Serra dos Órgãos: the mountain road to Teresópolis

Two hours north of the beach, the temperature drops ten degrees and the road starts to climb in earnest. The Serra dos Órgãos is the range that stands behind Rio de Janeiro, and the ride up to Teresópolis is the day trip that riders who live in the city keep for themselves.

Out of the heat, into the range

The climb begins almost as soon as the city lets go. The road gains altitude through a series of long, well-surfaced curves, and the air changes character: heavy coastal humidity gives way to something thin and cold that you feel through the jacket. By the time the peaks appear you are in a different climate entirely.

Those peaks are what the range is named for. Seen from below, the granite towers stand in a row like the pipes of a church organ, and the sharpest of them — the Dedo de Deus, the Finger of God — points straight up out of the forest. It is the single most recognisable skyline in the state after the Sugarloaf.

The riding

This is a road ride, not an off-road one, and it rewards a bike that holds a line. The curves are technical without being frightening: repeated second and third gear turns with enough camber to lean on, broken up by straights long enough to look at the view. Surface quality is good on the main climb and patchier on the smaller roads that branch off it.

Fog is the thing to plan around. The range makes its own weather, and a clear morning in Rio says nothing about what is happening at nine hundred metres. When the cloud comes down it comes down fast, visibility goes to twenty metres, and the sensible move is coffee and patience rather than headlights and hope.

What to eat, and where to stop

Teresópolis and the villages around it are mountain towns with a German and Swiss streak in the architecture and the food. Riders stop for trout, for cheese, for hot chocolate that would be absurd at sea level and is exactly right at this altitude. Nobody hurries back down.