Monday- Natural Site- Jardim Botanico

I did not enjoy the flight this week. The airport was very congested and no one was very willing to help us and overall it just was not a pleasant airport. Not to mention it was a LONG three days of flying. However, the beginning of the week has been wonderful, on Monday we had our natural site planned. We did not land until Monday morning early so we went to the hotel and checked in real quick and then got a taxi right away. We decided to go to Jardim Botanico which is a botanical garden. In Rio there are two types of taxi’s, personal special service cars which are significantly nicer and more expensive than the other type which are typical yellow taxis. We took a regular yellow taxi to save money. It was quiet a bumpy ride but it was not any worse than a taxi ride in the other places we were in. On the way we stopped at a local bakery market and got salami and ham and baguette. One of the locals in the restaurant that spoke a little English convinced us that we had to try a Brazilian specialty a cheese bread called pão de quejo he also helped us order everything else, I do not know what we would of done without him. The two baguettes, half pound of salami, half pound of ham and loaf cheese bread totaled R$ 36.9 which was $21.11 USD.

The cab fare started at R$4.3 and once we got to the park it read R$28.5 which converts to $16.31. When we first got there we went straight to the visitors center and got a map for R$.52 which converts to .30 cents in USD. The map was a wonderful investment even though it was in Portuguese the pictures on it helped us to get around. The garden was huge we did not even get to see all of it and we were there all day. The tickets for the day were R$6 which is $3.43 per person which totals $17.15 total for the tickets. There were so many tropical plants and trees that I have never seen. I filled up my camera chip within the first hour because there were so many new things I had to take pictures of. The animals were wonderful too there were sloths, and monkeys, birds, and fish in the mini-lakes. The funniest thing of all though was while we were walking we watched this little kid (who was about 150 yards from us and could not have been more than 5 or 6) chase a skunk and get sprayed. It was funny but also very sad because that poor kid smelled horrible we were far away and ran the opposite direction once we realized what was going to happen and could still smell the awful smell. They closed down that part of the park and the poor kid was crying his eyes out as the put a plastic suit around him and escorted him to the bathroom to rinse off. The weather was wonderful and we had a great time just walking around. We sat in a nice fenced off area that is reserved for picnics. They have blankets set out and plates and forks and knives. They also had big coolers where you could serve yourself water. We ate our cheese bread and baguettes with deli meat that we brought earlier in the day. After lunch we went to the “green house” they have there which was absolutely beautiful. It had a bunch of plants of different varieties. We got a taxi ride back from a similar taxi we rode in on the way there. The total for the taxi was R$28.3 which converts to $16.19.

The total in USD for the trip to Jardim Botanico was $71.06.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jardim_Bot%C3%A2nico,_Rio_de_Janeiro

http://ipanema.com/botanico/

http://coinmill.com/BRL_USD.html#BRL=28.3