Honeymooning around the world: Rio de Janeiro, Part 2: New Year’s Eve including thieves, Christ Redeemer statue and peaceful Jardim Botanic garden

Then it was time to celebrate New Year’s! We had read that most of the people wear white at New Year’s to bring luck for the upcoming year. If one wears black, one is doomed for the next year! We went around in different shopping centers in Rio to find the clothes and it was not an easy task! There were plenty of white clothes in the stores, but all stores were really expensive! If you think that the lowest level is at a ‘Tommy Hilfiger/GANT’ price level, you can figure out what the prices were in Rio. 😞 We don’t know where one could find cheaper stores there? Well, we managed to find something anyhow 😊

As we mentioned in our post of Inca Trail, we met a Swedish couple, Johan and Maria, in Peru. They were also in Rio for New Year’s so we decided to celebrate it together. We cooked a delicious dinner in our tiny kitchen including lentils, because apparently eating lentils at New Year’s eve brings also luck to upcoming year! 😄

Ready for the beach

Then it was time to take ourselves to Copacabana. They say that there are usually around 2 million people on the beach during New Year’s eve. 2 million! It’s more than 1/3 of Finland’s entire population! 😂 We thought it would be packed but we felt that everyone had enough space and it didn’t feel like we were THAT many 😉 The highlight of the evening was of course Rio’s firework show. It was about 12 minutes long (i.e. much shorter than before – did the Olympics use this money too?) and spectacular. We have never seen such firework show before!

But what disturbed the show a bit were the thieves. We had heard that there will be many pickpockets on the beach during the night and that one should be extra careful with one’s belongings. We were and nothing happened to us, but we saw something we have neither ever seen before. We stood almost in the middle of the beach in order to see the fireworks best. Every now and then a few young guys ran next to the water line and someone tried to catch them. Once someone managed to stop the thief and everyone on the beach started to clap! But then, around 11.50pm a large group of boys/young men walked towards the center of the beach. No-one was wearing a shirt (that way you could not grab them that easily, we guess) and everyone was barefoot. Then, when the fireworks started at 12.00am, we saw maybe 40 – 50 of the guys running again next to the waterline (where the sand is harder and there are not that many people to stop them) and they grabbed every single mobile phone they could see! Pam – pam – pam! We saw literally from 10 meters away how people lost their phones to these thieves who kept on running! Okay, we also don’t really understand why people would stand next to the waterline at 12.00am and take selfies when everyone knew that that is the time when most of the thieves would attack… In the video below you can see in the slow motion part the people running – they are all thieves. We heard also that one should not try to stop them because they have nothing to lose. Someone had tried to stop one of them and got stabbed for it. Maybe better to lose a phone.

Amazing fireworks and thieves in the slow motion part

There were no buses or taxis driving close to Copacabana so we started walking. And we ended up walking all the way back to our apartment – around 7km in flip flops in the middle of the night 😅 Well, we saw how people partied at Ipanema and Leblon beaches (small parties in tents) and it was still around 30 degrees, so we didn’t have to freeze 😛 The next day we just relaxed on our roof terrace in the sun. Lovely!

Looks like this video would be planned with the music behind us but no 😜

Then it was again time for sightseeing! We still had to go to the Christ statue (a must when first time in Rio, we guess 😉). We took an electric train up the mountain (around 20 minutes) which was nice. Btw, as of 1 July all tickets must be bought in advance. We used an app from Trem Corcovado and it worked out well. The app even tells how to get to the statue and when we were supposed to be there. We think it was maybe the last train of the day where people would actually see a) the statue and b) anything from the mountain down. Clouds appeared quickly and covered the entire sky so our visit was not very long 😛

Views from the electric train window

We were just in time to see the views before clouds covered everything

Edda’s friend Kaisa had tipped that we should see the botanic garden in Rio. This was great since we might have missed it otherwise! The Jardim Botanic garden is beautiful and perfect for a relaxing day activity. There were different parts such as Japanese garden, palm tree avenues, rose garden (not many roses, though), orchid house (not many orchids, though), and other parts with beautiful plants. We spent maybe four hours walking around the park. It was nice to be able to walk in Rio (the park) with your camera in your hand without being afraid it to be stolen.