Vertical Rio

Sugarloaf. What is a sugarloaf exactly, I found myself wondering? The name conjures up something sweet, uniquely appetizing. Something you might find at the Confetaria Colombo?

All these promontories, not just Sugarloaf, in and around Rio invite you to take a bite. They are all calling out to be climbed. An overcast first morning in Rio enabled me to scale Pao do Acucar with my guide Tomas without roasting to a crisp (though I still managed to have my pale Lithuanian-London complexion cloudburnt anyway. Not the most technical Climb - much of it is just scrambling - but easily among the most spectacular. Amazing exposure, bang for your buck (ride for your rope?), with the frigate birds circling along the way, and marmosets for company.

The beaches of Niteroi, Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon in the distance, Petrobras rigs being hauled into port for repair, coast guard ships, yachts and fishing vessels. We earned ourselves the descent by cablecar after our jungle scramble and the climb. A foretaste of climbs to come in Patagonia. Thanks Tomas for your steady hand with the rope. Seems this Northerner clocked the fastest time to the top of any tourist he's guided.

From my limited experience, I was reminded of a recent remarkable run along the Bowen road in Hong Kong, where the tropical rainforest intrudes into the city. Left to its own devices, Nature would overrun this town in short order. Less dramatically, San Fran too has its urban fabric interwoven with the natural world with sea lions under the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio squarely within city limits. In Rio the locals have spent decades and centuries reclaiming land, building, bustling. The tropics and the amazing monoliths stand alongside the modernist and tumbledown metropolis like a botanical reserve. And for all the energy and freeform approach to things, it all seems remarkably well tended. In the Morro da Urca park leading up to Sugarloaf, the flowers are even made to wear protective headgear to protect against predators and people. Beachfronts and boulevards are immaculate. And everywhere of course Cariocas are very publicly tending themselves, too. Running, stretching, exercising, and of course playing ball. No small number of the locals are also inviting you to take a bite. Eye candy seemingly everwhere you look.

Again like HK (or NY), this is a city in 3D, though here the skyscrapers are the natural outcrops, only a few of which have been surmounted by man-made monuments. Iris and I took to the sky by chopper, to greet the magnificent Jesus Christo face to face. At the edge of the staggering drop at his feet, he presides with real grace and beauty over the the verdant, vibrant city below. Teeming and easy, just being Rio, remarkable Rio.