By Dina Mishev
RIO DE JANEIRO — Capuchin monkeys jump from branch to branch in the trees_eucalyptus, mahogany, rosewood_towering above. On the ground, coatis and lizards scuttle through thick mounds of decomposing rainforest biomass. Hiking along, we haven’t actually seen any monkeys or coatis and I get only the briefest glimpse of a lizard_its tail the length of my arm_before it disappears into deadfall and underbrush, but their rustling is non-stop.
Because humans are also scarce, I don’t mind the hidden wildlife. Walking for seven hours smack in the middle of a city with over six million residents, we’ve only seen eight other people.
At 15 square miles, Tijuca National Park might be the smallest of Brazil’s 60-some national parks. But it’s smack in the middle of Rio. Any amount of green space in a city as populous as Rio is sweet. (To compare: New York’s Central Park is 1.3 square miles.)
Tijuca is one of the largest urban forests in the world.
The city’s famous Christ the Redeemer statue is perched on the summit of one of the dozens of peaks in the park. There’s a tram that takes you there and also a hiking trail to the top. Sometimes the wait for the former is hours long. The latter, despite being terribly steep, can be so busy it feels like a mule train.
Elsewhere in Tijuca, though, it feels like a national park.
Tijuca Forest is secondary Atlantic Rain Forest. By the mid-19th century, the original Atlantic Forest ecosystem — Mata Atlântica in Portuguese — that greeted the Portuguese when they first came to this area in the early 1500s had been cut down to make way for sugar and coffee plantations. In 1861, the Brazilian king, Dom Pedro II, was prescient enough to realize this deforestation would affect the city’s supply of drinking water. He ordered the continent’s first reforestation program. In less than two decades, employees and slaves planted over 110,000 seedlings.
A century after the reforestation program was first ordered, Tijuca was named a national park. I hired Anna Atz Asen of Free Tours de Aventura to show me around.
We meet at the Afonso Pena metro station and together hop onto a bus (the 301, 302 or 345 all work) so stuffed with passengers and climbing up a road so steep and twisty I many times wonder whether we’ll actually make it to the top. Nearly an hour after boarding, we get off at Bar da Pracinha, at the Praça Afonso Viseu in Alto da Boa Vista. And that’s pretty much the last interaction with civilization we have for seven hours.
An endurance athlete, I had asked Anna to come up with a challenging day hike. From an e-mail to her: “If we could do forty kilometers, that’d be great!” A whip of a woman born and raised in Italy’s Dolomites, Anna obliges, coming up with a hike that’s not only 20-ish miles, but that also takes us to the summits of eight peaks, several of which have 360-degree views of the city.
I’ve got a GPS track of that loop, if you’re interested. Instead of killing yourself though — you’ve got to stay alive long enough to enjoy the beaches, remember — hike just Pico da Tijuca, with a summit knob so rocky and exposed that in 1920, 117 stairs were cut into the side of it and a chain railing was installed. Also, the views from its summit are the best of the day.
Anna Atz Asen of Free Tours de Aventur hikes Tijuca Forest. The forest is part of a national park that’s in the middle of the city. [The Washington Post/Dina Mishev]
Halfway up the stone staircase, we pass three of the eight people we’ll see all day: a mom, dad and their daughter, who couldn’t have been more than 4. They’re on their way down. I’m sure Mom and Dad did/do some child-carrying — if you just hike to Tijuca Peak without the seven other mountains, it’s still between six and 12 miles, depending on where you start — but she’s handling the stairs just fine on her own. Smiling, even.
Who wouldn’t smile with almost the entirety of Rio spread out below them? From Tijuca Peak’s 3,353-foot summit, I see Guanabara Bay, Bico do Papagaio Peak, Pedra da Gávea, Maracanã Stadium, the Rock of the Topsail, Barra da Tijuca, and the Atlantic Ocean. I see Christ the Redeemer, too, but only after several minutes of searching. Seen from the northwest, it’s nestled among a sea of antennas and towers.
While we sit down and snack, I pepper Anna with questions about the Serra dos Órgãos mountains, their distant, pointy spires to the south looking quite fierce. And intriguing. Part of another national park about an hour’s drive from Rio, 10 of the peaks in that range are higher than 6,600 feet. I put it on my list for next time.
A peak almost directly to our south blocks views of Copacabana Beach, but we see neighboring Ipanema Beach and then Leblon.
It is from Tijuca’s summit that the extent of Rio’s beaches finally hits me. I thought Copacabana and Ipanema were the biggest beaches in the city. They’re nothing. I mean, of course they’re great — Copacabana is directly across the street from my hotel, has the softest sand my feet have felt since visiting Zanzibar’s beaches nearly a decade ago and the water’s warm enough to swim in — but, to the west, past Leblon, in the city’s West Zone, where much of the construction for the 2016 Olympic Games is happening, stretch miles and miles and miles more of white sand.
My last day in Rio, I explore these beaches. Driving west out of the city with a crew from Rio EcoeSporte Adventures, we pass more beaches than I can count, much less remember the names of.
I do remember Sao Conrado, because that’s the beach where the paragliders and hang gliders who launch off Pedra Bonita land. And also Tijuca Beach, because it’s there where Sergio, a true Carioca (what natives of Rio are called) and Rio EcoeSporte’s founder, alerts me to the presence of caimans, alligator-like creatures, in the brackish lagoons opposite the beach.
“But these are Carioca caimans,” he says. “They’re relaxed, like the people here. They’re no problem to you.” Evidently, the sharks sometimes seen off these beaches got the same memo the caimans did. “Sharks here are relaxed, too. No problem,” Sergio says.
I’m told Prainha Beach, about an hour via our scenic back route from my hotel in Copacabana, is one of the best spots in the city to surf.
After the barely-there-ness of many of the bathing suits — worn by both women and men — at Copacabana Beach, I’m surprised to learn Rio has only one nude beach, Abricó, west of Prainha and east of Grumarí, which is the last beach in this stretch you can drive to.
We drive past Grumarí without stopping. We’re headed to Praias Selvagens, Rio’s wild beaches, accessible only to those willing to hike.
Two hours by car from Copacabana, the neighborhood of Barra de Guaratiba is still in the city of Rio. Walking up a residential street, past two- and three-story houses painted every shade of the rainbow but all with red tile roofs, it doesn’t feel it, though.
Sergio Tavares and Robson Costa on the rock formation known in English as Turtle Stone, which overlooks wild beaches. [The Washington Post/Dina Mishev]
A white toy poodle looks down on us from an unfinished third story. Houses spill down the hillside until the hillside meets the Atlantic, its water clearer and bluer here than at Copacabana, perhaps because we’re further from the mouth of Guanabara Bay and its heavy shipping traffic.
Making a sharp right at a tree decorated with bright buttons nailed into it in the shape of flowers, the street eventually morphs from a potholed lane to a dirt path. “Tijuca Forest is nice, but now you’ll get to see the real wild,” says guide Julián Espinosa.
Cutting across a steep, vegetated hillside, we’re soon out of Guaratiba’s residential area and looking several hundred feet down onto the Atlantic Ocean, which fills the horizon.
Walking the 1 1/2 miles to the closest wild beach — several beaches are stacked one after the other, with increasingly exiguous trails linking them — something takes me back to a walnut forest I hiked around in Kyrgyzstan.
If I were to be transported anywhere, somewhere coastal would make sense. But Kyrgyzstan? I can’t figure out what here, 23 degrees south of the equator, makes me think of Central Asia. It’s certainly not the salty air, the petrified dirt beneath my feet, or the dreadlocked guide with Christ the Redeemer tattooed onto the back of his muscular calf.
I puzzle over this until it’s time to hike up Pedra da Tartaruga — turtle stone in English. Turtle Stone looks like its name would suggest, a rocky double mound rising out of the ocean, attached to the mainland by an isthmus barely wider than some of the bikinis at Copacabana. We do the steep walk up the shell part, although a trail does go to the turtle’s head.
Resting at the top of the shell, 300 feet above the ocean, we get the day’s best view of the wild beaches; four of them of varying sizes and separated by rock outcrops spilling down the hillside and into the ocean. They have as much in common with Ipanema or Copacabana as Washington, D.C., does with Washington state.
My day on Copacabana was wonderful, and exactly what would be expected at a major beach in a big city: reading a novel for the first time in over a year and, with an attendant from the Copacabana Palace watching my lounger and belongings, getting up every so often to wade into the ocean to a point where it is just deep enough the waves knock me over. There was great people-watching. And every five minutes, someone came over wanting me to buy a beach towel, or hat, or massage, or temporary tattoo.
Walking back across the isthmus, we head for the first wild beach, Praia do Perigoso. Its sand squishing up between my toes, I’m no longer in Rio, but on some exotic, remote island. Or so I think. On a beach the size of five football fields, there are half a dozen people. This is not what I expect in Rio.
In the distance, islets rise out of the ocean. At our feet, emerald green waves _taller than those at Copacabana_ crash into clean, white sand. “Perigoso means ‘danger,’ so this is ‘Danger Beach,’ ” Julián says. “But I think the only danger here is that you won’t want to leave.” Sergio adds: “It’s Carioca danger.”
We swim, then find rocks to rest on. The sun dries us off quickly, and leaves a gritty layer of salt behind on my skin.
The salt won’t last, so I look for a seashell to take home as a memento. There are none. But, where the beach meets the forest, there are nuts, still in their shells, everywhere. They could be walnuts _the Kyrgyzstan connection! — but I’m not sure. I ask Julián. He doesn’t know the name, but says the energy bar he gave me earlier had a picture of one its wrapper. Duh. Of course the forests around the wild beaches are full of Brazil nut trees.
Brazil nuts are an entirely different beast than walnuts, but evidently, the trees they grow on are close enough to be reminiscent. (At least, for someone who’s only exposed to nut trees when hiking in exotic places.)
My time in Rio could end now, and I’d be happy. But Sergio has another adventure planned. “It’s not hiking, or a beach, but I think you’ll like it,” he says, his English much better than he gives himself credit for.
Less than an hour later, we’ve dropped off our beach supplies at the car and are standing, feet hip-width apart, on stand-up paddleboards and making our way across the mouth of the Canal do Bacalhau in the protected area of Restinga da Marambaia. Safely across — not that the crossing is at all technical — Sergio points deep into a thicket of mangroves, most of their rainbowed roots exposed because it’s low tide.
He’s indicating the spot where he once saw one of the prettiest birds found in the area.
I can’t bring myself to look for birds, though. In addition to living in the Barrio da Tijuca lagoons, caimans live here, too. I might risk an afternoon on a beach that is dangerous Carioca-style, but I don’t know whether I’m yet ready to meet any caimans, no matter how relaxed they are.
And we don’t. An hour later, we’re returning our paddleboards. We didn’t see any caimans, but neither did we see Sergio’s bird. Maybe it’s hanging out with Tijuca’s coatis and monkeys.
A beach in Rio de Janeiro’s Barra da Tijuca neighborhood, where the 2016 Summer Olympics will be held. [The Washington Post/Dina Mishev]
—
IF YOU GO:
WHERE TO STAY:
– Belmond Copacabana Palace
1720 Av. Atlântica, Copacabana
011-55-21-2548-7070
www.belmond.com/copacabana-palace-rio-de-janeiro
One block from the famous beach, the lobby of this gracious art deco hotel smells of lemongrass. Its beach service includes sun loungers, umbrellas and attendants that watch your belongings while you swim. Rooms from $590.
– Mama Ruisa
132 Rua Santa Cristina, Santa Teresa
011-55-21-2508-8142
www.mamaruisa.com
A late 19th-century palace in the hilly, bohemian Santa Teresa neighborhood, this hotel is far from beaches, but convenient to Tijuca Park. Rooms from $245.
WHERE TO EAT:
– Casa da Feijoada
10 Rua Prudente de Moraes, Ipanema
011-55-21-2523-4994
bit.ly/1HveJr6
Usually reserved for Sunday, the traditional meat and side-dish-heavy Brazilian stew feijoada — pronounced “fedj-wa-da” — is available daily at this Ipanema cafe. Entrees from $50.
– Le Blé Noir
19 Rua Xavier Silveira, Copacabana
011-55-21-2267-6969
Expect to wait for a table at this tiny traditional creperie in Ipanema unless you arrive shortly after it opens. The Ouessant includes caramelized figs, Porto wine, vanilla, goat cheese, cured ham and crushed walnuts. No reservations. Open nightly at 7 p.m. Entrees from $11.
– Boulangerie Guerin
920 Av. Nossa Senhora de Copacabana, Copacabana
011-55-21-2523-4140
www.boulangerieguerin.com.br
Dominique Guerin’s grandfather opened a bakery in the Paris suburbs in 1921; Dominique opened one here focusing on “revolutionized French classics” in 2012. Open daily from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Entrees from $5.
WHAT TO DO:
– Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro
1008 Rua Jardim Botânico, Jardim Botânico
011-55-21-3874-1808
www.jbrj.gov.br
Wide pathways wind past upwards of 6,000 species of plants, including collections of bromeliads, cacti, orchid and carnivorous plants. Open Monday noon to 5 p.m.; Tuesday to Sunday 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Adults older than 60 and children younger than 7, free; $2.50 otherwise.
– Rio EcoeSporte Adventures
011-55-21-96416-4930
www.rioecoesporte.com.br
Get away from the hustle and bustle of downtown by hiking to a wild beach, taking a surf lesson, paragliding or stand-up paddleboarding. All adventures are custom. From $150.
– Tijuca National Park
011-55-21-2491-1700
www.parquedatijuca.com.br
The urban forest is in the heart of Rio. The park includes several popular trails as well as miles of less-traveled hiking trails, howler monkeys and ocelots. Open daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m. during Rio’s winter and 8 a.m.-6 p.m. during Rio’s summer.
– Christ the Redeemer
Rua Cosme Velho, 513, Laranjeiras
011-55-21-2558-1329
www.christtickets.com
Trams leave every 30 minutes or so to escort you to the 2,300-ish foot summit of Corcovado and the base of the 98-foot art deco statue of Jesus. The statue was designed by French sculptor Paul Landowski and named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007. Open daily from 8 a.m.-7 p.m. From $17.
– Free Tours de Aventura
011-55-21-98002-7520
www.freetoursdeaventura.com
Group hikes go out almost daily and focus on the city’s wilder places — Urca Hill (an easy hike next to the more popular, and strenuous, Sugarloaf hike), Primatas Waterfall, Corcovado, Pico do Papagaio, Tijuca Peak, Vista Chinesa, and Pedra Bonita. Group tours are free, but tips are encouraged. Private hikes are also available, starting at $75.
INFORMATION:
– www.rcvb.com.br
– www.rioofficialguide.com