The Augustana basketball teams are heading to Brazil this week and will be blogging on the trip. Chaney Tambling is blogging for the women’s team and you can catch their blog posts on the D3hoops.com Daily Dose. Ben Ryan is blogging for the men’s team.

Well today was yet another beautiful day in Rio de Janeiro!

We started the day by taking a long bus trip up to the Christ the Redeemer statue. Let me tell you he’s much bigger on top of the mountain than when you see him from any other place. The statue oversees everything in the city and is quite a breathtaking monument. From the top you can see every part of the city and all that it has to offer, from the waterways and other mountains to the thousands of houses and other sightseeing opportunities in Rio.

The ride up to the statue was another experience in itself. The drivers were flying around corners and barely clipping each other’s mirrors just to get people to where they needed to go. While up by the statue we, of course, took lots and lots of pictures and even happened to meet a family from Naperville, Ill., who was visiting Brazil as well! We also got to frequent the many different shops that were held on the mountain by the statue and while waiting for a bus to bring us back down, we even saw the Canadian Prime Minister going up to see the statue.

After getting to see Christ the Redeemer our bus took us to a part of town where they host the Carnival celebration. While there we got to go into a shop and pay to get dressed up in the different Carnival outfits. The crazy outfits were accompanied by big headdresses and large bejeweled shoulder wraps. A video of the actual parade was playing and it was very extravagant, loud and full of excitement. Judging by the color and nature of the parade you would have thought the people were preparing to send the participants into the Hunger Games.

The Carnival shop was the last stop on our agenda. When we got back we grabbed a quick lunch and headed down to the beach for a relaxing afternoon. Tonight we will be going with our guides to Lapa, the downtown area of Rio to see what a typical nightclub here is like. We are excited to learn the Samba and any other dances that they will be willing to teach us. I’m sure that it will be lots of fun!