There is a dizzying array of different things of offer each day at the free(!!!) buffet breakfast in the hotel. Breads of all types including cakes and sweet roll things that change each day. Always some pretty average, badly scrambled eggs, hot savoury things like cheese bread, cheese & ham pastry rolls, boiled eggs, fresh fruit, limon (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) mousse, cheese, cream cheese, ham etc then the fresh squeezed juices – here I am “enjoying” cashew juice. They also have fantastic coffee – very happy with their coffee!

We ventured out further today, Ubered to the Botanical Gardens through some pretty fucking insane traffic. Auckland has nothing on Rio for bad drivers. Lanes seem to be a vague suggestion, above you can see a bus just being wherever it wanted to be, not changing lanes or anything just doing it’s thing. Then there’s motorbikes everywhere, children on the back of utes, cars throwing on their hazards lights and stopping and roads that are as rough as guts. I did notice that here the people on motorbikes all wear helmets, as opposed to going along Copacabana. I guess the ones that don’t wear them here don’t last very long.

We started with a queue, as is the way, to pay for tickets to enter. Their website says unless you have cash, you can only pay by credit card if you have the infamous Brazilian tax number. Apparently this isn’t the case anymore so at least a bit of sanity has crept in. A helpful security guard asked us Portuguese or English and I automatically said “English” thinking he was asking us where we came from. He then gave us directions in what I guess he thought was English but he thought wrong. Swahili would have been more useful.

The place is far larger than we had anticipated, and a morning walk turned into an all day epic trek though only the start was uphill and the rest was on flat ground. We started with the cactus and smellys, then into the rainforest, heavily featuring jackfruit trees. I can imagine this place gets lively at night when all the beasties come out, but during the day it seemed pretty quiet, other than birds. I guess there were plenty of bugs and insects around but I wasn’t willing to go looking, no glowing fingers on these bastards.

The Jamiroquai tree (or something, maybe that’s a 90’s band), the start of what turned into a day of looking up a lot. It’s pretty hard on the neck looking straight up then back down so you don’t trip over all the roots, then back up again at the next gigantic tree. As with everything, the photos don’t do justice to how high everything is. They are literally breathtaking.

Some native roaming about the place, probably best to avoid.

This and the photo above is really where I felt the South American vibe from movies, the style of the buildings, the plants and the steep hills. There were fairly ruggedly built houses crammed up against concrete walls next to the gardens, just so different from New Zealand, where there are ruggedly built houses crammed up against each other.

An African God of medicinal plants. It didn’t really explain why historically there was so many Africans here to have brought their Gods, and I thought it impolite to point out. Those sugar plantations are sure fine though.

Pitanga fruit – apparently very yummy and rich in vitamin C, 1 million times more than an orange. Or something, I’m guessing here. I can’t read the information sign. Leave me alone.

Some plants, some of them tall and some not so much.

The entranceway to the cafe, which used to be a gunpowder factory, hence the balls and cannons on the top. Also home to a bunch of wild monkeys who seemed to be happy to grab anything edible near them.

Lunch, some sort of chicken in pastry, with a Guarana drink – really good. Then there’s a pulled pork number. No, I have no idea what the names of these are. There was a cod one too, but I had a very physical reaction when I tried it so my body definitely said “no”. The monkeys could have that one.

The main pathway through the gardens is line with these insanely tall palm trees, some over 200 years old.
One was planted by one of the Portuguese kings, Joao something or other.

A fairly unimpressive selection of carnivorous plants, the Venus and dewdrops were very small, but the pitcher plant ones were thriving. Dad had tried to grow these many years ago, with very limited success, and here they were like weeds.

A fountain with the big J. Rio is a contrast of the well kept privilege and the utterly destitute.

A very shiny tree from the Amazon. My neck was very sore at the end of the day.

Cannonball tree – my new favourite. When the balls break open the fruit inside turns blue and it stinks like the devil’s lettuce.

This little park walk ended up taking the entire day but it was well worth it, so many things that were new and strange, and so many others that were used in our everyday lives but here we got to see them in their home country, like the rubber tree.

Final food pics for the day – a garlic bread that promised so much from the outside, but only delivered wet mush on the inside. It was like they soaked it in garlic butter, and not in a good way.

We also had Brazilian stroganoff, really good but the best part was the fried potato sticks, so very fine and crispy.

Final bit of exercise for the day, a walk back to the hotel along Ipanema beach, pretty quiet at 11pm on a Monday night, but the couple of homeless setups seemed to enjoy the quiet.