Harbor+of+Rio+de+Janeiro

Hello, and welcome to the Harbor of Rio de Janeiro!

The harbor stretches twenty miles inland, and is the largest harbor in the entire world! Long ago, at the beggining of the 16th century, Portuguese explorers sailed down the coast of Brazil. On New Year's day in 1502, they sailed into a narrow opening in a coastline guarded by mountains. Past the opening was a body of water that went twenty miles inland. The explorers thought they had found a mouth to a great river, so they decided to call it //Rio de Janeiro// - the River of the First of January. It turned out not to be a river, but an island-studded bay that people long before them named //Guanabara// - "arm of the sea". Today, the city is a wonderful metropolis with a statue of Christ the Redeemer watching over it.