception of a few showers here and there, but we I can't really complain. Yesterday we went to see the Corcovado (the giant statue of Christ that looks over the city) with our friend Adam and his girlfriend. The drive up to the statue was gorgeous and we stopped at one lookout point to check out a spectacular view of all of Rio. There were very few tourists and the weather was great so we were actually really lucky. Unfortunately, our luck seemed to change when we arrived at the actual statue. As we drove up the hill that it sits on top of, we started to encouter fog that seemed to get thicker and thicker as we ascended. By the time we made it to the actual base of the statue we could barely see anything. The 125 foot Corcovado was barely visible from more than 50 feet away. Things cleared for a few seconds and we did get to see it for a few brief moments, but our expereince was less than ideal. We will be in Rio for a few more days, then on Saturday we are heading to Colombia. Hopefully I'll check back in before the next leg of our trip.