Well, we got an early start today. Hadley got up extra early and took a picture of the Rio sunrise from our balcony:


Then we got up, grabbed some breakfast, and jumped in a cab and headed to the top of Sugar Loaf.


We got to Sugar Loaf and, although we were told we could hike to the top, we realized this wasn't true once we spent almost an hour walking only to hit a deadend. We returned to the base of Sugar Loaf and joined all the other tourists in line for the cable cars.

More than a million tourists come here every year to enjoy breathtaking views of the entire region. It is located on a small peninsula at the entrance of the Guanabara Bay, forming two steep hills (morros): Urca with 220 meters and the Sugar Loaf with 575 meters.

A cable car system joins both hills with the base station. The first leg of the ride ends at Urca. The excitement of the travelers is felt from the very beginning due to a totally glazed cabin that allows passengers to get a fantastic aerial view of the region. In Urca there is a wide platform with trails in the middle of deep vegetation and natural observation posts located at different heights. From there, you can see the Copacabana beach, the port, the Christ of Corcovado, the Guanabara Bay and Niteoroi.





The second leg goes to the top of the Sugar Loaf. It is also a marvelous ride with even more breathtaking 360-degree views of the region.







After seeing all there was to see at Sugar Loaf, we made the trip down, grabbed a cab, and went to small bistro not far from our hotel to grab lunch. Then we hit the beach! I took a picture of Hadley enjoying the surf:


And then another picture of a typical Brazilian couple on the beach:


And then, of course, I had to give body-surfing yet another try, and I almost crashed into a girl who probably thought I was an idiotic American:


After we'd had enough beach for the day, we made our way back to the hotel. On the way, we saw some guys with Brazilian afro's (who weren't too pleased that I snapped their picture)...


...and we saw some guys doing some amazing flips and acrobatics on the beach...


...and then we HAD to try the corn that we had seen vendors selling for days....and it was GOOOOOD!!...


We found a nice little part of the beach where the waves were larger, yet the crowd wasn't too bad...


We walked by the amazing sand castle again so I took yet another picture of it...for a price, obviously!


And then we got back to the hotel, cleaned up a bit, and went to the beautiful Copacabana Palace for drinks. Here's a picture of my beautiful bride while we were there:


We tried to have dinner there, as well, but we didn't have reservations, so we tried a nice, cozy restaurant called the Esplanada Grill. Actually, the American medical students that we met at Sushi Leblon had mentioned it, so we decided to try it out....and it was awesome. We finished dinner, grabbed a cab back to the hotel, and called it a night.

To see more pictures from Day 5, click here, here, and here.