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| Sugarloaf Mountain on Guanabara Bay |
If
you are watching the
Summer Olympics
in Rio, in almost every aerial shot of the city is the Christ the
Redeemer Statue,
and just across Guanabara Bay you’ll see the
iconic cone shaped hill that also defines Rio de Janeiro…Sugarloaf Mountain, or Pão de Açúcar in Portuguese.
Rising
1,299 feet, it sits at the mouth of the bay on a peninsula that juts out into
the Atlantic Ocean overlooking the harbor.
It gets its name from the traditional shape of concentrated loaf sugar, a name coined
by the Portuguese in the 16th century during the heyday of the sugar cane trade in Brazil.
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| Cable car ride up to Sugarloaf Mountain |
It
is known for its cable car ride
to the summit
and the majestic 360-degree views of Rio from the top. The first aerial tram opened in 1912 and those
wooden cars
were used for 60 years. In 1972 the tram
system
was upgraded to carry ten times the passengers, up to 65 people.
To reach the summit, passengers actually take two cable cars. Sugarloaf is only one of many hills to rise along the water’s edge in Rio. The first car rises from Praia Vermelha (Red Beach) to the shorter Morro da Urca for 722 feet, and the second ascends to Sugarloaf Mountain.
The 360-degree views
you'll enjoy along the ride and from the top of Morro da Urca and Sugarloaf
Mountain encompass Rio
beaches – Flamengo, Botafogo, Leme, Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon –
the Corcovado,
Guanabara Bay, downtown Rio, the Santos Dumont Airport, the Rio-Niterói
Bridge and Dedo
de Deus (God's Finger), a peak which rises from Brazil's coastal
range (Serra do Mar) in Teresópolis, RJ, about 50 miles from Rio.
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| Sunset at Sugarloaf Mountain |
The
entire ride in the bubble shaped cars takes about six minutes. The cable cars run from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. in
20-minute intervals. Currently tickets are about
$20. One of the best times to visit is sunset for the
spectacular views.
Visitors
can watch rock climbers on
Sugarloaf
and neighboring Morro da Urca (Urca’s Mountain) and Morro da Babilônia (Babylon
Mountain). Together they make up one the
world’s largest urban rock climbing locations. (And incidentally, you just
learned your first word in Portuguese…morro = mountain!)
Sugarloaf
Mountain has made its mark in cinema. It was featured in the 1942 Bette Davis movie
Now, Voyager. In 1979, James Bond shot a fight scene for Moonraker
in one of the cable cars. And even The Simpsons cartoon featured the iconic
mountain in an episode.
