This week’s dream: a walk across Rio de Janeiro
Built around a series of forested hills and mountains running down to and along a coastal plain, Rio de Janeiro’s different neighbourhoods were largely cut off from one another until the 20th century, when “modern transport and the pressures of space squeezed them together”, says Wanderlust. This prolonged isolation has allowed them to retain their distinct characters – from “sleepy” fishing communities to sprawling favelas – and each has its own “captivating views”.
Three times the size of Cape Town and with twice the population of Hong Kong, Rio is overwhelming for first-time explorers, but a new trail, the Transcarioca, has opened to help connect the city’s “cultural nooks, densely forested paths” and hidden corners. It takes ten days to walk the 180km route, but you can “dip in and out” for shorter hikes. On any given day you may end up on an entirely deserted beach, or up a hill gazing over the city’s “serrated skyline”.
The first section begins at Praia Vermelha, a peaceful cove where yachts sway in the water and pensioners “perform their morning stretches” in the early light. The trail cuts abruptly up Sugarloaf Mountain through thick forest carpeted with mosses and orchids, where “tiny marmoset monkeys chirrup in the trees”. At the top, you emerge to a glorious panorama that’s both familiar and improbable. There’s Christ the Redeemer crowning Corcovado up ahead, while to the left is the “yellow ribbon” of Copacabana beach, with its apartment blocks “stacked like sugar cubes”. Hulking mountains are shrouded in green and distant roads thread to the horizon. It would be easy to spend a day here “lost in the views”. But there’s always tomorrow, for another trail and another side of Rio. Journey Latin America (020-3553 9699; journeylatinamerica.co.uk) has nine days in Rio and the Emerald Coast from £1,267pp, excluding flights.