Urban rainforests, where monkeys are like squirrels

Our second day in Rio we went on a hiking trip through SAS to the Tijuca Rainforest, a large swath of rainforest in the middle of Rio de Janeiro. Some say it's the largest urban rainforest in the world, but I'm pretty sure it's not actually the largest. One of the funniest things on this trip has been seeing how everyone everywhere insists that whatever is in their city is the biggest, oldest, first, best...superlatives everywhere!

The trip consisted of two parts: first, we would drive to a few different viewpoints to see the city from different perspectives. In the afternoon, we would take a short hike to one of the highest peaks in the forest. Our first stop was the Vista Chinesa (Chinese viewpoint), marked by a pagoda.

 From here we could see over the lush green forest to the bay and the mountains beyond. If I thought the views were good coming in, this blew them out of the water!

Can you see the Christ the Redeemer statue to the left?

There's a monkey in that tree

There were also adorable little monkeys running around the trees like squirrels. All the Brazilians were not impressed by them as they're everywhere in Rio and in some of the provinces. All us Americans were delighted though!

Our second stop was a huge waterfall where our guides stopped for a bit to give us a lecture on Brazilian history and the particular history of the rainforest we were in.

 The Tijuca rainforest was almost completely deforested in the19th century to make way for coffee and tobacco plantations. Luckily in the early 20th century they decided to replant the whole thing. It was replanted by hand a la Johnny Appleseed. If you look closely you can still see tobacco plants mixed in with the tropical vegetation. The plants smell just like cigarette smoke!

At this point we finally started our hike to the peak of Pedra Bonita, "pretty stone." We headed up through the jungle as our guides pointed out plants and animals along the way. We even saw a wild pineapple growing!

I thought this bamboo was cool until our guide told us that snakes live in it. There's no picture of me with it, obviously!

 The hike was very hot and sweaty but the view from the top was incredible. We could see in so many different directions at once. On one side we could see golf courses, beaches, and all the hang-gliders and paragliders taking off and soaring down the valley. The other side had more long stretches of beaches. Rio is really one of the prettiest cities in the world!