There was one place I wanted to visit due to a suggestion from @mengao. I saw one of his photographs from the Botanical Gardens of Rio thought it might be a good sight to see.
@alexandrefeliz also confirmed that it was quite the place. He said there are many opportunities to see a toucan which I had not seen yet in my brazilian adventure.
I went alone one day to the botanical garden. I called an uber and was dropped off in front of a massive gated park. I walked inside and payed about 70 Reals to get in. I thought it was a little expensive, but it makes sense because this seems to be mainly a tourist attraction, not really a go-to place for cariocas (people who live and are from rio).
I started just wandering around. It was basically like a huge private park with tons of huge trees and wild plant life.
There were not too many impressive cactus's, which makes sense since brazil is more rainforest than arid.
The first sight that wowed me was these huge lilypads.
I had never seen lilypads so big. it looked like you could walk on them. There were birds that could. So cool to see a plant like this.
I was pretty much lost inside the place, i didnt know which direction to go, but i wanted to make sure I saw the best stuff, So i looked at a map.
I wanted to see the orchids. I imagined that a place this prestigued would have super baller greenhouses. I was wrong, the greenhouses here were bleak- small, and somewhat under-maintained. I concluded that the best stuff in this botanical garden were the outdoor plants, and the trees.
I did find the orchid house, and saw TONS of orchids that i had never seen before. Tiny ones. I didnt know orchids could be so small.
This one I took picture of because it was a cool purple and was suspended in mid air with the roots open like this:
There were some people taking wedding photos in the orchid house which was pretty anoyying, so i moved on.
They had a bee sanctuary where they had like 12 different beehives of native brazilian bees. they were all super small bees, of which I had never seen before. it was cool how they let you get as lose to the bee hives as you could. I dont have any photos of them because i couldnt make any of the photos do the bees justice.
I kept walking until i ran into the next thing that wowed me.
The biggest tree I have ever seen during my time in brazil.
This tree was next to a sign marking a monument to Tom Jobin, the bossanova musician. This tree must contain ancient wisdom for artists to source when they stand near it.
There was something totally amazing about this tree. It was like an animal. I felt like it was alive i went up and touched it. it was like touching a ancient elephant.
I loved this tree for some reason and didnt want to leave it
But i eventually turned around and saw this black fountain shimmering in the light.
After this tree I was kinda ready to go, but I kept walking.
There is a river going through the park.
I saw the Christ statue.
The biggest Bird Of Paradise I have ever seen, about 20 feet tall.
Look at the lighting in this next photograph. I was aiming at the round brown balls hanging from that tree but the photo itself just turned out so tropical looking:
It was cool because you didnt have to stay on the paths, you could walk anywhere, and up to any tree or plant as close as you wanted to.
The highlight for me was probably the wild monkeys I saw. I have never been this close to a monkey before. They are so weird and crazy looking up close. Like little gnomes or something. I watched a woman try to feed one of the monkeys but it was not interested.
Glad I went to the Botanical Gardens but it wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. The greenhouses were underwhelming but maybe thats because you don't really need greenhouses in rio since the climate everywhere outdoors is basically already greenhouse conditions.
I feel like the city of Rio could invest more into this tourist attraction and make it even better. They could improve thier cactus collection and maybe even create a butterfly house. I bet brazil has tons of really cool butterflies.