Pão de Açúcar

Arrival: Pão de Açúcar

The day ends on the far side of the peninsula, at the cable car station on Praia Vermelha in Urca. Pão de Açúcar — Sugarloaf Mountain — rises 396 metres (1,299 feet) from the granite peninsula at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, and the aerial tramway that connects it to the shore was, when it opened in October 1912, only the third cableway in the world. The engineer Augusto Ferreira Ramos conceived the project at the 1908 National Exposition held at the foot of Morro da Urca, and the cars — initially wooden-bodied and made in Germany — began carrying passengers two years after construction started. Today's Swiss-built glass cabins, introduced in 2008, seat sixty-five and make the ascent in two stages: first to Morro da Urca at 220 metres (722 feet), then to the summit.

At the intermediate stop on Morro da Urca there is a restaurant, a small outdoor theatre, and views back across the bay toward Centro and the hills of Santa Teresa. From the summit, the whole geography of the city resolves itself — Corcovado and the Cristo to the south-west, the long arc of Copacabana below, the bay opening toward Niterói. The cable car runs until 10 pm; arriving in the late afternoon puts you at the summit as the light shifts and the city begins to come on. On a clear evening, with the mountains turning dark and the bay holding the last of the light, it is one of the better vantage points in South America.

After descending, the evening ends in Urca itself — the quiet residential enclave at the base of the mountain, largely unchanged since the mid-20th century, with a handful of small restaurants along the waterfront promenade. A light dinner here, with the cable car station still visible and the bay dark beyond, closes the day on a calm note before an Uber back to Santa Teresa.