Cristo Redentor, known to the English-speaking world as Christ the Redeemer, is a giant statue of Jesus Christ located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The statue itself is nearly 100 feet tall, stands atop a 26-ft tall base, which is itself positioned at the peak of the 2,300-ft Corcovado mountain.
Or if measurements aren’t your thing–it’s really freaking tall.
And it has just become the site of one of the most batshit insane selfies you’ll ever see.
Lee Thompson, of the travel and adventure company The Flash Pack, was in Brazil recently to document the months leading up to the World Cup. One day he was presented with quite the opportunity.
As he tells it on The Flash Pack’s blog:
Even though I had been to Rio many times and admired the iconic statue from afar, I had never had the time to visit the Christ the Redeemer Statue in person, let alone imagine snapping a selfie of me popping out of his head just two hours later!
A severe lightning storm had damaged the statue in January and I knew that workers were busy with repairs, so decided to take a stab in the dark and along with my colleague, Oliver Harvey, managed to convince the Brazil tourist board to allow us to climb to the top and take some seriously vertigo-inducing photographs.
After a good 20 minutes climbing up stairs around scaffolding inside the statue, Lee found himself poking out through Jesus’ crown.
“As I popped my head out of the hole in Jesus’ crown, I was in total and utter awe as my eyes met with a vast panorama that quite literally took my breath away. Talk about a religious experience!,” he said.
Yeah, this is incredible–but there’s absolutely no way in heaven or hell you’ll ever see me up there. I’m pretty sure I experienced vertigo simply by looking at this photo. Kudos to this ballsy selfie, which is one of the very few acceptable man selfies one could ever take.
If you thought the selfie was bad, here’s a palm sweat-inducing video of the experience.
Image via Lee Thompson, The Flash Pack