GUANABARA BAY

 
BEAUTIFUL, PICTURESQUE AND POLLUTED

Ilha da Boa Viagem -- Island of Good Travel/Safe Voyage -- is much smaller than, but pound-for-pound almost as beautiful as the famed Sugar Loaf.

Home of both a battery that used to protect Guanabara Bay and the Capela de Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem, it is the stuff of dreams perched atop the blue waters.

A bridge links it to Niteroi on the mainland.

Though our Portuguese is pretty lousy, we understood a sign we saw in late January to say the buildings are being restored for visitors.

It is about a five minute walk downhill from the Museum of Contemporary Art -- the space ship designed by the late Brazilian modernist master Oscar Nieymeyer.