Top Rio de Janeiro Helicopter Tours - page 2

The helicopter base was an hour's taxi ride away, and I wasn't expecting that. I should've checked in advance but didn't...so fair warning everyone else! When I got there - just in time - I was asked if I wanted a cold drink or maybe a beer? I opted for the beer (I was on holiday after all and not driving the thing, so why not?). I also opted for the extra video they make of the journey, which is e-mailed to you about 5 days later. So given that I had paid for a VIP flight, and bought the extra video offer, I was a little surprised to also be charged for the beer! And so to the flight itself. Well, it's at that point that you realise that Rio is just like any city anywhere on the planet. It too is subject to the vagaries of the weather. Every day for the last six months, in my mind this one day, this one particular half-hour was bathed in glorious sunshine. But it could be so different. Too cloudy, too wet, too windy, too anything...And today, right now...was none of those things. It was as if I had placed a weather-order with the Redeemer him/her/itself. Rio and the weather working hand-in-hand to deliver my long-held weather expectation. Across that panoramic perfection rode one helicopter and two insignificant passengers who may have been thinking different things about their forthcoming trip, but not that they would soon be silently and reverentially acknowledging the imperial majesty of Nature and Humans to bring us, well...this. A planet we could exist on, the luck that would allow us to develop and live this long, and the vision that would allow one person to say, "I've got this crazy idea. What I want to do is put a statue of Christ - right there...", and the vision that would allow another person to say, "Eh...OK" And they did. Then my wife and I came along. We took some pics. Shot a video or two. Ipanema, Copacabana, Cristo. Minds so exstatically blown. Grateful to everyone for everything. So yeah, it was OK. We'd do it again.