Third day in Rio – Sugarloaf Mountain
That night I had to share my room with four very good looking nice women for the second time. Two of them twins from France and the other two ongoing teachers from Germany. (Hi Marlene and Nadja. 😉 ) – Yes I know I am a such a poor guy. 🙂
In the morning the question as to who is going where came up. And the german girls asked if somebody wanted to come with to Pão de Açúcar.
As the Sugarloaf mountain as it is called in english was on my list of things I wanted to see anyway I was more than happy to go with them.
The only “donwside” was that they had to get their ongoing bus tickets to Iguaçu first. But the nice guys from the hostel had told them that they don’t need to go to the Rodoviária Novo Rio (the central bus station in Rio) to buy their tickets but that there is a ticket agent downtown that is lots easier to reach.
Finding the ticket agent took some asking and a very nice young brazilian looking around with us. But find it they did. (I wasn’t much help on that part.) As it turned out they couldn’t pay with credit card and had to pay in cash. Looking for an ATM I could at least be of some assistance.
As I was warned before the first ATM does not always want to give you money. And the we started to fear that the card could have been disabled because of the many unsucsessful tries. Pushing for yet another bank (I had the same problem on my first day in Rio) we managed to find one that did give money with the more resiliant card.
It was my lucky one where I could get some money too. Small world.
Having bought the tickets we were ready to take on the adventure of going to Pão de Açúcar. Being the cheap germans that we are we decided to walk up to the first station.
The girls knew how to get to the start of the trail and lead me like they knew the whole area.
On the way to the trail you walk past Praia Vermelia. This is a nice little beach off the usual tourist route next to a military academy.
After a little picknick at the beach we went up to the first station. pretty soon I exchanged my sandals for bare feet as it was just a little bit to steep to be comfortable.
On the way up we were greeted by some little monkeys (Callitrichinae) who at some point sent us into the right direction by just occuping the other route.
Up there we enjoyed the view and relaxed for some time. Watching some freeclimbers in the sugarloaf.
On our way back I had the great idea to try to get to Copacabana beach. Problem is – I forgot that there is a reason why the beaches were not very popular until they built the tunnels from Botafogo to Copacabana.
As a result of my failure in remembering basic geography we did a unplanned trip through Botafogo. We were told by another very friendly Carioca how to find the way through the tunnel. But as it started to get dark we decided to skip that trip and try to get back to the hostel before it got too dark.
Leaving us with the task of getting something for dinner. As the word of the day was vegetarian and the girls opted for plain pasta I decided to throw some of my onions into the mix and we made some faux Spagetti aglio e olio. With that a very nice day came to an end.
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