Rio de Janeiro
Posted by admin at Jun 17th, 2008 in Brazil, South America
Nearly five hundred years have seen RIO DE JANEIRO transformed from a fortified outpost on the rim of an unknown continent into one of the world's great cities. Its recorded past is tied exclusively to the legacy of the colonialism on which it was founded. No lasting vestige survives of the civilization of the Tamoios people, who inhabited the land before the Portuguese arrived, and the city's history effectively begins on January 1, 1502, when a Portuguese captain, André Gonçalves, steered his craft into Guanabara Bay, thinking he was heading into the mouth of a great river.
The Cusco Valley and the Incas are synonymous in most people's minds, but the area was populated well before they arrived on the scene and they simply built their empire on the toil and ingenuity of generations of previous cultures. The Killki culture, for instance, whose members learned to work the hard diorite and andesite stones that abound here and, although primarily agriculturists, built stone structures, dominated the scene around 700-800 AD. Some of these structures still survive, while others were incorporated into later Inca constructions - the sun temple of Koricancha, for example, seems to have been built on the foundations a Killki sun temple. Early Inca pots, too, are stylistically close to Killki-produced items, while classical Inca pots demonstrate strong similarities to ceramics produced around 1000 AD by the Lucre culture, whose main site was at Choquepugio, 35km from modern Cusco. 
In Chili’s capital city, Santiago, a person can ski in the Andes at day break, and then head over to Vina Del Mar for a bout of snorkeling and go swimming in the clear blue waters along the shore. If you were to go to Parque Metropolitano you could enjoy a wonderful botanical garden, a zoo, and a lovely view of the entire city. A wonderful tourist spot lay in the vicinity of the northern border with Peru in the city, Arica. It’s famed for its pristine beaches and the splendid San Marcos Cathedral. This is also a great spot for fishing enthusiasts. Interestingly, a person can visit salt marshes, and a unique and inviting landscape that even has volcanoes. All of this can be found in Alstiplano that along with various lakes resides at the top of a 12,000 ft plateau. This plateau is also the home of the Aymara Indians, an indigenous tribe. The unique alpaca and llama can be seen in this area in large numbers.
Machu Picchu was built in a classic Inca architectural style of polished dry-stone walls. Its primary buildings are the Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun and the Room of the Three Windows located in what is known by archaeologist as the Sacred District of Machu Picchu. There are concerns about the impact of tourism to the site as its visitors reached 400,000 in 2003. On September 2007, Peru and Yale University reached an agreement regarding return of artifacts removed from Macchu Picchu in the early 20th century by Hiram Bingham. 
Christ the Redeemer (Portuguese: O Cristo Redentor), is a statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The statue stands 39.6 metres (130 feet) tall, weighs 700 tons, and is located at the peak of the 700-m (2296-foot) Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park overlooking the city.A symbol of Christianity, the statue has become an icon of Rio and Brazil.
Local engineer Heitor da Silva Costa designed the statue 