Christ the Redeemer

It’s interesting how most folks joke about getting struck by lightning when they’re afraid of God’s wrath. So, it’s quite ironic when the Christ the Redeemer (called Christo Redentor in Portuguese) statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil gets struck by a bolt in 2008. Kind of funny, isn’t it?
Irony plays no part, however, in the fact that more than a quarter of a million visitors drive or tram car up Corcovado Mountain in the Tijuca National Forest, where you’ll find the Cristo Redento. If you are going to cable car up the mountainside, you better come early since the wait could take hours. And that’s with it running everyday every half-hour from 8:30am to 6:30pm.
Pope John Paul II and Princess Diana probably didn't have to wait in such long lines when they came to pay respects to this massive soapstone statue, using the Trem do Corcovado. Don’t think this is an entirely different way to see the Christo Redentor, it’s just the Portuguese term for the tram car.
If you choose not to wait in long lines, Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer Statue can be seen from many vantage points in Rio. As it rightfully should, this statue is more than 130 foot high, 98 foot wide (only Bolivia can boast one bigger and not by much); sitting more than 2,300 feet above sea level.
With this kind of height imagine how far you can see perched up here. Besides Christ the Redeemer, many visitors come to the little chapel (consecrated to Our Lady of the Apparition) underneath Christ’s feet AND to catch glimpses of Pão de Açúcar, more commonly known as Sugarloaf Mountain.
The Christ the Redeemer statue has become more than a symbol of Brazil’s religious life, it has become the embodiment of the country itself; finding itself on the New 7 Wonders of the World List a few years back.
It’s hard to imagine that all of this was created totally from donations costing around 3.5 million U.S. Dollars in today’s money and taking nine years to build (1922-1931). It’s all good though, when you’re the largest Art Deco statue in the world, you can take a little heat—even when it’s caused by lightning from the heavens.