Great Things To Do In Brazil – Tandem Hang-Gliding in Rio de Janeiro

One of the most adventurous activities that you can do in Brazil, or anywhere else for that matter, is to take a Tandem Hang-Gliding lesson in Rio de Janeiro that has you taking off from the mountain and landing on the beach.

The flights are done as a first lesson in hang-gliding with a fully qualified instructor with many hours experience of flying in the area and elsewhere around Brazil and the world. Full safety instructions and practice take-offs and landings are done before you are strapped into your equipment. Helmets and safety harness are included for every learner, and videos make part of the instruction as you sign up for your lesson at the west end of Sao Conrado Beach in Rio. This beach is on the other side of the Dois Irmaos (‘Two Brothers’) peaks that can be seen in the background of most photos looking along Ipanema and Leblon Beaches, and in the shadow of the mighty Pedra da Gavea.

The take-off ramp sits near the top of Pedra Bonita, a 696m/2,297ft high mountain set in the Tijuca Forest National Park, and covered with Atlantic Rainforest on its slopes. There is a R$15 entry fee to pay to access the ramp inside the park, and this makes part of the instructions at the bottom of the hill. Once you have signed up, you and your wings will be whisked up through the steep, winding roads of Vila Canoa and into the forest. After you have climbed up the mountain to the ramp at 636m/2,099ft, you will begin the process of jumping off it.

As the instructor finalises the preparations of the wings, you will also be helped with the putting on of your helmet and safety harness, just in case your hands are not working as they should! The spectacular view, way down to the high-rise buildings of Sao Conrado may induce a few nerves at this point. A couple of practice runs at the top of the ramp give you the idea of how to take off and overcome any nerves. It really is quite simple, all you have to do is to run and look to the horizon. Most people can manage that!

The first moment of take off is of course the one that induces most adrenaline as your feet begin to run on fresh air and your stomach drops with the wings. You soon begin to soar high above the forest, circling above the hillside houses Vila Canoa and Sao Conrado, with the Gavea Golf & Country Club below you. Your eagle-eye views take in the spread of the Rocinha Favela, the Avenida Niemeyer leading to Leblon and the Joa Flyover and Tunnels that take traffic around the rocks to Barra da Tijuca.

If the winds are favourable, you can take the controls as you wind slowly downwards, before you head out over the clear Atlantic Ocean, swooping again to gain your landing course. Your final descent comes into the wind on the sands of Praia Pepino, with your legs unharnessed to enable you to run with the hang-glider. One final push and your wings rear up and pull to a stop, with your feet safely on the sand once more.

You will find the smile doesn’t leave your face as you discuss the flight with your friends, and look over the photos and video from the wing-cam with your instructor, who may well also be smiling. Your happiness is their spiritual food as they say.

Even if your first lesson is your only flight, you are guaranteed at leave one very special memory of your time in Brazil after your tandem hang-gliding experience in Rio de Janeiro.

Activity Information: Tandem Hang-Gliding Lessons are limited by the weather of course. Heavy rain, strong winds and low clouds can all mean that flights are not possible at certain times.

Weigh Limit: There is a 95kg/209lb maximum weight limit for the tandem hang-gliding flights in Rio de Janeiro. If conditions are perfect, flights for slightly larger people may be possible.

Age Limit: 16 Years Old is the lower age limit. There is no upper age limit, and we’ve flown with senior citizens approaching their 70^th birthdays! If people of advanced years can manage with no fear, then anyone below 40 years old has no excuses at all not to fly!

Great Things To Do In Brazil – Favela Tour

There are other cities in Brazil where you can visit the favelas, but of course Rio de Janeiro has the most famous and most visited favelas. Rio’s mountainous landscape has meant that the steeper slopes were all left empty, even in and around the traditional noble boroughs of Santa Teresa, Laranjeiras and Flamengo close to the city centre. The first favelas sprung up close to the Centro as soldiers who fought in the Canudos campaign in Bahia travelled to the erstwhile capital for the payment and land they had been promised for fighting. While waiting, they settled on the empty hillsides, which reminded the soldiers of those in Bahia that were covered with the favela plant. The favela morro (favela hill) had been a common phrase for them and continued to be in Rio as well.

 

The word is often translated into English as ‘slum’ or ‘shanty-towns’ although neither are quite the same. The politically correct sections of Brazil now prefer to call these areas ‘comunidades’ (communities), the residents are still prone to call them the ‘morro’, even those that are on the flat lands, while we can still use the term favela without anybody really minding.

The basic idea of the favela is communities of illegal housing built on land not owned by the residents. There is nothing much more complex to it than that. Regular construction booms in Rio, Sao Paulo and other big cities have drawn people from the poorer areas of Brazil, generally the north-east, who have moved into existing favelas or created new ones. With no government help, little education, sanitation or medication, the favelas have had to develop their own methods of survival. This included appropriating the city’s water and power supplies, and also communication lines, and led to the favelas having their famous impenetrable muddle of cables and wires, hanging between each post like vines between trees in the thickest parts of the Amazon Jungle.

The favelas were always infamous for the salacious activities going on there, and became far more so once the drugs trade began to flourish in the 1970s and 80s. Millions of reais are made in the major Rio favelas such as Rocinha and the Complexo de Alemao every week, or at least they were until the recent UPP police project to pacify them. Alongside this grow communities just like any other, with organisations for social, religious and sporting bodies. The favelas can be very dangerous of course, but they are still home to many law-abiding citizens too.

The UPP project has left many of them much safer for residents, and a visit to a favela gives you an interesting look at life inside the ultimate Urban Jungle. Brazil is a good place to do this of course, with it being such a musical country, and with people known for their sunny outlook on life, and those Brazilians who live in favelas are no different. With such a bad reputation, it is good for visitors to see that other aspects of favela life exist too. The everyday activities, the shops, the trade, the music, the singing, the boys whistling at the girls, the kite-flying, school kids playing in the streets... or in the schools, depending on when you visit!  

Of course, it is still best to visit with people who know the area personally, and that is where the Favela Tour comes in. There are rules that must be followed to ensure your safety, even with the pacification projects, although even before this, when the favelas were openly controlled by gangs, tourists could still pass through without any trouble at all as long as they behaved within the limits.

This kind of tour is clearly not for everyone, but those who want to take a look at another side of Brazilian life rather than just the classic tourist destinations are in for a fascinating time. Some people believe that this kind of trip is Poverty Tourism, although the tours are educational rather than a vehicle-based visit to take photos of poor people. Most people leave having benefitted from the experience, with the word ‘humbled’ being used quite often, and a general contrast ambiguous in emotions that fits in very well with Brazil, a land of contrasts itself. There are also projects within the favelas that benefit from receiving visitors, with part of the tour fee going towards helping the local schools or clinics.

The Favela Tour gives a surprisingly good view of Brazil and its contradictions in just a few hours, with much of the modern history of the country tied in with the story of its favelas, the wealth gap, the Brazilian jeitinho, and mostly that, despite the harsh living conditions of the Urban Jungle, the people who live in them can still be warm and friendly and very typically Brazilian.

Activity Information: The Favela Tours are open to everybody, although they don’t tend to have so many Brazilian tourists, and many Brazilians will look at you strangely if you tell them that you are going to visit a favela in Rio or Brazil! Guides will always explain what visitors must do and what they must avoid doing along the way in order to ensure safety. Cameras are safe to take along although at times care must be taken on where you point them. Before the UPP project, the better connected local residents did not appreciate photos being taken of them, while now the police involved in the project may not be so happy to make part of your snaps.

Great Things to do in Brazil – The Botanical Gardens, Rio de Janeiro

 

There are so many places to visit in Rio de Janeiro that the Botanical Gardens often get overlooked, especially by those who don’t have such green fingers. Personally I would recommend it for just about any visitor to the city, and most would find it rewarding. The gardens can be visited in a couple of hours, and combined easily with some of the city’s more famous sights, or perhaps with the Sitio Burle Marx gardens further out of town. On a sultry summer day in Rio, the shade from the tall palms and other assorted trees is more than welcome.

The Botanical Gardens lie between the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon and the mountains of the Parque Nacional da Tijuca, which can always be seen through tree trunks and leaves while wandering around, including Corcovado with the statue of Christ the Redeemer almost directly above.

The gardens are now neighboured by the Jockey Club, making the whole area one of the least developed in the city. It was even less developed in 1808, when King João of Portugal decided to inaugurate the gardens, soon after arriving in Brazil to escape a potential revolution at home. The original idea was to have a place for spices to become accustomed to Brazil, as they had after being imported into the Caribbean, with nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper having successfully taken there following introduction from the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Strangely despite the success of the gardens, Brazil still seems to be the only Latin country in the world that doesn’t have black or white pepper on every table.

The gardens were opened to the public in 1822, the same year that João’s son Pedro had declared independence from his returned father’s kingdom. There are now over 6,000 tropical tree and plant species, with the 900 types of palm being possibly the most spectacular, including the centre-piece Avenue of Royal Palms, and the incredible colours of the Pau Mulatto trees This Amazon spruce sheds its bark completely between July and September, the bark being one of those used in Ayahuasca rituals, and the colours of the smooth trunk include bronze,  green, orange and purple. The sight of the whole alley of pau mulattos in their annual Carnaval parade makes you wonder if you actually drank some ayahuasca before arriving at the gardens.

The other essential tree to look out for is the pau brasil. This is the tree that is responsible for the whole of Brazil. Or for the name at least. The Portuguese explorers found the tree with its red resin being useful for dyes. It grew in the Atlantic Rainforest from Rio de Janeiro up to Rio Grande do Norte, including most of the original areas that the colonialists went ashore. The Portuguese cut down this 15m tall tree in thousands and thousands, shipping them off for sale in Europe in order to pay off debts to the English government of the time. They were the original reason for colonisation, before the sugar and coffee plantations had even been considered.

The Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens also boasts an impressive Bromeliário and a colourful Orquidário, as well as houses for carnivorous and cacti plants, the Sensorial Garden, and also the Fountain of the Muses focal point. Waterfalls and trails through the Atlantic Rainforest  keep the scenery interesting, while the local wildlife colours the trees and grasses, and would hold the attention of young children, at least for a while! The turtles climbing over each other to catch some sun at the entrance are supplemented by enormous carp in the ponds. Visits from monkeys are common, including the cute tuft-eared marmosets, and the less cute howler monkeys - renowned for their piercing grunts, and also for throwing their faeces at other creatures that invade their personal space.

Hundreds of bird species can be found too, including the vivid colours of parakeets, macaws, humming-birds (the more poetic beija-flor in Portuguese – the Flower-Kisser) and many different types of toucan. They are generally quite small compared to their Amazon and Pantanal cousins, but the yellow-breasted or black-beaked toucans, and the classical tucanuçu are numerous in the gardens, flying from tree to tree for berries. Sightings of these wonderful birds and others are far more common in the gardens than outside, as they have become accustomed to the presence of humans over the years, and do not fly off quite so readily as in the forests. Their habit of taking flight at regular intervals, just as you have your camera set on them amongst the foliage, only makes them even more loveable. Personally, I think the toucans are worth the bargain R$6 entrance fee on their own, even if the gardens themselves might not appeal.

They should though. The Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens are one of the most impressive in Brazil, South America or anywhere else, and should definitely be on the list of Things To Do in Brazil.

Around Brazil – Lapa, Rio de Janeiro

The options for Nightlife in Rio de Janeiro have long been famously excellent. The meat markets in Ipanema; the Gentleman’s Clubs of Copacabana; masked balls around the Lagoa; blocos passing along the avenidas; samba in the Sambodromo; chorinho in the street; and lately baile funk parties in the favelas. Rapidly growing in popularity, the district of Lapa has a mix of them all.

The turn of the century buildings in Lapa, tucked under the arches that carry the little yellow bonde tram up to Santa Teresa, had long been neglected and never made part of Rio’s glamorous nightlife scene. Over the last 15 years or so though, Lapa has turned itself into possibly Rio’s favourite nightlife area. As with other semi-abandoned districts close to the centre of our world cities – Hoxton in London and San Telmo in Buenos Aires spring to mind immediately – the large colonial houses and warehouses were too central and too spacious to remain dormant.

The antiques market of Rua do Lavradio in Lapa was perhaps responsible for germinating the revitalisation of the whole area, stemming from people simply selling old furniture out of the front of their houses. The Saturday market developed into a typical carioca street fair, with samba and choro bands providing the entertainment. Cafes and bars sprang up as well and began to stay open after the market finished for those still in the party mood, which is usually quite a few people in Rio. The logical next step was to turn the huge empty spaces into larger bars and clubs. The Scenarium Club opened initially in 1999 as a space to house furniture and antiques for rental to the theatre, television and cinema worlds, before opening as a fully fledged cultural centre in 2001. 

Around Brazil – Tijuca Forest, Rio de Janeiro

Tijuca Forest - Trail to Tijuca Peak

Rio de Janeiro has many surprises hidden away but perhaps one of its most impressive secrets is either completely hidden or visible from just about every part of the city. The Parque Nacional Floresta de Tijuca is the forest covering the mountains that dominate Rio, with the city centre, the Zona Sul of Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches, and Barra da Tijuca all sitting between the slopes of those mountains and the waters of the Atlantic or Guanabara Bay.

As an escape from the city within the city, Tijuca Forest is perfect. Access is easy whether driving yourself, being part of a tour group, or taking the metro to Saens Pena and catching a bus or minivan up the hill to Alto da Boa Vista. The climb up the winding roads through Usina, behind the Jardim Botanico or past the Itanhanga Golf Club in Barra da Tijuca takes you into the cooler mountain air almost immediately, as the humid city air becomes clean enough for mosses to grow on damp tree trunks. 

The whole area was originally cleared of trees, cut down for timber by the colonialists in order to build the developing city of Rio de Janeiro, and later to make space for coffee plantations. The idea of replanting it is reputed to have come from Dom Pedro II, with a Major Archer charged with the task in order to save Rio’s water supply. Major Archer passed on the replanting task to 6 men who had not quite been freed from slavery, and worked from 1874 to 1888 before abolition meant they were joined by others. They planted 100,000 seedlings between them. The park was later turned into a recreation area with bridges, fountains, lakes and leisure areas for turn of the century cariocas. 

Are You Ready for Your First Visit to Brazil?

There are many options for a first visit to Brazil of course, so if you can’t decide between them, you could consider a few different options.

The best known places in Brazil are probably Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, the Amazon Jungle and Iguazu Falls, maybe with The Pantanal thrown in for serious nature-lovers. Brazil is also renowned across the world for the quality of its beaches, and with 8,000km of coastline it is easy to understand why this might be. There are wonderful stretches of sand splashed along almost the whole length of Brazil’s Atlantic shores and on many of its offshore islands too.

Christ the Redeemer - Rio de Janeiro

When visiting a new country, it helps to adapt more quickly if visitors already have a certain familiarity with the first place that they visit. For this reason, if you must pick a place to arrive in Brazil then it has to be Rio de Janeiro. Photos, postcards, films, documentaries and music videos, most people can spot Rio without even needing to think about it. The iconic Christ The Redeemer statue overlooking the city is also the symbol of Rio.

You may be able to see it from the plane or boat as you arrive in Rio, but if not then a clear day gives you a guaranteed view of Cristo during the journey from the airports to the city centre or further on to Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches. The first sight of the statue balanced on top of the sheer rock that is Corcovado is bound to bring a smile to the face of any overnight traveller. If you arrive at night, then the statue is lit up and can be seen glowing eerily through the clouds, high in the sky, with nothing but darkness underneath. He is an impressive sight, and one that you are unlikely to tire of seeing, no matter how many times you visit Rio de Janeiro.

Orientation may be a problem in Rio at first, with new visitors never sure whereabouts in the city they might be. Cristo often comes to the rescue, appearing between high buildings on the beach roads, or gazing directly at you in the city streets. He is a reassuring sight at all times.

The journey from the airport or marina will also take in Sugar Loaf Mountain, and the wires stretched across the gap between the crown of Pao de Acucar and neighbouring Urca at the entrance to Guanabara Bay. The first sight of the tiny cable cars rolling their way up to the top can induce a giddy sensation, even for people on the ground way below.

Overlooking Copacabana Beach from Sugarloaf Mountain

The first view of the curve of Copacabana Beach after exiting the tunnel from the city is another special moment, with 4km of sand full of Brazilian bodies, beach volleyball and football nets, with surfers catching waves in the background and patterned pavements and sand sculptures in front. The surrounding mountains are green and granite, and dwarf the high-rise buildings of Copacabana and Ipanema. The Two Brothers stare down the length of Ipanema Beach, another iconic image of Rio.

All of these exotic images will be implanted in your brain forever. If you have a hotel or apartment to check into, you may be surprised to find that even after a long journey to arrive in Rio, staying inside and relaxing is the last thing you want to do. There are so many sights and sounds out there that you may just drop your bags on the bed, take out your shorts and flip-flops, and head right back out, full of life and energy. Rio de Janeiro can have this affect on everyone, which is why we recommend that you make it part of your first visit to Brazil.
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