Around The World In 80 Waves

The tour of the city I had signed up to took me to see a number of wonderful places including a huge staircase covered in tiles and ceramics from all over the world. I found the Conwy Castle one pretty quickly.

Later in the day we went along to Sugar Loaf Mountain, which is another of Rio’s iconic sights.

To reach the summit, you take two cable cars. The first ascends to Morro da Urca and the second car goes to the summit of Pão de Açúcar.

It was getting towards the end of the day when we went up the mountain and it looked amazing in the late afternoon sun.

I can admit however to feeling a little short changed not to be having a James Bond esque battle with Jaws during the ascent.

In Moonraker, which was one of the first bond movies I had seen, Roger Moore and Richard Kiel have a dust up of the cable car which ends in ‘Jaws’ biting through the cables supporting the 65 man gondolas.

The fight doesn’t end well for the big man who crashes into the ground station, but he does end up meeting some tiny woman who is captivated by him.

It was movie gold. (Sam Mendes please take note. Skyfall was rubbish.)

The sun was setting as we reached the summit, and the view from the top was simply stunning.

This shot of the coastline to the north was my favourite vista from the summit of Pão de Açúcar. 

The view of the sunset was also pretty spectacular but it was somewhat ruined by the hundreds of people who were all trying to get a picture of the sunset.

I was still battling the fact that I had only benefitted from two hours sleep on my flight from Panama and couldn’t be bothered to get involved in the scramble for a camera angle.