Sugarloaf and Christo Redentor

So we’ve finally done some touristing (my blog, so I can make up words if I like). On New Year’s day we headed up to Sugarloaf (Pao do Acucar). After waiting almost 40mins to get the local bus to Urca, we decided to walk, which only ended up taking 20-30mins. After one of the inevitably long queues (Matt likes to say – “come to Rio and stand in a queue”) we got the cable car up the mountain to watch the sunset over Rio - wow what a view!.

The next day, after a trip out to the bus station to buy our tickets to Paraty (another long queue), we decided we were going to skip the queues for the train/vans up to Christo Redentor and hike it instead. Phew! It wasn’t all that far but it was incredibly steep for about ¾ of the hike. At one point there is even a chain to help you get up an almost vertical section of rock! It was hard but very rewarding. In fact I think we both would have been a bit disappointed with the whole day if we’d waited in the 2 hr + queue to get up to see the statue (and another equally long queue to get back down). While the statue is big and a bit of a symbol of Rio, it’s actually not really that exciting or inspiring to see up close. If there was anywhere in Rio we could have seen it a bit closer without going up, we probably would have saved ourselves the R$32 entrance fee. The hike was great though, we saw monkeys on the way up and back down, and felt pretty pleased with ourselves when we made it to the top.