funtotravel.info PLACES: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Quite simply one of the most naturally beautiful and fun cities on the planet. Yes it has its problems with violent crime and drugs, but the world can prepare itself for one hell of a party when the Olympics and World Cup come to town during the next decade.

With so much to see and do and so many amazing things on offer, it's not called the cidade maravilhosa (marvellous city) for nothing. The best way to guide you through this simply fantastic city destination is to let you know what we'd do if we had a weekend to kill here. Note that we have recommended throughout that you take taxis - they are a safe and inexpensive way of getting around. We would normally recommend taking public transport, but for many of the sights in Rio it is just not very convenient.

Remember that if you are a sensible traveller and keep your wits about you, the worst thing that will happen to you in Rio is that you'll have a pretty bad hangover. Be aware that English is not very widely spoken (this may change with the Olympics and World Cup coming), so take a good phrasebook, smile, be polite and patient and you'll be fine!

The funtotravel.info guide to Brazil can be found here. Click here for the funtotravel.info members' guide to Rio de Janeiro.

Day 1
After a quick breakfast in your hotel/hostel (Brazilians don't seem to be big on breakfasts really, much like the rest of South America), take a taxi (plentiful and inexpensive in Rio) to Rua Cosme Vehlo 513: you are about to visit a wonder of the world. We know that we've put it first up on our itinerary, but we really don't think that a visit to see Christ the Redeemer on his lofty perch should be delayed by even a second. It's just a jaw-droppingly brilliant experience, though not cheap at around US$12 for the return cable car ride. Take your time at the top, as crowds are likely to be pretty big. The view needs to be seen to be believed:

View from Christ the Redeemer

Take in the sweeping view over Sugarloaf mountain, Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, Botafogo, Ipanema and Copacabana beaches and and if you have the time, pause for a coffee at the unsurprisingly expensive cafe at the top - it's well worth taking your time! Steel yourself for the bill and one last look up at Christ (literally), before taking the tram back down to earth. Don't be surprised if you're serenaded by a samba band on the way down - you should give them some of your change.

Jesus: big in Brazil.

Find yourself a cab and head down to Ipanema beach for a spot of lunch and some sun-bathing. Rio is chock full of excellent eating options, but being the gluttons we are suggest you head for one of the excellent 'por kilo' restaurants in Ipanema. These are buffet restaurants where you pay depending on the weight of food on your plate. Dismiss any sniffy thoughts you might have about buffet food: the fodder on offer is fresh, tasty and varied with great meats, pastas, fried foods, sushi, salad etc on offer. We would recommend the Frontera, which is slightly more upmarket than most, but with a great range of food. Prices are reasonable in what can be a very expensive city (about US$12-15 per kilo - a hell of a lot of sushi!).

Having stuffed yourself silly take the short walk to Ipanema beach and pick yourself a spot. We were reliably told by a number of cariocas (Rio locals) that Copacabana is for tourists and Ipanema is for locals. We think it's prettier and a bit less seedy. You are free to just find yourself a free stretch of sand and throw down your beach towel (harder than you think with huge crowds at weekends!), but you'd be well advised to keep an eye on your things as petty theft is rife. We'd recommend taking up one of the Godfather-like beach vendors on their offer of  a couple of deckchairs on their 'patch': spend the afternoon being waited on hand and foot (as well as feeling like your things were being watched for you) - well worth the slightly-inflated price for drinks and snacks as well as the charge for the chairs (around US$5). 

Ipanema beach: stunning. Speedos everywhere: not so stunning.

Having spent a few hours sunning yourself, indulging in some of the most fascinating people watching on the planet (speedos are just plain wrong wherever you are though!) and marvelling at the sheer range of goods being hawked by the beach sellers, it's time to head back to your hotel/hostel to get ready for a night on the tiles.

Before sunset, take a taxi to the bondinho (street car) station on Rua Profesor Lelio Gama and take the tram up to the beautiful district of Santa Teresa, a hillside area full of charm and colonial architecture, with a slightly rough and ready feel. The tram costs around US$0.40 and takes about 15-20 minutes, though expect a wait around at the station for departure as they only leave every half hour - find a guide here. Don't be alarmed if locals run alongside and get a free ride by hanging off the side - it's normal! Get off at Largo de Guimaraes, a square with some great cafes and restaurants.

The Bondinho tram in Santa Teresa

Find a restaurant that takes your fancy (we like Bar do Mineiro at Rua Pachoal Carlos Magno 99) and stay for some delicious and filling food as well as a few cachaça (cane sugar liquor) cocktails before taking a cab on to Lapa for dancing (don't walk - the neighbourhood isn't the safest after dark). Lapa is THE area of the city to head to if you fancy dancing the night away - getting your groove on to some samba beats is a must-do experience in Rio. We recommend checking out Carioca de Gama - our favourite of the samba venues in Lapa and a great place for first timers. If you don't fancy dancing then stay in Santa Teresa and check out the bars around Largo de Guimaraes and Largo das Neve for a good drink. Definitely take a cab home - there are hundreds around Lapa around kicking out time so you won't have a problem getting home safely!


Day 2 
Bit of a hangover? Start your day with brunch at the brilliant Caroline Cafe near the Botanical Gardens to help lift the fog around your head. If you can't face moving that far then we suggest trying one of the many amazing fresh juice bars around the city - try an acai juice if you want to be like a local. It's purple, blended with honey, sugar, banana or even nuts and it's quite delicious.


Having sated your appetite, do something that will get you under the skin of the 'real' Rio a little more. Rocinha is the first and biggest of Rio's favelas (shanty towns), and you can take a fascinating half-day tour around the neighbourhood with a local guide (do NOT go into any of the favelas on your own). You'll be safe, well-informed and looked after on your trip around this fascinating city within a city. We'd recommend Exotic Tours for their excellent attitude to sustainable tourism. An incredible way to spend half a day, and it will teach you something about how the city really works away from the glitz and glamour of Ipanema and Copacabana.


If day 2 happens to be a Sunday as we've planned, ask your guide to drop you near Copacabana beach, which is brilliant to explore on this particular day because the Avenida Atlantica (the beach road) is closed to traffic since it's Shopping Day! 

Sundays: No traffic on Copacabana beach

Drink some fresh coconut juice or a caipirinha if that takes your fancy, grab a snack from one of the roving food venders or cafe cabins on the beach then take a taxi to the cable car station for Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf Mountain in English). A return ticket to the top costs about US$12, and not only are the views back over the city stunning, but it's an incredible place for sunset.

View from Sugarloaf Mountain

Come back down to street level on the cable car and make your way back to Ipanema, where for your last supper you will sample a Brazilian eating tradition: the churrascaria. If you're a vegetarian, this isn't for you (though there is a seafood version if that's your bag) - these are all you can eat barbecue restaurants. You pay a set price (not including drinks and sometimes desserts) and are seated at a table with a reversible red/green card. As long as you have the green side showing, the waiters will continue to bring you whatever delicious type of meat the kitchen grills up that second, which will then be carved at your table: gorge yourself on every cut of steak you can think of, sausage, chicken, pork etc until you take mercy on your stomach and show the red side of your card. At this point they will stop serving you meat. Help yourself to the delicious buffet of salads/potatoes/sushi etc, which is included in the price. If you get hungry again, just flip your card to green and let the orgy of eating continue! You'll find many of these restaurants all over Rio but our favourite was Carretao. We saw one woman there cry because she loved the meat so much but couldn't fit any more in. Honestly.


If you still have room in your stomach, head to the obligatory Irish Pub, Shenanigan's, which is popular with tourists and locals, and is a great place to watch sport. After this collapse exhausted following a fun-filled two days.


We hope you've enjoyed your brief virtual tour around this incredible city. We've barely scratched the surface and there is so much more on offer - go for yourselves, explore and report back to us! We haven't even mentioned carneval! We'll save that for another time....


To read the funtotravel.info guide to Brazil, click this link

funtotravel.info ISSUES: 'Green' Travel - an oxymoron?

Practical steps you can take to travel more sustainably.

Sustainable travel is an important and challenging issue. Travel, by its very nature causes harm to environment, especially as a result of the typically large distances clocked up by backpackers on long-haul flights across the world. It is far too simple though to dismiss travelling as something that's destroying the planet. We hold the opposite belief – that travelling can be a force of good. By visiting different countries and experiencing different cultures, travellers understand that there is a true world community: by continuing to travel we are improving peoples' livelihoods and promoting the development of local economies as well as helping to conserve countries' cultural and natural heritages.

Travelling also makes us aware of the problems of those people less fortunate than ourselves. The world belongs to all of us and we all have a huge responsibility towards it. Cutting down our carbon footprint and our impact on the environment.

As we have stated there is no way of getting around the fact that many travellers take longhaul flights to reach their desired destinations. What can we do practically to reign in the effects of this?

First of all, rather than fly long distances, we could look for destinations of interest closer to home so that we can avoid flying. If you live within Europe then you have a vast array of destinations that you can reach by plane or bus, travelling on public transport and thus cutting down on your carbon foot-print. Likewise if you are from the States, Canada or Australia then you are lucky enough to live in huge and diverse countries in terms of people, landscapes and attractions. Why not hit the road within your own country by public transport and see what there is to offer?

If you do choose to visit destinations further away that you cannot travel to overland then of course you will have to fly. There are ways in which you can minimise your carbon footprint, and the most obvious of these is to offset your carbon. Many airlines are now offering to do this for you at the point of booking, but if you prefer to do it directly with a reputable company then we suggest that you look at carboncare.com.

This is fine as a starting point, but we feel that the situation with carbon off-setting is getting slightly out of hand. It should be a tool by which people look at their carbon footprint and seek to reduce it, but instead people are only paying the offset fee to ease their conscience and doing nothing to reassess their travel plans or travel more responsibly. For this reason we would advise you to think about how you can reduce your carbon emissions as well as offset the ones you can't avoid.

If you are on a round the world trip then think best how you can cut down on flights when you have reached the region in which you are planning to travel. Take buses or trains rather than internal flights – not only will taking public transport cut down on your carbon footprint, but it also means you are far more likely to meet and interact with the locals and experience life and destinations in-between that you may well fall in love with. The experiences that you have on never-ending bus journeys, full of livestock and without a toilet will be the ones that look back at when you get home with a smile on your face – they make for great stories too. Don't miss out!

If you do have to take a long haul flight to your destination then we'd recommend that you use a Carbon Comparison flight search like the one offered by responsibletravel.com. This will give you an indication of how much carbon dioxide your journey will produce and which airline has the least impact on the environment.

Protecting local cultures and helping local economies

We should all ensure that we are doing our best to protect the interests of the countries that we visit and the people who live there rather than lining the pockets of large corporations from our own countries. We want to help and learn about local cultures and peoples rather than exploit them. There are many ways in which we can do this, by promoting local businesses and fair trade practices, hiring local guides and doing our best to ensure that our consumption of local products, water etc is sustainable.

If you choose to travel with an organised group or on a tour then think carefully about which one you go with and choose one that has a written policy on responsibility and sustainability. Be sure that they support local businesses and minimise their environmental impact. Do not be afraid to ask questions of them before you book.
What you can do before you go:

• Read up as much as possible on local cultures and do your best to learn some of the local languages – respect the local people.
• Do your research to see if there are any useful gifts that you can take out with your for the locals i.e. pens and schoolbooks for the local children.
• If you have bought any new equipment (bags, cameras, clothes etc) please remove any excess packaging before you go thus easing the load on the destination country who might not have adequate waste disposal means.

What you can do whilst you're away:

• Buy local produce from local businesses and ensure that the money you spend stays within the community.
• Use local guides rather than guides shipped in from elsewhere.
• Please do not purchase any artefacts, hard wood products or endangered species –this sounds like obvious advice but you'd be amazed by how many people do.
• Respect local cultures and do not act in a way that will upset the local people – don't act drunk in public, ensure that you dress appropriately and behave in a manner that is a credit to yourself and other travellers: you won't be the first to pass through there and you certainly won't be the last so don't tarnish future travellers' experiences.
• Take public transport as much as possible as opposed to flying to keep your impact on the environment as low as possible and be sure to walk or cycle as much as you can to lower your carbon footprint even further.
• Use water sparingly as supplies of clean and treated water can be in short supply in many areas. Refill your water bottle wherever possible and don't buy new ones all the time.
• Ask questions of the locals and take interest in their traditions and cultures – you are not going to a zoo and you are not, we hope, just going to hang out with other travellers.
• In poorer countries, rather than giving money to random beggars, try instead to find charities and organisations that have been set up to tackle the problems of poverty and homelessness and give to them instead to be sure that the money is being spent in the right way.
What you can do on your return:

• Donate to local projects and charities in areas that made your trip really special – give something back to the communities that gave you such wonderful memories.
• If you promised to send someone a picture or stay in touch by email then please make sure you follow up on this – it can mean an awful lot to the people to whom you made the promise.

You will find a growing number of businesses while you're away that claim to be 'green', 'eco-friendly' or even 'eco-lodges'. Please do your bit to ensure that they are what they seem by asking them the following questions before handing over your hard earned cash:

• Do they have a written policy on sustainability? Any company that is serious about best-practice when it comes to sustainability and reducing carbon emissions will have one.
• How do they measure their contribution in terms of being sustainable?
• How many local people do they employ and how many of these are in management positions? If there aren't any then ask why not.
• What are they doing to protect the environment?
• Are they working with any local charities in this regard?
• What percentage of their products or services are sourced from within 20km of the site? Are they using as much local produce and people-power as possible.
• What are they doing with their waste-water and how do they heat their buildings (i.e. do they use solar power)?
• Do any guides that they employ come from the local community?

If the answers to any/some/all of these questions make you suspicious then you are better off taking your business to somewhere with better sustainability practices.

Community based travel is a great way to put money directly back into a community and meet the locals first-hand. These schemes are not however getting the marketing or sales they deserve, so check out responsibletravel.com’s database of such schemes and see if any are of interest.

As you can see from all of the above, sustainability and collective responsibility for our planet is a growing concern, and one that all travellers should do their best to help with. By taking the small steps listed in the paragraphs above you can help to do your bit to reduce our collective carbon footprint, put money back into local communities, maintain the respect of the inhabitants of the destinations we travel to and to have a great time in the process.

If you have enjoyed this blog then why not check out the funtotravel.info e-book which covers other green issues as well as giving practical advice on travelling the world? Click here to get yourself a copy.