Pulsating, self-confident and exploding with energy, Brazil is South America’s potência fantástica, the most impressive nation on the continent by milhões de milhas. Bowing to no one, Rio serves up cocktails, culture and curves the rest of the world dreams of.
Impanema beach: Sunday afternoon in Rio
We based ourselves in bohemian Santa Teresa, and fell in love with Cairoca culture. Very reminiscent of Montmartre, perched high overlooking downtown Rio, Santa Teresa was bursting with elegant, fin-de-siecle architecture and atmospheric bars. The home of Rio’s elite before the Roaring Twenties rush to the sea, today it is a charming, crumbling area reachable by Bonde, the only remaining metropolitan tram in Brazil.
Rio is a city of incredible contrasts. Soaring cliffs surrounded by rainforest, the biggest urban park in the world, some of the world’s biggest shanty towns. The rich live in heavily secured gated towers on the beaches, the poor crowd together in dangerous favelas on the hills: enjoying million dollar views. One big surprise: Cairoca’s are surprisingly fat!
Coconuts on Copacabana: what's not to like!?
Probably because Rio was our last stop, we were a little edgy. There is huge and undeniable poverty everywhere. Not quite Mumbai, but sharing that other booming city’s extremes. Anyway, Ipanema, Copacabana, the Sugarloaf, the Estádio do Maracanã: plus muitas caipirinhas e cervejas!