Rio de Janeiro shore excursion

[RobertQM2]

Hello, I do have a question about Rio de Janeiro on Dec. 31/08.

 

Has somebody been in Rio with Splendour of the seas and tried to visit the statue of christ on the 31st?

 

We'd like to do that next year but we are not sure if there is enough time on the last day of the year and also if it is offered by some tour operators.

 

thank you for your help in advance

[cujosmom]

We were in Rio for two days in November and had the MOST EXCELLENT private guide for both days. We are not supposed to make recommendations on this site so if you want the guide we used you can email me and I will send his information to you. He spoke perfect english, was very reasonable price-wise and took us where we wanted to go and then some. He was very accommodating at Christ the Redeemer statue helping us get the best seats in the best train car and letting us stay as long as we wanted at the statue.

 

Email me at: sanantoniocruise at yahoo dot com

 

You can see my Rio photos at: http://community.webshots.com/user/redbandana

 

Marty

[xpcdoojk]

We were in Rio in November 2005 and were going to go to the statue. Unfortunately, the day we had planned on going it was raining and visibility was extremely limited, so we didn't do it. Of course, we were just going to take a cab to and from. I don't think you need to do a tour at all to visit the site.

 

jc

[Sue L]

We were in Rio for two days in November and had the MOST EXCELLENT private guide for both days. We are not supposed to make recommendations on this site so if you want the guide we used you can email me and I will send his information to you. He spoke perfect english, was very reasonable price-wise and took us where we wanted to go and then some. He was very accommodating at Christ the Redeemer statue helping us get the best seats in the best train car and letting us stay as long as we wanted at the statue.

 

Email me at: sanantoniocruise at yahoo dot com

 

You can see my Rio photos at: http://community.webshots.com/user/redbandana

 

Marty

 

You can recommend tour guides and tour companies on the boards with no problem. The only thing we can't talk about or recommend is travel agents.

[xpcdoojk]

You can recommend tour guides and tour companies on the boards with no problem. The only thing we can't talk about or recommend is travel agents.

 

Sue, actually she is right. There are stickies at the top of the ports of call forum saying you can't recommend except to a direct question or some such verbiage. In fairness to CC there are some people that self-advertise or tried to in the past in the ports section of the forum.

 

jc

[FionaMG]

We were in Rio with Splendour on the 17th of December. We managed to do two shore excursions, both organised by the ship. The morning excursion was to the statue. Unfortunately, there was a lot of low cloud that morning so visibiilty wasn't very good but it was still a very enjoyable excursion.

 

The excursion was scheduled to leave at 8.30am and last four hours. We were actually half an hour later than that leaving as ours was the last bus which meant we had a huge rush to go to the Windjammer and grab a sandwich to eat on the go as we headed out for our afternoon excursion to Sugarloaf. We should have had an hour between which would have been fine. The moral of the story is if you plan on doing two shore excursions get to the theatre early for the morning one so you're on the very first bus.

 

Anyway, to actually answer your question now - if we managed to do two trips in the one day, you will almost certainly have time to do just one. However, if you are concerned about it, take the ship's excursion rather than an independent one. That way if there are any delays you won't need to worry about missing the ship. Our afternoon excursion didn't get back until 10 minutes before the ship was due to sail and RCI had staff at the bus drop off point waiting for us because they knew two buses (ours and one other) had not returned yet.

 

I know some ship's exursions aren't all that great but I can assure you ours were both good and the guides were excellent. Very professional, very friendly, very knowledgeable. I have worked in travel for 24 years and seen countless tour guides at work and these were some of the very best I've ever seen.

 

Hope this helps.

Fiona.

[Aerorea]

I'm not sure if it is offered as an excursion or not, but another great sight-seeing option in Rio is Pao de Azucar ("Sugarloaf"). You take a large cable car to one point, walk to the other side, and go up a second cable car to the high point for some breathtaking photos of Rio. Of course, you can see the Redeemer from there as well. This is where a good zooming camera is amazing.

[ajpack]

We were in Rio for two days in November and had the MOST EXCELLENT private guide for both days. We are not supposed to make recommendations on this site so if you want the guide we used you can email me and I will send his information to you. He spoke perfect english, was very reasonable price-wise and took us where we wanted to go and then some. He was very accommodating at Christ the Redeemer statue helping us get the best seats in the best train car and letting us stay as long as we wanted at the statue.

 

Email me at: sanantoniocruise at yahoo dot com

 

You can see my Rio photos at: http://community.webshots.com/user/redbandana

 

Marty

 

I know you can't recommend tour guides unless specificaly asked...so I am asking who did you use??? We're going there for carnival on RCCL in 2009 and will be there for 3 days.

Anne