Rio de Janeiro

Hey Guys!!! Been gone way too long. I've been in Rio de Janeiro for work for 2 weeks with a week still to go. The good part is my family got to travel with me for the first week & we got to spend the first couple days together doing some sightseeing. Here are some shots around Rio. This first series is of Pão de Açúcar (Sugar Loaf).

This first one is the cable tram that takes you up the mountains. There are small wild monkeys that inhabit this first peak.



This is a shot of the Atlantic Ocean from inside the car on the way up to the first mountain. The steep peak on the far left is actually the second of the two peaks that make up Pão de Açúcar.



Here are a couple from the lookout area of the first mountain. This first one is a shot looking out over the district of Rio known as Bota Fogo.



In this one you can see "Cristo de Redentor" (Christ the Redeemer) at the top of Corcovado. (It's alot bigger than it looks here)



This one is from the other side of the mountain looking across the bay with Niterói in the background. You can see the bridge between Rio & Niterói on the far left.



Here is a view of the second peak from the first stop. Here you board a second tram to get there.



Here's another one looking out @ Niterói from the second peak. The island with the Fort @ the bottom tip is known as Santana Island & it marks the entrance to the bay from the Atlantic Ocean.



This is a view back down to the first peak. If you look at the big building with the terra cotta colored roof, the little white bldg to the right of it is where you board the first tram on you journey up.



Here is a shot of Copacabana Beach (Our hotel is about midway down that strip). This district is also known as Copacabana. The district that begins just behind that small mountain to the right of the picture is Ipanema (Including Ipanema Beach - from the Little Old Lady from Ipanema fame).



Another with my son in the pic. (Note his Búzios shirt. Búzios is a resort community about 2 hours north of Rio).



The journey back to the base. Here you can see both peaks in the background.



That's all for this series. Next Up: Corcovado w/ Cristo de Redentor. ENJOY!!!

 

I saw this and instantly thought of the Bond movie, Moonraker. I was going to ask if this was the same place that the gondola sequences from the movie took place in, but IMDB seems to verify that it is, it mentions a cable car run between Sugar Loaf Mountain and Urca Hill. It includes a trivia item that BONDinho is a real term used to refer to the gondolas, not a 007 reference at all but a term from Portuguese.

Neat pictures, I always find places like this interesting with the way you have areas of reasonably flat land and then apparent sharp transitions to big mountains.

 

Sorry I missed this one, Cooleo. Great! Makes me want to go on vacation...LOL...like I could ever have a real vacation...

 

Thanks All! I hope to get another series up soon. CRAIG - Those gondolas are very high. DAN - You are exactly right! This is the very place that the Moonraker sequence was shot. Very Cool to be there & know that I movie of that caliber was filmed there. Bond is one of my all time favorite movie characters. URCA is also the district of Rio where the base of the gondola is located. If you guys liked these, wait till you see the ones from Corcovado with Cristo de Redentor. Breathtaking!!! ZACKIEDAWG - It's not just the low spaces that are heavily populated. The roads up the sides of the mountains are tightly packed villages. It's truly amazing to see as you don't see these villages well from the base of the mountains. STAY TUNED!!!