Teresopolis - March 20th

Given Rio has been a bit disappointing, and that we have overdosed slightly on beaches, we are leaving to go to the mountains.  Brazil isn’t that well known for its mountains, but there are loads of them, how else did they get all the Swiss and German immigrants to come in and give us the good beer and sausage that we have been having.  Anyway today we are going to Teresopolis, which gets its name from the Empress Teresa who used the mountains as a cool retreat from the hot summer weather in Rio.  In case anyone isn’t aware, Brazil does have an imperial past, but we will see more of that in a couple of days.  Not much of the remnants of the imperial past are left in Teresopolis.

But first to get there we had to get there.  This turned out to be fairly easy; we got a taxi rather than risk the bus again.  But it was a lot cheaper than we thought it was going to be, and although there were a few dodgy characters around the entrance to the bus station in Rio, once we were in it was quite secure, but nowhere near as nice as the ones in other cities.  Our bus is one of the frequent ones, so we weren’t waiting for too long.

The trip itself took a bit longer than scheduled, because of an accident and road works, but it gave us more time to enjoy some great views back over Guanabara Bay as we go up to 900m above Rio.  When we get off the bus we walk to our hotel, but we didn’t realise it was up a very steep hill, so it was a struggle with our backpacks on.  Still it was worth it, because the hotel and room are lovely, and the view is pretty good.

After settling in we go for a walk around the town.  There isn’t that much to see, a nice church, a few squares, and a museum showing an exhibition of the history of carnival in the town.   There is one other major sight, the place where the Brazilian football team train when they are in the country, but as they are not there at present, and as it is about 3km outside town, we don’t bother going.  In the evening we find a restaurant serving sauerkraut and pork, so we have another almost Polish dinner.