Sugarloaf Mountain

Where it sits. Sugarloaf — Pão de Açúcar — is the bare granite peak that closes the mouth of Guanabara Bay, rising 396 metres straight out of the Atlantic at the tip of the Urca peninsula in Rio de Janeiro. It stands with its lower companion, the 220-metre Morro da Urca, at the end of a chain of domes that includes Morro da Babilônia and the Morro Cara de Cão. The rock is a coarse granite-gneiss, part of the same intrusive complex as Corcovado; its rounded shape comes from onion-like exfoliation, sheets of stone shedding under the tropical sun and rain. The name is usually explained by the resemblance to the moulded cones of refined sugar shipped from colonial Brazilian mills, though it may also echo a Tupi word for the headland. Below it, the small crescent of Praia Vermelha faces back into the bay.

The cable car. Rio's engineer Augusto Ferreira Ramos spent three years persuading investors that a cableway up a vertical rock face was reasonable. The first stage, running 528 metres from Praia Vermelha to Morro da Urca, opened on 27 October 1912 — only the third aerial cableway built anywhere in the world; the second stage, 750 metres from Urca to the summit, followed on 18 January 1913. The original wooden cabins carried 24 passengers each. The current glass-walled Italian-built cars, introduced in 1972 and replaced since, carry around 65 and give a slow 360-degree turn as they climb. More than a century after opening, the bondinho remains one of the most-used pieces of transport infrastructure in Brazil that goes nowhere in particular.

On screen. The mountain's most famous appearance is the cable-car fight in the James Bond film Moonraker (1979), in which Roger Moore's Bond and Lois Chiles's Holly Goodhead are attacked mid-span by the steel-toothed henchman Jaws, who bites through the haulage cable. It was shot on the real cableway high over Guanabara Bay, and it nearly killed a man: the veteran stuntman Richard Graydon, doubling Moore on top of a moving car, slipped when his rig failed and held on one-handed hundreds of metres above the rocks, later calling it the worst moment of his career. Bond's Rio outing also gave the falls at Iguazú their most-seen cameo in the same film's river chase. Earlier, Philippe de Broca's L'Homme de Rio (1964) used the cableway and the bay with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and the peak has since served as visual shorthand for the city in everything from animated features to Olympic broadcasts.

What you actually see today. The view is the reason to come, and it is genuinely the best orientation to Rio available: Copacabana's arc to the south, Botafogo's marina and the Flamengo landfill park curving north, Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado to the west with the Tijuca massif behind, the bay opening east toward Niterói and the Rio–Niterói bridge. Morro da Urca, the halfway station, has restaurants, a small amphitheatre that hosts concerts, and an exhibition on the cableway's history. On the summit there are viewing decks at several levels, snack kiosks and forest paths where marmosets move through the trees. Climbers work more than 270 established routes on the granite faces, and the Pista Cláudio Coutinho, a paved coastal trail from Praia Vermelha, is free, flat and good for wildlife.

A note on climbing history. The peak was first recorded as climbed in 1817 by Henrietta Carstairs, an Englishwoman who reached the top and planted a British flag — a fact locals still enjoy, given the era. A steep hiking route to Morro da Urca from the Pista Cláudio Coutinho lets walkers reach the halfway point on foot in about 40 minutes and buy a ticket for only the upper cable-car stage, which saves money and beats the queue.

Getting there and timing. The base station is at Avenida Pasteur 520 in Urca, reachable by bus, taxi or a 25-minute walk from Botafogo metro. Cars run roughly every 20 minutes from morning until evening; buying a timed ticket online avoids the worst waits. The cableway, stations and main viewing decks are step-free and served by lifts and ramps, making this one of the more accessible high viewpoints in South America. Clear, dry air is most likely from April to June and August to October; the summer months are hazier and stormier. Sunset is the prize slot — arrive at least an hour early, then stay for the city lights on the way down. Pairing Sugarloaf with Corcovado on the same day is common but redundant in flat weather; if cloud is sitting on the Christ statue, the bay view from here is usually still clear.