Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
belonged to the Sisterhood of Misericordia (see p.69), who ran it as an orphanage. The
Daros foundation has restored it beautifully and now uses it to display part of its huge
collection of contemporary Latin American art, with exhibitions that change on a
regular basis. There is also a café and an art shop on the premises.
1
Urca
The best bet for swimming near the city centre is around
Urca
. There are small beaches
on each side of the promontory on which this small, wealthy
bairro
stands, its name an
acronym of the company that undertook its construction - Urbanizador Construção.
Facing Botafogo, the
Praia da Urca
, only 100m long, is frequented almost exclusively
by local inhabitants, while in front of the cable-car station, beneath the Sugar Loaf
Mountain,
Praia Vermelha
is a cove sheltered from the South Atlantic, whose relatively
gentle waters are popular with swimmers.
Sugar Loaf Mountain
Urca • Daily 8am-9pm (ticket o
ce closes 7.50pm) • R$53 •
T
21 2546 8400,
W
bondinho.com.br • Cable car every 20min from Praça
General Tibúrcio, reached on buses marked “Urca” or “Praia Vermelha”, including #107 from Centro, Catete and Flamengo, and #511 or #512
from Zona Sul (it's fastest to take #512 from Ipanema and Copacabana, and #511 going back)
he
Pão de Açúcar
(in English,
Sugar Loaf Mountain
) rises where Guanabara Bay meets
the Atlantic Ocean. Its name may simply reflect a resemblance to the moulded loaves
in which sugar was once commonly sold. Alternatively, it may be a corruption of the
indigenous Tamoya word
Pau-nh-Açuquá
, meaning “high, pointed or isolated hill”. The
first recorded non-indigenous ascent to the summit was made in 1817 by an English
nanny, Henrietta Carstairs. Today, mountaineers scaling the smooth, precipitous slopes
are a common sight, but there's a cable-car ride to the summit for the less adventurous.
he
cable-car
system has been in place since 1912, though the present system was
installed in 2008. The 1.4km journey is made in two stages, first to the summit of
Morro
da Urca
(220m), where there is a theatre, restaurant and shops, as well as a helipad, from
which helicopter tours depart (see p.92). In fact you can walk up to here and then pay
just R$26 for the second stage of the ascent, up to the top of Pão de Açúcar itself (396m).
The cable cars have glass walls, and the view from the top is as glorious as you could wish.
Facing inland, you can see right over the city, from Centro and the Santos Dumont
airport all the way through Flamengo and Botafogo; face Praia Vermelha and the
cable-car terminal, and to the left you'll see the sweep of Copacabana and on into
Ipanema, while back from the coast the mountains around which Rio was built rise to
the Parque Nacional da Tijuca. Try to avoid the busy times between 10am and 3pm: the
ride is best at sunset on a clear day, when the lights of the city are starting to twinkle.
Leading down from the summit is a series of wooded trails along which you'll encounter
curious small marmosets, and it's easy - and safe - to get away from the crowds.
Copacabana and Leme
Copacabana and Leme are different stretches of the same 4km-long beach:
Leme
extends for 1km, between the Morro do Leme and Avenida Princesa Isabel, by the
luxury hotel
Le Meridien
, from where Copacabana runs for a further 3km to the Forte
de Copacabana.
Leme beach is slightly less packed than Copacabana and tends to
attract families, but avoid walking through the
Túnel Novo from Botafogo
, as it's a
favourite place for tourists to be relieved of their wallets.
Copacabana
is dominated to the east by Sugar Loaf Mountain and circled by a line of
hills that stretch out into the bay. The
bairro
's expansion as a residential area has been
restricted by the Morro de São João, which separates it from Botafogo and the Morro
dos Cabritos, a natural barrier to the west. Consequently, Copacabana is one of the
world's most densely populated areas as well as a frenzy of sensual activity.
