Shopping and Sugarloaf

Our last full Rio day. Temp has dipped to low 20s but it is grey and very cloudy and we had a little rain. After a wander down the hill we took our first ride on the Rio subway. It was impressive - clean, cheap, efficient, safe and has a women only carriage during rush hour. We did some last minute gift and clothes shopping.

Next up we decided to take the two-legged cable car ride up to the iconic Sugarloaf mountain. We weren't sure we would actually see anything due to the low cloud but thankfully we could. Brazilians are generally lovely, lively, expressive people. Put sixty Brazilians in a cable car up a steep mountain and it gets very loud and lively! Our ears were ringing.

Views were still great. Christ came in and out of sight. We went into the museum of the cable car and learned some engineery stuff. There were capuchin monkeys, vultures and parrots in the forest - some of which you could walk through, but it was very steep.

Later we walked around the bay to Urca for the sunset, which was pants because we couldn't actually see the sun. But hey you have to try these things when in Rio!Read more