Six nights in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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Friday 3rd Feb - Thursday 9th Feb 2023

With amazingly timed flights, we were sat a mere 10minutes at the arrivals side of Rio’s big airport before our friend, Charlotte, caught us up. All a little tired and sweaty but happy and excited, the time instantly flew by, as we chatted away whilst catching an Uber, finding our AirBnB apartment, working out we should not touch the shower head if we don’t want a shock, and enjoying a cup of tea. All this talking and planning for her to meet us at the end of our travels and here we all were together, in the huge city of Rio, Brazil. Amazing stuff.

With 6 nights here we wanted to do as much as we could but at an enjoyable pace, which meant not leaving too early for Charlotte, making sure we had a good coffee stop for Paul, and a tasty breakfast for me, before starting any day. Similar to a lot of Latin America, we struggled to find what we’d call a good breakfast place but luckily, down one block from our place, was a great cafe and one we visited a couple times. Perfecto. There was also limited places for veggie dinners in our area too, but again, we still managed to find a couple of good ones; including a very tasty veggie Spanish paella on the beach front, a huge Lebanese plate selection down a few blocks, and a yummy Indian just a short Uber ride away; safe to say we didn’t starve!

So apart from thinking and discussing food, we also saw and did a lot of things here in Rio. Between walking, using Uber and using the metro, we managed to get around relatively easily and all really liked the city. We were definitely aware there were areas we should avoid and had heard of many horror stories, but thankfully and luckily, we managed pretty well and never felt completely unsafe. Having done so much in these short 6days I could write a lot more, but, to try and summarise, here’s what we did: many walks along Copacabana beach, watching lightning fork in the dark skies of an evening, seeing the old Copacabana Fort with views of the bay, a free walking tour of the City Center, visiting the overly crowded but pretty Selaron steps, a couple of old churches, a slightly disappointing visit to the underwhelming Museum of Tomorrow and a beautiful cycle ride along Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon bays and around a lake. We even managed to take a break from the cycling and stop off at the national park where we spotted two toucans and a few monkeys!

We did however, get caught out in a heavy rainstorm later, which made for a fun but wet ride back and look around a market. A similar downpour soaked us again on another day too, whilst at the botanical gardens, which created a bit of entertainment as we huddled under the smallest drain cover by a building and Paul made friends with a family trying to stay dry by sitting in a covered golf cart. In fact, two days here were with a weather warning, with news reports of severe flooding. So, yes it is hot in Rio but it also rains and storms a lot too!

This climate is what helps keep the nature here though, and having such a lush jungle (part of what’s left of the Atlantic Rainforest) so close to a huge city was very cool, and we really liked how the vine covered trees have managed to stand strong down many roads. In fact the landscape of this massive city is really quite unusual, with this backdrop jungle weaving throughout it and the lumpy green hills breaking up the mass of human construction that is here; from the tall fancy buildings to the smaller ‘mini cities’ of the favelas.

You get a sense of all this walking around the city but don’t really appreciate it until you see it from afar, and luckily we managed to get to a couple of vantage points during our time here. That’s right, we made it up the cable cars (with many, many others) to sugarloaf mountain, on a super sunny day, which gave spectacular views. We also made it up the tram on another, not so sunny day, to Christ the Redeemer which gave a more atmospheric non-view of the city. The sun did manage to beam through the misty cloud though, to give glimpses of the big JC and snippets of the city sprawling out below him which was cool.

Rio is so much bigger than any of us realised but I think we managed to visit what we wanted and really enjoyed this fun city. We could definitely have stayed longer here, but, wanting to explore a little more, we decided to venture out of the city and along the coast to the old colonial town of Paraty, for our last few nights here in Brazil. It’s almost time to go home!

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