We awake this morning to another beautiful day. We decide it is a perfect day to go up Rio’s
other main mountain attraction, Pao de Acucar, also known as Sugar Loaf
Mountain. Before we go today we are
going to look at the top of the mountain and check out the conditions, making
sure there is no cloud hanging around!
This shouldn’t be a problem today as this mountain is only 396 metres
high while Christ the Redeemer mountain is 710 metres high. We have breakfast, get ready and are on our
way. We walk to the main street which is
on the beach that we visited on our first day in Rio, and caught a bus that
will take us to the bottom of Sugar Loaf (cost of bus is R$2.75 each). We arrive and buy our tickets for the cable
car (R$53 each). We then hop aboard the
cable car for our short journey to the first stop. There are two separate mountains and to reach
Sugar Loaf you need to take the first cable car to the first mountain called
Morro da Urca which is 215 metres high and then change lines. The cable car is the oldest in the world
(obviously modernised) and ascends quite quickly. As we arrive at Morro da Urca, we get to some
amazing views of Rio, the water surrounding the city and the mountains towering
over the city. It really is a
spectacular city and we are pretty lucky to be able to witness such a stunning
view on a beautiful day. We hang around
on this mountain for about an hour just admiring the view in the sun and slowly
walking around the place. We also watch
a short movie about the history of the cable car and the mountains and find out
that in 1977 a James Bond movie was filmed on the mountain and they used the
cable cars. I really want to watch this
movie now! We then catch the second
cable car up to Sugar Loaf mountain.
This cable car was equally as efficient at getting us to the top,
however it could be interesting on a windy day especially as it exposed to both
the south and the north. When we reach
the top we had a 360 degree view over the entire city, the Atlantic ocean and
the airport, where we watched planes fly over the top of the mountain
descending to land, and then we got the opposite as the wind changed direction,
we got the planes flying over us as they were taking off. From this point we could also see the famous
Copacabana beach (which we will be visiting in a couple of days (probably day
101)) and also other beaches around Rio de Janeiro. We stayed up on Sugar Loaf for about an hour
and a half, just relaxing and once again admiring the view. We decided that we wanted to have a beer or two
and enjoy the sun with a great vista. We
decided to do this on Morro da Urca as we enjoyed this view better as you were
closer to the city and could see the more detail. We caught the cable car down, went to the bar
and got some beers and then parked up on a bench in the sun with a spectacular
view over the harbour towards the city with the mountainous terrain in the
background. This city is really
spectacular, I’m pretty sure this is the best city in South America, for me
anyway.
We eventually pulled ourselves up and went back down the
cable car to ground level. From here we
walked to the metro underground train system and caught a train into town
(R$3.20 each). We decided to get off one
stop before the central area as it looked a more populated area on the
map. It was still in the centre of the
city however. When we exited the train
terminal we got a bit of a shock, we had entered a local market. This market was selling all types of goods at
pretty cheap prices. We both bought
havaina jandels for R$8 each, Ann also bought a Rio singlet and a Brazilian
fridge magnet. After about an hour or so
of wandering around (with one hand in my pocket and the other clutching my bag)
we decided to head back to the hostel as we didn’t want to catch a rush hour
train. We then went to the supermarket
and bought some steak and salad for dinner and went back to the hostel to cook.After dinner we booked a favela tour for tomorrow. The hostel manager also mentioned to us that we should go the market in town to pick up some cheap goods, we laughed and told her we had just been in the afternoon by fluke but then she mentioned that it goes for miles so we might go back later in the week for another look, minus the bag and the cameras this time!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment