Whether this expense was necessary or not is debatable as the bus service in Rio (once you get the hang of it) is excellent and at a set price of 3 real a trip, not particularly expensive. I doubt you could cover all 4 things in 1 day on public transport though.
The biggest problem with deciding to do a tour is that you only get a set period of time at each of the places and both sugar loaf and Christ are susceptible to being ruined by cloud.
For us it was Christ who was shrouded in cloud while we were there (when we arrive we couldn't even see his head). Eventually during our allotted 30 minutes we did get a few glimpses of him and the city below but unless you are on a real tight timetable you should try to do this on your own as we'd have hung around if we could (annoyingly the cloud cleared about 40 minutes after we left). There is even a TV screen at the ticket office so you can see the weather at the summit before you buy your ticket to get in.
Luckily the rest of our trip was unencumbered by the weather, the selaron steps were really interesting (I can see why people from all around the world sent in tiles from their local areas to be incorporated) but the highlight for me was the view of Rio from the Sugar Loaf mountain (pictures added below). We got there just as the sun was setting and the cloud over rio made it look even more dramatic.
Deapite being billed as an "afternoon" trip the whole excursion took around 7 hours and as many people who know me understand I can be a proper diva when I am hungry. We mitigated this by grabbing a massive, late breakfast at our hostel, the highly recommended "Bossa in Rio" which laid on all sorts of things including several types of fruit, bread, jam, cheese, ham and a toastie machine as well as cake, coffee, several types of tea and the sweetest breakfast cereal you can imagine (although this is more a brazilian thing as it turn out). We were able to eat enough to keep us going for most of the day only needing a snack (which in Rio are plentiful and usually unhealthy, I think on this occasion we ended up going for the cheesey bread balls.
However when dinner came around we noticed a problem, on a Sunday half the restaurants were closed being used to London we assumed that most places would be 7 days a week but for the next few days we realised our eating options were limited by the nights the restaurants were open with several in Santa Teresa taking it in turns to have the night off (usually when we wanted to eat there)
We ate at both Bar do Arnaud and the sea food restaurant Sobre Natural. Both were large portions of decent food (although nothing exceptional) with a main being more than enough for 2 people. These were reasonable value with a main for two people at bar do Arnauld costing 70 real (22 pounds) and at Sobrenatural the prawn in a creamy sauce was 110 real (28 pounds).
While at sobrenatural we were also serenaded by a local music group, they turned up after we started eating and despite not being part of our reason to eat 30 real was added to our food bill to cover the music (although this was optional) it is definitely something to be aware of as this is also fairly standard in Lapa as well.
Pictured below are shrouded Christ, the Selaron steps, some pictures from sugar loaf and the traditional prawn dish from Sobrenatural.
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