A single walker on a dune crest above a turquoise rainwater lagoon in the Lençóis Maranhenses

Signature Journey

Adventure & Active

Rather do than watch

Fourteen days of doing rather than watching: the hardest hike in Rio, an inflatable straight under the Iguaçu falls, surf and forest trails on our home island, and a three-day crossing of the Lençóis dunes on foot.

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Duration

14 days / 13 nights, and it works from 11

Start / End

Rio de Janeiro → Lençóis Maranhenses

Accommodation

Boutique hotels, a surf pousada, oasis huts

Highlights

Pedra da Gávea · Macuco Safari · Surf · Dune crossing

Most Brazil itineraries are built around viewpoints you drive to. This one is built around the days you earn. It is for people whose idea of a good holiday involves sore legs, salt in your hair and at least one moment where you are not entirely sure you can do the next bit.

The route runs the length of the country and gets harder as it goes. Rio first, where the Atlantic forest starts inside the city and the best view in town is a four-hour scramble rather than a cable car. Then Iguaçu, where you take an inflatable straight into the spray under the cataracts. Then Florianópolis, our home island, where the surf and the forest trails are the whole point. And finally the Lençóis Maranhenses, where you walk for three days across a desert full of rainwater lagoons and sleep in oasis villages that have no road to them.

Nothing here is a fixed departure and nothing is graded for the average of a group. Every day is private and matched to what you actually want: your guide will happily take the harder line up Pedra da Gávea, or route around it entirely. The dune crossing is the one part with a real fitness threshold, and there is an honest answer about that in the questions below.

Fourteen days as written. It works at eleven if you drop a region, and we would drop one rather than shorten all of them.

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Pedra da Gávea, the hardest hike in Rio, and the only place you look down on the whole city and the sea at once
Tandem hang-gliding off Pedra Bonita, landing on the sand at São Conrado
The Macuco Safari, an inflatable driven straight into the spray beneath the Iguaçu falls
Surf, sandboard and Atlantic-forest trails on Florianópolis, where we live
Three days on foot across the Lençóis dunes, sleeping in oasis villages with no road in
Every day privately guided and graded to you, not to a group average

The active route

Four regions, and each one asks more of you

The order is deliberate. Rio gets your legs under you, Iguaçu is the adrenaline day, Florianópolis is where you find your rhythm in the water, and the Lençóis crossing is the thing you came for. By the time you start walking into the dunes you have had eleven days of build-up.

1 Rio de Janeiro

2 Foz do Iguaçu

3 Florianópolis

4 Lençóis Maranhenses

This is just one example of how your days could unfold, every itinerary is private and fully tailored, so we gladly reshape it around your pace, interests and travel dates.

Rio de Janeiro

Day 1–3

3 nights

Rio is the only city in the world where the rainforest starts in the middle of it, which makes it the right place to start a trip like this. Three nights, and none of them spent queueing for a cable car you could have hiked to instead.

Day 1
Landing, and a look at what you signed up for

Met inside the terminal and driven to a hotel a block from Ipanema. Nothing is scheduled, but if the flight has not flattened you there is a run or a swim to be had before dark, and your guide will point out the flat-topped rock on the horizon that you are climbing the day after tomorrow.
- Airport pickup
- Arrival day
Day 2
Pedra da Gávea, the hard one

Just under 850 metres straight up out of the sea, roughly four to five hours round trip, and near the top a slab of bare rock you go up on hands and feet with a guide on the rope. What you get for it is the view nobody else on your flight home will have: the whole city on one side, open Atlantic on the other, and hang-gliders below you. There is an easier summit if you would rather, and no shame in saying so at breakfast.
- 842 m
- Scramble section
- Guided on rope
Day 3
Off a ramp, then into the surf

The morning is spent stepping off a wooden ramp at Pedra Bonita strapped to a hang-glider and a pilot, which takes about eight minutes and ends with a soft landing on the sand at São Conrado. The afternoon goes west to Prainha, the surf beach cariocas drive out to at the weekend, with a board and a lesson if you want one. If the wind cancels the flight, and sometimes it does, the day becomes the Tijuca waterfall trails instead.
- Tandem flight
- Prainha surf
- Weather dependent

Flight Rio → Foz do Iguaçu

Foz do Iguaçu

Day 4–5

2 nights

275 waterfalls over a cliff nearly three kilometres wide. Most visitors look at them from a walkway. You will do that too, on both sides, because the Argentine walkways over the Devil's Throat are genuinely one of the great things to stand on. But the reason we come here on this trip is the boat.

Day 4
Straight in under the cataracts

The Brazilian side first, the panorama trail that gives you the whole sweep in one look. Then the Macuco Safari: a jeep track down through the forest, into an inflatable, and the driver takes you upriver and straight into the base of the falls, twice, because the first time nobody manages to keep their eyes open. Dry bag for everything. You will be soaked to the skin and it is worth it.
- Brazilian side
- Macuco Safari
- You will get soaked
Day 5
The Argentine side, then south

Across the border early, before the day groups, for the walkways that carry you out over the lip of the Devil's Throat, where the falls stop being in front of you and start being all around you. If there is appetite for more, the Poço Preto trail can be ridden by bike and finished by boat. Evening flight south to the island.
- Devil's Throat
- Bike trail optional
- Evening flight

Flight Foz do Iguaçu → Florianópolis

Florianópolis

Day 6–9

4 nights

This is where we live, so this section is not researched, it is just what we do at the weekend. Forty-two beaches on one island, an Atlantic forest running down to the sand in the south, and a surf culture that is the real thing rather than a photo opportunity. Four nights, because the island is the part of this route people always wish they had given another day.

Day 6
Learning the island

You can drive the island end to end in about ninety minutes, and doing exactly that on the first day is the fastest way to understand it: the developed, sociable north with its flat water, and the raw south with dirt access roads and beaches you can only walk to. We finish in the south, which is where you will want to be for the next three days.
- Island orientation
- North and south
Day 7
Surf, and a dune to slide down

A morning in the water at Praia Mole or Joaquina with an instructor who will have you standing up, whatever you claim about your coordination. Joaquina also has a wall of sand behind it that people have been sandboarding down since the seventies, and it is exactly as ridiculous and as fun as it sounds. Late afternoon, oysters at Ribeirão da Ilha, which are farmed in the channel in front of the table.
- Surf lesson
- Sandboarding
- Oysters
Day 8
Lagoinha do Leste, on foot only

The best beach on the island has no road to it, which is the whole reason it is the best beach on the island. About an hour and a half over a forested ridge from Pântano do Sul, dropping onto a wide arc of sand with a lagoon behind it and usually a couple of dozen people on it. Swim, eat what you carried in, walk back over the other trail, or take a boat if your legs have opinions.
- No road access
- Ridge trail
- Boat return option
Day 9
Paddling, and the long flight north

A gentler last morning: a kayak on Lagoa do Peri or the Costa da Lagoa trail, where you walk in along the water to a village with no road and come back by boat with a plate of fish inside you. Then the airport, and the one genuinely long travel leg of this trip, up to São Luís in the far northeast. We time it so you arrive with an evening to sleep before the dunes.
- Kayak or lagoon trail
- Long flight north

Flight Florianópolis → São Luís, then road to the park

Lençóis Maranhenses

Day 10–14

4 nights · 3 of them in the dunes

A thousand square kilometres of white dunes that fill with rainwater every year and turn into thousands of freshwater lagoons. It is not a desert, it rains too much for that, and that contradiction is the whole point of the place. Almost everyone sees it on a half-day jeep tour from Barreirinhas. You are going to walk across it, which is a completely different thing.

Day 10
To the edge of the sand

Overland from São Luís to the gateway village, an afternoon to check the pack, and an early night. Your guide goes through what you carry and what stays behind, which is more than you think: everything you need for three days has to go on your back or on the mule, and water is the heavy part.
- Overland transfer
- Kit check
Day 11
Into the dunes, and the first lagoons

You start before the sun is properly up, because by eleven the sand is too hot to be pleasant. The first crest is the moment the trip makes sense: white sand to the horizon in every direction with turquoise water sitting in every hollow, and no structure of any kind in sight. Swim in whichever lagoon you like. You sleep at Baixa Grande, an oasis of a few families and a lot of palm trees, in a hammock, and the Milky Way is genuinely the brightest thing you have ever seen.
- Dawn start
- Lagoon swims
- Hammock night
Day 12
The deep middle

The longest day, and the one furthest from anything. You cross to Queimada dos Britos, a settlement of a handful of families who have lived inside the park for generations and who cook you dinner. There is no electricity, no phone signal and no road, and the quiet in the middle of the afternoon is a thing people remember longer than the view.
- Longest stage
- No signal
- Family kitchen
Day 13
The last crest, and the sea

A shorter day that ends the way the whole thing was always going to end: you come over a final dune and the Atlantic is in front of you. Down into Atins, a fishing village of sand streets that has only recently stopped being entirely off the map, a shower, and a plate of prawns you will think about for a while.
- Dunes to Atlantic
- Atins
- First shower in three days
Day 14 · Finale
Down the river, and home

Out by boat down the Rio Preguiças rather than by road, past the Mandacaru lighthouse and the sandbanks, which is both the nicest way to leave and the fastest. Then São Luís and the flight home. If you have days left, this is the natural place to add them: Jericoacoara is along the coast from here, and it is where a lot of people wish they had gone next.
- Rio Preguiças by boat
- Departure

Fourteen days. One of them ends at the sea, on foot.

Tell us your dates and roughly how hard you want this to be, and you will have a personal, non-binding version of the route within 24 hours.

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What's Included

Included in this journey

Guides who do this themselves

A climbing guide on Pedra da Gávea, a surf instructor on the island, and a Lençóis guide who grew up walking these dunes. English or German speaking, and none of them is reading from a script.

Every activity as described

Pedra da Gávea with technical support, the tandem flight, both sides of Iguaçu, the Macuco Safari, surf and sandboard sessions, the Lagoinha trail and the full three-day dune crossing with permits and porterage.

Every transfer and domestic flight

Three domestic flights booked and timed around the activities, all airport pickups, and the overland and river legs at the Lençóis end. The long hop north is planned so you sleep before you walk.

A bed that matches the day

Boutique hotels in Rio and Iguaçu, a surf pousada in the south of Florianópolis, and in the dunes a hammock under a palm roof, which is not a downgrade but the best night of the trip.

The safety side, handled quietly

Ropes and helmets where they belong, certified operators for the flight and the boat, water and electrolytes carried on the crossing, and an honest conversation beforehand about what each day actually demands.

Days that can be swapped

Wind cancels hang-gliding, swell flattens, and the dune lagoons are seasonal. Every stop has a planned alternative that is not a consolation prize, and we tell you the fallback before you go, not on the morning.

Where it takes you