Monday, July 27th: Sugar Loaf Mountain and Botafogo

     This morning we had nothing planned until touring Sugar Loaf Mountain at 1:00 PM, so my roommate, Kyle Zimmerman, and I met up with the other guys at 11:00 AM and went out to walk Copacabana beach and swim in the ocean.  It was quite the experience for my first time in the ocean, it is a picture perfect beach. 

     At 1:00 PM we headed out to go on the Sugar Loaf Mountain tour. There was two different mountains and we took gondolas to the top of both. The first had a gorgeous, 360 degree view of the city of Rio and it was a spectacular view. Unfortunately, I only took pictures with my camera and I don't have the cord to get those onto the computer, so I will have to put those up later. We did take a team picture in the first ever gondola on Sugar Loaf Mountain. 

     From the top of the first mountain, we took the second gondola to he top of Sugar Loaf Mountain, which was a little more than 1000 feet higher than sea level. More gorgeous views from here, including the Copacabana beach all of the bays and the rest of the city.  Barely visible in the distance on top of Rio de Janeiro, the Christ the Redeemer statue in was the peering through the clouds as it was the only thing visible. That was an amazing view, to see Christ looking over the city, and even though the original picture was on my camera, I had to take a picture with my phone of my camera. 

     After we had taken enough time on the top of Sugar Loaf, we descended the mountain and made our way to the mall and had a quick bite to eat before making our way to Botafogo Club to play our last game. This club was in the middle of the city and is home to a top league soccer and basketball team. The women's team played first and got their second win. The team we played had some of the guys on their top team, but it also had some players on their youth teams. However, all of them were members of the club. We got off to another fast start and ended up playing the best basketball of the trip in the last game and we won by 30 points. We became the second team to go undefeated on the tour, and Ron has done about 20 of these tours in multiple sports. After the game the Botafogo players were more than willing to trade shirts and jerseys, I was able to trade two Concordia Shirts for both a Botafogo Polo and jersey. This guy will be wearing his Roll Cobbs shirt around Rio de Janeiro, that's pretty cool stuff! 

     After the game at Botafogo, we went back to the hotel and got ready to go out and eat at an all you can eat pizzeria and buffet. The food was much like the food before, a lot of rice, meat and fruit, along with many different flavors of pizza. We topped the night off by hanging out at the beach walking around seeing the night life of Copacabana Beach. The last game was today, which means we are now tourists for a day and a half before we head back to the States. We will be making the most of it tomorrow as we are going to Christ the Redeemer!