Travelogue 2: Rio de Janeiro and other cities, 2025
General observations
Rio de Janeiro thoroughly deserves its nickname, “Cidade Maravilhosa”. It truly is a wonderful city, where I spent two incredible months. It feels much cleaner and greener than São Paulo, with hills and mountains covered in dense vegetation everywhere, and a coastline of white sand and blue-green sea. As soon as I arrived in Rio, I felt a certain familiarity with the city that I could not explain. After several weeks there, I think I began to understand where that familiarity came from. Rio reminds me of cities such as Cartagena de Indias and Havana, in a way that is difficult to explain, but I will try. These cities share a similar atmosphere, an aesthetic we might call tropical-colonial: the beach; the use of pastel colours on houses and buildings; colonial architecture; forts; tropical vegetation; the balconies and wooden shutters on old houses; tiled roofs; everyone wearing sandals and very little clothing; bare-chested men; a large Black population; some cobbled streets; buildings with exposed brick or adobe; the humidity. All these factors give the cities a shared style. In Rio’s case, the city has an intense, exotic and sensual personality. Compared with São Paulo, Rio feels cleaner, mainly because there are fewer homeless people. There is also less rubbish in the streets. Sadly, one thing the two cities share is the presence of street vendors, who take over the pavements and obstruct pedestrians. Their presence on the beaches is regrettable and, honestly, annoying; it is a common complaint among tourists. As in every city, this phenomenon can be understood as the product of a corruption network that collects protection money in exchange for allowing them to operate. I had less difficulty communicating than in São Paulo. People seemed much better able to understand my poor Portuguese and made an effort to be understood. Some spoke Spanish, or at least understood it. People seemed kind and cordial. I had heard that cariocas were very cheerful. I dislike stereotypes of that kind, but I noticed a few details that made me think there might be some truth to the observation. For example, when a street performer suddenly boards the metro to dance or put on some kind of show, people behave very differently from what I have seen elsewhere in the world. In most places, passengers avoid eye contact with the performer and ignore them. Here, to my surprise, the great majority turn to watch, applaud, record the performance on their phones, shout encouragement and seem genuinely to enjoy the show. Something else caught my attention: when restaurant staff sing happy birthday to someone, people at all the other tables join in and applaud—even repeatedly when several tables are celebrating birthdays. Everyone participates. Perhaps there really is a local culture that makes people seem happier, or at least more enthusiastic. In that context, I was also struck by the way almost everyone gives up their seat on the metro to older people, women and children—to a remarkable degree. There are signs asking passengers to offer their seat to elderly and disabled people, and so on, but I doubt a few signs are responsible for such a widespread attitude. It seems more like a feature of the local culture. I have already mentioned the metro a couple of times. We used it extensively. It did not seem as well maintained as São Paulo’s, but it was not bad. It could be compared with the Mexico City Metro as it was before 2018, when the authorities began systematically dismantling it. The stations are old and somewhat dirty, but they work; the carriages feel old, but they work. Overall, the system has few delays and operates properly. One thing I like is that stations have many entrances at different points, making them easy to access. Another advantage is that contactless bank cards can be used to pay at every station.
The beaches
The beaches are beautiful, with fine white sand and a sea whose colour is difficult to describe: sometimes it looks blue, sometimes green. The sea is rough and the water cold. There are very few palm trees. The horizon is often dotted with small islands and distant hills. Were it not for the street vendors, I could call them almost perfect beaches. Since the beaches are public, there are no sections reserved for hotels or beach clubs. The usual routine is to go to the beach and hire chairs and an umbrella. Barracas are stalls that rent out chairs and umbrellas and can also sell you drinks. As you approach the beach along the pavement, barraca vendors usually come up to you offering a menu with their prices. The menu is somewhat misleading because the prices they can actually offer for chairs and umbrellas are lower. The first time we went to the beach was in Ipanema. One of these vendors approached us and I conducted the entire exchange in my terrible Portuguese. He showed me his menu with the price of each item. I asked what he would charge for two chairs and an umbrella, expecting a package price. He said 120 reais. I thanked him and we turned to leave, at which point he asked, how much do they charge you? I replied: I pay 40 for two chairs and an umbrella, all day. Fine, he said, and led us onto the beach to choose where we wanted the chairs and umbrella set up. In that very first exchange, the price dropped from 120 to 40, showing that the listed prices are meant for naïve tourists. On another occasion, also in Ipanema, a barraca vendor approached us without a menu. I asked how much two chairs and an umbrella would cost. He said 34. That seemed fair, so I agreed. Some offer a fair price from the outset; with others, you have to negotiate. Public toilets are located roughly every 500 metres, but there are few of them, so queues can form. There are also showers and changing rooms wherever the toilets are. Everything costs money. The stereotype is real: the beach is full of people playing keepy-uppy and women in thongs. But the people doing keepy-uppies are not that good, and the women in thongs are not that beautiful. You can have a better time in areas with fewer vendors. Going to the beach is not usually my favourite activity, but I genuinely enjoyed my visits during these weeks. At weekends, a peculiar spectacle takes place: hordes of people descend on the beach. You see them leaving the metro carriages in swimsuits, carrying folding chairs, umbrellas, coolers, inflatables and everything else. You also see them coming down from the favelas beside Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, carrying all their equipment and determined to make use of the very last ray of sunlight. From my window, I watched them descend from Morro de Cantagalo and return at dusk, tired but cheerful.
The neighbourhoods
Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon
We spent our first month in this area, specifically in Copacabana, two blocks from Copacabana beach and about five from Ipanema beach. Copacabana is highly tourist-oriented and commercially very active. Ipanema is equally popular with tourists but feels less crowded; its streets are prettier and its restaurants, cafés and bars are better. Leblon, the neighbourhood after Ipanema, feels a little more local, with similarly attractive, tree-lined streets.
Santa Teresa
We spent the second month here, outside the Zona Sul, immersed in the Rio de Janeiro of neither beaches nor tourist hordes. The neighbourhood is hard to describe, but I will try. It lies across a set of extremely irregular hills. One forms a horseshoe, and that was where our flat stood. Because of the hills’ irregular shapes, the streets form a genuine maze of slopes and bends, sometimes widening and sometimes narrowing, some cobbled and others paved with asphalt. Extremely long stairways connect the streets, allowing pedestrians to move among the different levels created by the hills. There are houses, but also many apartment buildings, adding to the visual confusion: you can stand at the top of a hill looking out of a window and find yourself level with the top floor of an eight-storey building opposite. It is also a leafy area. The same view encompasses both buildings and steep hills covered in trees and vegetation. Walking through the neighbourhood becomes a somewhat surreal experience, passing run-down plots and hillsides, walls decorated with murals, and sometimes crumbling exposed brick. It is common for two cars travelling in opposite directions to meet in a street and perform a complicated dance so that one can give way and let the other pass. The Bondinhos add to the surrealism: yellow trams connecting the neighbourhood with the city centre and crossing the famous Arcos da Lapa, a former aqueduct that became a symbol of Lapa in central Rio de Janeiro. Santa Teresa naturally has a tourist side. Around Largo dos Guimarães, there are restaurants, cafés, bars and shops. The Bondinhos pass packed with intrepid tourists who dare to venture beyond the beaches. But on the side where our flat stood, you saw only local people who gave the impression of having lived there all their lives. It is one of those neighbourhoods with so much personality that the neighbourhood chooses its inhabitants, not the other way round. Among those inhabitants, incidentally, are Titi monkeys, small primates only a little bigger than squirrels which, like squirrels in Mexico, move along power lines and through tree branches, always in troops. The hills on which Santa Teresa sits connect with the jungle of Parque Nacional da Tijuca, allowing us to run along a road through the forest. We simply climbed the Santa Teresa hills for three or four kilometres until reaching the road, then followed it for several more. Here we had an interesting encounter with Macacos-bugios (Alouatta guariba), a genus of primates found in some areas of Brazil. One day, while running, we saw two of them moving along the side of the road. They stopped and so did we. They seemed to approach us slightly, and we did not know whether they wanted food or intended to attack, since it seemed odd for them to come closer. It was not our first encounter: when visiting the famous Cristo Redentor on Corcovado, we had already seen one of these monkeys, and it appeared harmless. But this time, alone with them on a road through the jungle, we did not know what to think. The monkeys went on their way, and we went on ours. Every so often, we glimpsed them among the trees, heading in the same direction as us. At one point we decided to turn back, and now they too were moving in the opposite direction. I did not know whether they were frightened of us or perhaps checking whether we had food. Then we realised they were going back to meet their troop. There were seven or eight altogether, and they moved so quickly that within seconds we lost sight of them. I researched them afterwards and discovered that this particular primate species had been extinct in Parque Nacional da Tijuca for 200 years. In 2015, however, a group of eight was reintroduced to establish a new population; then, in 2024, a new phase began with the introduction of another group of seven. That means we were lucky enough to see one of those two groups in its entirety.
Fátima
This small neighbourhood borders Santa Teresa and could be described as its entrance on the non-tourist side, where we stayed. It takes its name from Avenida Nossa Senhora de Fátima, which is less an avenue than a quiet street connecting Avenida Riachuelo with a roundabout. The street ends there, so the only option is to circle the roundabout and return to Riachuelo. Between our flat in Santa Teresa and the roundabout were perhaps only 100 metres, descended by a stairway. Our neighbourhood that month was therefore not only Santa Teresa but also Fátima, since we constantly passed through it to go to the shop or cross towards the centre. This little neighbourhood has a curious sense of community: everybody seems to be neighbours who have known one another all their lives. Avenida Nossa Senhora de Fátima contains several lanchonetes, something I forgot to explain when I first encountered them in São Paulo. A lanchonete is a small bar serving simple dishes, rather like snacks or light meals, where people generally drink beer. Both São Paulo and Rio are full of them. Curiously, they are rarely called lanchonetes in Rio; people usually call them simply bars. The important thing to understand is that the concept is very different from what we in Mexico mean by a bar. It is closer to the traditional Madrid bar: somewhere you can go for breakfast, lunch or dinner, drink coffee or beer, but most importantly… simply be there. People sit in lanchonetes to pass the time, usually while drinking beer. From ten in the morning onwards, it is common to see people sitting on metal chairs at metal tables, in the style of a Mexican fonda, drinking an ice-cold beer; they may remain there all day. Old and young, men and women: everyone spends hours drinking cold beer, chatting and watching a football match. I am explaining lanchonetes here because, as I said, Avenida Nossa Senhora de Fátima has several, and all are filled with local residents. It is common to see someone leave their building on the way to the shop and stop at every lanchonete to greet the neighbours. You see tables full of women drinking beer and talking. On Sundays, a resident might bring down a barbecue and grill linguiças—sausages similar to Argentine chorizo—right there on the pavement beside the lanchonete tables, with the whole building socialising together. This neighbourhood has a genuine sense of community unlike anything I had seen elsewhere.
Lagoa
Lagoa is the neighbourhood surrounding Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon. It is one of the city’s most beautiful and expensive areas. The huge, beautiful lagoon, with green spaces and a track for running and cycling all the way around it, is framed by countless apartment buildings enjoying incredible views. From the lagoon, you can see nearby mountains and hills such as Dois Irmãos, Cantagalo and Corcovado. I greatly enjoyed running around the lagoon, a distance of 7.5 kilometres. People cycle, run and walk there. I usually ran partly along Ipanema beach and partly around the lagoon to complete 12 kilometres. There are also several restaurants and bars scattered around different green areas beside the water.
Centro and Lapa
Central Rio, full of buildings and activity, presents a very different view of the city. Here, nature gives way to asphalt. There are many beautiful old buildings and numerous streets in generally good condition. One area, however, offers less pleasant sights: Lapa. Between the rear of the cathedral and the Arcos da Lapa are many homeless people, some merely existing and others taking drugs. The Arcos da Lapa and the famous Escadaria Selarón are attractions tourists seek out, but what they encounter is a rather harsh reality. The dirt and general neglect are enough to repel anyone. I hope the government can reclaim and revitalise this area.
Botafogo and Flamengo
I liked both these neighbourhoods, especially Flamengo. They seemed like quiet places to live, with many apartment buildings and plenty of commercial activity, but not too many tourists. On several occasions, I walked through their leafy streets lined with restaurants and cafés.
Two visits that felt like leaving Rio
Niterói
Niterói is a city opposite Rio de Janeiro, across Guanabara Bay. It takes about 25 minutes to get there by ferry from central Rio. We went to see buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer, especially the Museu de Arte Contemporânea. For anyone who likes modernist architecture, visiting the buildings Niemeyer created here is essential. Almost by accident, we discovered a small island, Ilha da Boa Viagem, which can be reached by crossing a bridge about 100 metres long and has a little church at its summit. This short excursion completed a pleasant day in the city.
Ilha da Gigóia
This is a group of nine small islands in a lagoon in the Barra da Tijuca area. Some call it the Venice of Rio. You can travel among the islands by boat and take a tour around the lagoon, where a wetland is home to crocodilians. The main island has several restaurants and even a couple of guest houses. It is visited more by domestic tourists than international ones. This day trip left me pleasantly surprised: without truly leaving Rio’s metropolitan area, you can feel transported somewhere completely different, far from the city’s commotion and surrounded by beautiful nature.
An adventure
There are things one thinks will “never happen to me”: I will never be left adrift at sea; I will never be shipwrecked on a desert island; I will never get lost in the woods. With that last example in particular, whenever I saw someone get lost in a forest in a film or television series, I always thought it could never happen to me. I have a good sense of direction and consider myself capable; I simply could not understand how someone might fail to retrace their steps to the starting point. Well, that overconfidence placed me in one of the situations I thought would never happen to me: lost in a jungle. It happened on Morro da Urca, a hill in Rio de Janeiro beside one of the city’s most famous peaks, Pão de Açúcar. It was a terrible but brief experience that left me with a good anecdote and feeling somewhat humbled. To explain what happened, I need to describe how the day began. It was a Thursday and we decided to visit Pão de Açúcar—Sugarloaf Mountain—a hill, or more accurately a monolith, in Guanabara Bay. You reach it by taking a cable car from Parque Bondinho. The cable car first takes you to a station on Morro da Urca, a smaller hill immediately beside Pão de Açúcar. At the summit are a restaurant, several shops and the next cable-car station, from which you continue to Pão de Açúcar itself. We completed the whole journey, visiting the different viewpoints, taking photos and enjoying a good day. At sunset, we descended from Pão de Açúcar to Morro da Urca for an event held on certain days, when a DJ mixes dance music as the sun goes down. The event ended at around 6 p.m., when it was already getting dark. Both peaks and the park close at 8 p.m. Suddenly everyone wanted to descend by cable car and an astonishing queue formed. Nydia and I decided to wait over a few beers for it to shrink, but an hour later it was even longer. Without exaggeration, I estimated that it would take us almost two hours. Another half-hour passed and the queue seemed to have grown. We could not believe that so many people were still trying to get down. Then we noticed a group of about six people preparing to descend along a path. It turned out there was a hiking trail on the hill. At the time, this seemed like a good idea. I thought we could avoid the queue and reach the bottom in 20 or 30 minutes; it would even be a little adventure. A serious mistake. I asked the guard at the trail exit and he told me that we needed to go to an office and sign a waiver releasing the park from liability if anything happened to us on the way down. Of course—what could possibly happen to us? Let us sign it. We signed and returned. By then, nobody else was trying to leave that way; Nydia and I were alone. The guard calmly guided us to the exit leading to the path, opened the gate, let us through, wished us goodnight, locked the gate behind us and left. I should say that everyone’s casual attitude—both at the office where we signed the waiver and the guard’s—reinforced my confidence that the trail would be an easy descent. I had climbed and descended other hills on paths before. Some can be a little tiring, but none had ever seemed like a great challenge. Between my usual overconfidence and the park staff’s attitude, I thought: no problem, we will be down in 20 minutes and it will have been a miniature excursion. I switched on my iPhone torch because the path was in complete darkness, and we set off. The trail became progressively narrower and steeper until we reached a point where I was no longer sure we were following the right route. After trying to continue in a couple of different directions, it became obvious that we were no longer on the trail. Perhaps 20 minutes had passed. We decided to retrace our steps to the park entrance, and this is where the terror of feeling lost began: following our own path backwards, we could not find the starting point. It seems impossible, and anyone reading this will think we are a pair of idiots, but a combination of factors genuinely disorients you. This was not our first time climbing or descending a hill, nor our first time on a hiking trail, yet it is astonishing how quickly we became lost. After spending some time unable to find the starting point, I told Nydia that our only option was to try to make our way down by any means possible. I was becoming nervous because by then the park would have closed and we could hear no distant noise. My phone had about 25 per cent battery left and Nydia’s had five. It really was like something from a film. What followed was a couple of hours spent following false trails and shouting to each other in the darkness: it’s this way; no, not that way; no, that’s where we came from; no, we came from this side; we’ve already passed here; no, we never passed this tree trunk. All the trees look alike, all the trunks look alike, all the plants look alike. The vegetation is dense; we could not see the moon, buildings or distant lights through it. The ground is terribly steep and always sloping because it is a hill, and we were navigating all this by the light of an iPhone. This cannot be happening, I thought. We cannot be lost. We are in a city, not a real jungle; I know civilisation lies only 600 or 700 metres away. Anyone who knows Morro da Urca, or has at least seen it in a photograph, will say: it is a small hill, how could you get lost there? It is not small. From a distance it looks small, but in reality it is quite large. I could not find its precise area; the only figure I found says that, together with Pão de Açúcar, it covers 91.5 hectares. Morro da Urca is 220 metres high and the trail is 1.5 kilometres long. The walk normally takes around 40 minutes. So this was not really like getting lost on a tiny hill. Another thought one might have is: it is a hill, just walk in any direction until you reach the bottom. Logic would suggest that, except that whenever we tried it, all we found were cliffs and ravines, or vegetation so dense that we could not pass. One amusing detail I discovered was that the hill is covered in thorny plants, and I was wearing shorts. We reached a point where we could not continue in any direction. Each route seemed more difficult than the last; the darkness was absolute, the phone battery was running out, and reality began to sink in: yes, we were lost; yes, we needed to be rescued. Nydia had the idea—obvious, though it had not occurred to me—to begin shouting for help. In Spanish, English and Portuguese, she yelled at the top of her lungs. Looking back and wondering why shouting for help had never occurred to me, I think men are programmed to believe that we do not need help, that we can get ourselves out of any situation. It is an extremely stupid way of thinking, but one etched deep into us. I told Nydia I was going to call the emergency services. With some battery still remaining, I called. A recording said, “For English, press star.” I pressed the star and someone answered in Portuguese. I asked whether they spoke English or Spanish. No, neither. Using what terrible Portuguese I could, I tried to make myself understood. In my frustration, I spoke very slowly in Spanish to see whether that helped. I explained that we were lost on Morro da Urca and asked them to notify a park ranger or someone who could find us. Wait a moment, the person said, and put me on hold for a couple of minutes. I do not think they had understood me. Meanwhile, Nydia kept shouting. Then we heard a shout from high above on the hill. Nydia shouted again; another shout came back. They’ve found us, Nydia said. Hang up. I did. After several shouts back and forth, we tried to explain that we needed help and were lost. Finally, we saw a torch high on the hill, where the voice was coming from, and signalled with ours. Você pode me ver? I asked. Sim, vejo! came the reply. More voices sounded above us; at least we now knew that people from the park were aware we were there. They shouted for us to move to the right. Sua direita ou minha? I asked. They signalled with the torch, which looked very far away but was still visible. We began moving in the direction indicated, shouting continually so they would know where we were. After several minutes, we heard more shouts, now at our level and coming from the direction in which we were heading. We shouted; they answered. I had never felt so vulnerable, nor so happy to feel that help was coming. At last we saw the torch beam pointing towards us. Here! we shouted, as if we were adrift in an ocean and a helicopter had found us. I remember Nydia turning to look at me when they reached us as though to say: holy shit, we’re saved! Thinking about it now makes me laugh. At last we met. They were three park workers carrying torches, one with a rope. They asked whether we were all right and whether we were injured. They guided us for about ten minutes to the point where we had originally left the park. Concrete, civilisation: at last we were leaving that green hell which, under the iPhone’s light, had looked more black and white. They offered us water. I had not noticed that I was soaked in sweat and terribly thirsty. We must have looked ridiculous in our tourist clothes, with a tote bag from a Danish museum and our iPhones. Two foolish tourists who had tried to walk down the trail and got lost. We were lost for about three hours, but it felt like six or seven. When I checked the time and worked it out, I could not believe so few hours had passed. Darkness, disorientation and fear stretch time. They told us they would take us to a cable car that could carry us down. Nydia asked whether there were dangerous wild animals on the hill. Only snakes. There are two large enclosed cable cars, each holding 65 passengers, but park employees use a small open one resembling a metal basket. We climbed into it with our rescuers and began the descent. Nobody else gets to ride this one, I thought; at least I got a VIP trip out of it. As we descended, I turned to look back at the hill. It was much larger than the image I had held in my mind and surrounded by sheer drops. We are lucky not to have fallen off a cliff, I thought. I asked the park workers whether we were the first people to get lost. No. One asked where we were from; I told him. Upholding Mexico’s good name. We reached the bottom, they escorted us to the exit, and we said goodbye, thanking them profusely. We stepped out into the street as if nothing had happened. It was impossible to believe that only minutes earlier we had been contemplating spending the night on the hill waiting for daylight. We walked about 100 metres to where we would order an Uber. I looked back and the park workers were still there, watching us. They raised their hands to wave goodbye; I did the same. Five minutes later, we were in an Uber on the way to our flat, with a few scratches and cuts, but laughing.
The favelas
Something you do not understand about Rio until you have lived there for several weeks is that the favelas are everywhere. They are not remote or hidden from public view; they are fully integrated into the city’s daily life. Favelas are often misunderstood. What distinguishes them from some other poor districts or neighbourhoods in Brazil and elsewhere is that they are informal settlements: people moved there without buying land and simply began building homes in a particular area. For this reason, they have no planned urban development or basic services. Every favela can be different, and they may have their own characteristics in each city. Rio’s favelas are famous because they are scattered across its many hills. The city has extremely rugged topography, full of hills, and over the decades all of them became inhabited by people who had no other housing option. Tours take visitors into favelas, and at the beginning of our trip we planned to join one, but as the weeks passed, we lost the desire. I think we abandoned the idea for two reasons. First, as you become used to seeing favelas everywhere, passing beside them and understanding that people you meet every day live in one, the exotic quality that attracts tourists begins to disappear. The second and stronger reason is that “going to see how poor people live” feels invasive and bizarre. It seems like an activity designed to give privileged American and European tourists the chance to descend into the world of the savages and take photographs, naturally without any risk. This impression was confirmed when we saw a leaflet for one of these tours that said something like: “Visiting the favela is not like going to a zoo; we will learn about their customs and daily life.” I understand why they say it is not like visiting a zoo, but the mere need to say so made me feel disgusted as I read it. Besides, is taking an interest in “the daily life of the poor” not a form of alienation? Are they not people just like us, with different problems? I do not know; everything we saw about these tours put us off. When visiting London, Paris or Rome, it has never crossed my mind to tour their poorest neighbourhoods to see how people live. Why would I do it in Rio? I understand that ignoring their problems and circumstances is not ideal either, but should they be displayed as though in a shop window? As I mentioned when discussing the beaches, seeing groups of teenagers come down from the Cantagalo favela to enjoy the beach at weekends dismantled for me the image of favelas we see in films.
A note on safety
There is considerable concern about safety because muggings are common. We were not mugged, but on numerous occasions we noticed suspicious behaviour from people watching or following us. When we made it obvious that we had noticed, crossed the street or went inside somewhere, the suspicious people magically disappeared. They did not continue on their way; they simply turned around and returned in the direction from which they had come. I think there needs to be a greater police presence in the streets, as there is in São Paulo. It was also common for me to take out my phone in the street to check directions and sense a motorbike or bicycle approaching; when I put the phone away, they continued on their way. In my experience, you have to exercise considerable caution to avoid trouble. We walked through many parts of the city at night without incident because that is what we are accustomed to doing, whether in Mexico City, Paris or Buenos Aires. But I would not advise anyone else to do it; taking an Uber after sunset is safer. Remaining so alert to security for several weeks is exhausting. It is the only negative experience I take away from this trip.
Two more cities
Petrópolis
During my stay in Rio, I visited Petrópolis in the Serra dos Órgãos mountains. It is a small city of fewer than 300,000 people, known as “The Imperial City”. It is called that because it was conceived as a summer residence for the Brazilian emperors and built in a distinctive European architectural style. Its name means “City of Pedro”, after Emperor Pedro I, who ordered its construction. It is a common holiday destination for residents of Rio state, and I enjoyed my visit, although I came away with the impression that its tourism potential is not being fully used because there are too few restaurants, terraces, bars and shops. Compared with other similar destinations, it strikes me as wasted potential.
Curitiba
I visited this city in the state of Paraná after leaving Rio de Janeiro, but since the stay lasted only a few days and concluded my time in Brazil, I am recording it here. Curitiba feels completely different from São Paulo and Rio. It is not exactly small, with around two million inhabitants, but its quiet streets make it feel that way. Seen from above, the sheer number of high-rises is impressive, yet walking through the streets, you do not feel the population density of a megacity such as São Paulo. The climate is colder than in other parts of Brazil and the vegetation completely different: more forest than jungle. People were the most cordial and friendly of any city I visited on this trip. They often asked where we were from and took an interest in our visit. It is also the only Brazilian city where several people spoke Spanish to us, perhaps because Paraná lies in the south, closer to Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay—although that proximity is relative, since Curitiba is not on the border. It is a clean, orderly city full of parks and woodland. Overall, it left me with a very good impression.
Conclusions
The variety of things to see and do in Rio can be overwhelming. Sadly, most tourists will reach the beach and never venture beyond it. Its complex topography and dense vegetation give the city a personality unlike that of any other beach destination. Brazilians are generally cordial, but indifferent compared with people in other parts of Latin America. Brazil is an enormous and complex country; three months have allowed me only to scratch the surface. It is also a country of great cultural diversity and beauty. I finish my visit to Brazil with a good feeling and the certainty that I will return.