I was about to bust, I was so excited to see The Christ. Ever since I had seen him in pictures, it had been a fascination and a small obsession. This Seventh Wonder of the Modern World combined one of my biggest fears and one of my biggest loves in one awe inspiring package. Pictures taken above the statue’s head looking down would bring my acrophobia to the surface every time, but in a strange comfortable way. When I first saw The Christ upon arrival in Rio, all I could do was kind of sigh, the way he overlooked everything. And, yes, he has incredible peripheral vision.

The awesomeness of huge things is another of my passions, and poor little ole Vulcan would have to stand on top of his own head twice before he would reach The Christ, who is 90 feet tall with a 90 foot hand span. The herculean efforts required for something like this make me swell with pride for mankind’s attempts to be great.

We decided not to ride the tram up the mountain, but instead have Marcelo take us as far as he could, then we would board a minivan to ride to the top for a small fee. The tram looked really neat, being the train that brought the stuff to the top of Corcovado for the construction of the statue. It went through the dense foliage that hugged the mountain, and was supposed to be a great trip.

Naah. We wanted to get there fast. Upon seeing the tram and the track it took up the mountain, I was kind of sorry we didn’t do it. But we were there, and of course Marcelo wasn’t coming with us. He drove his car to the top of the hill to wait with the others who weren’t making the trip. I’m sure he read his history and science magazines that he kept in the car. Or napped. Probably napped. The magazines were most likely props.

The drop off point was somewhere outside of Santa Teresa, which is pretty high up already. It was teeming with people, but they were kind of just milling around: some official, some not, everyone looking kind of specious. There was a cop asleep in his car while all this loading and unloading went on. We all got in the van, waiting only a couple of minutes for it to fill up with other people. The ride up to the statue was neat, with the continually curving road draped on one side with lush green foliage and perilously seductive on the other, with tiny little Rio peeking through the small trees–the only thing that would keep us from plummeting off of Corcovado should our driver lose control of the van. WHEE!!!

The feel of the urban jungle as we ascended the mountain was strange, because I knew there were hundreds of people all around us, but it appeared that we were the only ones there.

When Carol and family had been to see The Christ previously, there were a multitude of steps to mount. We were fortunate to have arrived at the modernization of holy access. The bad part was now merely a slightly healthy flight of beautiful stone stairs at the bottom which led to a plateau with a couple of elevators up to the next level.

The crowd was big, but not overbearing by any means. We got an elevator rather quickly. This was a weird experience, in that the cars were very narrow and twice as deep, causing us to line up in there kind of like parachute jumpers. Through the green tinted glass, we could see our ascent through the vegetation that opened on another panoramic view. It was as if the elevator had no bottom when you looked straight out the window. Slightly creepy.

Our elevator operator had blonde spikes in his hair, and the look of Johnny Rotten, but he was wearing an official Jesus elevator operator vest, so I figured he was okay. I felt sure that the same rigorous specifications had been applied to this job as those for the security guards around town. When we reached the next level, the door opened behind us, we all turned around and quickly filed out, giving the operator our various versions of “obrigado/a.” Instead of telling us to “wank off” or something like that, he smiled broadly and said in stilted English, “Enjoy The Christ.” Indeed.
Gorgeous. The top tier was achieved by riding a brand spanking new escalator. Jean and I were both thankful. Well, who WOULDN’T be? At the top right under the statue, there was a throng of people milling around excitedly, everybody with cameras, many taking pictures of loved ones or companions by lying on the ground and shooting up to get The Christ in the picture looming protectively over the subject. Like the Kennemers.

Yeah, I lay down on the hot pavement to take this picture. I don’t know where the hell Jean was, but my frying back couldn’t take any more, so she didn’t get the photographic blessing. The views from there were unbelievable–the horse track was a funny counterpoint to The Christ. He didn’t look down AT the track, but you knew he could see them anyway.

There was so much hedonism for him to see, with the sexy beaches and all! But I didn’t feel one iota of judgment. Not one. This beautiful bug climbing on Christ’s granite (natch) base was so pretty and cool and kind of unlikely looking. What would a bug be doing up this high? How long did it take him to get here? Surely he was born here in one of these patches of vegetation. He looked so small and dedicated against the enormous mass of stone, like he was making his own trek of faith old style to see Jesus. May be.

Jean took a good picture of Robo and me, after which I took long shots of The Christ and more of the crowd.

This vertiginous shot looks like the shelf of people is fixing to crash down onto the city below. Shudder.