Beaches & Islands

01

Rio de Janeiro

Day 1–3

3 nights

Your flight lands here, and Rio is the only city on earth where a proper beach day and a rainforest mountain fit into the same afternoon. Three nights is the least it takes to see the two peaks and still have a full day where the only decision is which stretch of sand you want. If you already know you want more city, this is the stop that grows first.

1. Day 1

   Landing in the Cidade Maravilhosa

   Your guide meets you inside the terminal at Galeão and drives you to your hotel in Ipanema or Copacabana, a block or two from the sand. Nothing is scheduled after that. If your body clock allows it, walk to Arpoador for the sunset, the rock between the two beaches where a few hundred people applaud the sun as it goes down, which sounds ridiculous until you are standing there doing it too.

   • Airport pickup
   • Arrival day
2. Day 2

   Corcovado early, Sugarloaf late

   The two big ones, timed rather than queued for. The cog railway climbs through the Tijuca forest to Christ the Redeemer in the morning, before the coach groups arrive and while the bay is still clear. The middle of the day is yours on the beach. In the late afternoon the two glass cable cars take you up Sugarloaf, and you stay for the moment the city switches its lights on below you.

   • Corcovado
   • Sugarloaf
   • Private guide
3. Day 3

   A carioca beach day

   Rio's beaches are not just one stretch of sand; they are a dozen distinct vibe-zones sharing a coastline, where the numbered lifeguard posts (postos) tell you exactly where you are. Today is entirely yours to enjoy a free day at the beach: grab a chair and an umbrella, soak up the sun, and let the beach vendors keep the cold drinks coming. If you'd rather experience the city's wilder side, head west instead to Prainha and Grumari—forested, building-free coves with great surf, just forty minutes from Ipanema and a completely different world. Alternative option: If you want to blend nature and relaxation, you can add an optional ~4-hour morning tour into Tijuca National Park with your private guide to explore the lush rainforest, before heading to the beach for the afternoon—or simply spend the entire day unwinding along Rio's coastline with a fresh Caipirinha in hand.

   • Ipanema and Leblon
   • Wild beaches optional

02

Ilha Grande

Day 4–6

3 nights

An island with no cars and almost no roads, an hour off the coast. It stayed that way by accident: first a quarantine station, then a prison colony that only closed in 1994, which kept the developers away for a century while the Atlantic forest grew back over everything. Today it is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, it has more than a hundred beaches, and you reach every one of them on foot or by boat.

1. Day 4

   Across to the island with no cars

   A little over two hours down the Costa Verde road from Rio, then twenty minutes by speedboat to Vila do Abraão, the island's one real village: sandy lanes, boats at anchor, forested peaks straight behind the rooftops. Luggage goes to the pousada on a handcart because there is nothing else to put it on. The rest of the day is the village beach, a first swim and the slightly strange feeling of not hearing a single engine.

   • Speedboat crossing
   • Vila do Abraão
2. Day 5

   Lopes Mendes, worth the walk

   A boat around the coast to Pouso, then a twenty-minute forest trail over the headland, and the trees open onto roughly three kilometres of fine white sand with green water in front of it and nothing built on it at all. No road reaches Lopes Mendes, which is exactly why it stays the way it is. Bodyboards for hire under the trees, a boat back in the afternoon, and dinner in Abraão with sand still in your bag.

   • Forest trail
   • Boat there and back
3. Day 6

   The Blue Lagoon and the coves in between

   Your own boat for the day rather than a fixed schooner timetable. The Lagoa Azul is the set piece, a shallow pool of clear water inside a ring of rocks where the fish come to you the moment a mask goes in, and it is calmest early, which is when we go. After that it is your call: quiet coves along the north coast, a beach with a shack that grills whatever came in that morning, and back whenever you feel like it.

   • Private boat
   • Snorkeling

03

Paraty

Day 7–9

3 nights

The town at the other end of the bay, and the reason the bay was ever important: for two centuries the gold of Minas Gerais came down out of the mountains on mule trains and left Brazil from this harbour. The historic centre has been closed to cars since long before that was fashionable, so the streets are still the original uneven ballast stones. Three nights, because Paraty is a town, a boat trip and a rainforest walk, and each deserves its own day.

1. Day 7

   Into the old gold port

   Back across the water in the morning and an hour and a half down the coast, which puts you in Paraty for lunch. The old town is best walked late, when the day trippers have gone and the whitewashed fronts turn orange, so that is when your guide takes you through it: the two churches built for two different classes of people, the drains cut into the cobbles so the spring tide can flood and rinse the streets, and the cachaça that made the town famous a second time.

   • UNESCO old town
   • Late afternoon walk
2. Day 8

   Your own boat in the bay

   The Bay of Ilha Grande holds dozens of islands, and the schooners all visit the same four. You get a private boat and a skipper who goes where the water is clearest that morning: swim stops in green coves, snorkelling over rocks, lunch on board or at a floating restaurant. If you want the wilder version, we point the boat at Saco do Mamanguá, a long thin inlet of mangrove and forest that is the closest thing Brazil has to a fjord.

   • Private boat
   • Swim stops
3. Day 9

   The Gold Trail, or the beaches at Trindade

   Two good options and no wrong answer. The Caminho do Ouro is the original eighteenth-century stone road, hand-laid, now mossy and swallowed by rainforest, and you walk on the actual paving the mule trains used, with waterfall pools clear enough to swim in along the way. Or drive twenty-five minutes south to Trindade, a former fishing village with a string of surf beaches and a natural rock pool you can snorkel in. Start early and there is time for both.

   • Caminho do Ouro
   • Waterfall pools
   • Trindade optional

04

Salvador

Day 10

1 night

One night, and deliberately so. The flight north leaves from Rio anyway, and Salvador is where it lands, so the question is only whether you sleep at the airport end of the day or drive straight on. We sleep in the old town, because the Pelourinho in the last hour of daylight is the single best thing Salvador gives a traveller who is not staying a week. Brazil's first capital for over two hundred years, and the place Afro-Brazilian culture was made. If it grabs you, this is the stop to add two more nights to.

1. Day 10

   Down the coast road, up to Bahia

   An early start from Paraty and about four hours back along the Costa Verde to Rio's international airport, then a two-hour flight north. By late afternoon you are somewhere that does not feel like the same country. Your guide walks you through the Pelourinho as the light goes soft: the pastel mansions, the gold-leaf interior of São Francisco, drums starting up in a square somewhere out of sight. Dinner is moqueca, the Bahian fish stew cooked in coconut milk and dendê oil, and it is the reason people book a second night.

   • Flight Rio to Salvador
   • Pelourinho at dusk

05

Praia do Forte

Day 11–14

3 nights

A former fishing village on the Coconut Coast that has one sandy main lane, no through traffic, and a line of pousadas a few steps from the water. It is also the home of Projeto Tamar, the sea-turtle programme that started in 1980 and now runs the whole Brazilian coast. This is the part of the trip with nothing to achieve, which after eleven days of coast roads and boats is exactly the point.

1. Day 11

   Up the Coconut Coast

   After breakfast, an hour and a quarter north on the Estrada do Coco, palms on both sides most of the way, and you are at the pousada before lunch. Nothing is planned. The village is small enough to learn in one walk, the sea in front of it is calm and shallow behind a reef, and the correct use of the first afternoon is a chair, the shade of a palm and no further decisions.

   • Short transfer
   • Free afternoon
2. Day 12

   Turtles, and the tide pools

   Projeto Tamar's main visitor centre sits right on the beach here: open-air tanks of green, loggerhead and hawksbill turtles, the tanks of the ones being nursed back, and the story of how a handful of biologists talked the fishing villages out of eating the eggs and into protecting them. Between September and March there are hatchling releases at dusk. Afterwards, walk out to the natural pools that form on the reef at low tide, which is snorkelling for people who do not really snorkel.

   • Projeto Tamar
   • Reef pools at low tide
3. Day 13

   Whatever the day asks for

   A day with options and no obligation. The Sapiranga reserve just inland has Atlantic forest trails and a tea-coloured river you can paddle down to the sea. On the hill above the village stand the ruins of the Garcia d'Ávila castle, a fortified manor begun in the 1550s and among the oldest colonial buildings in Brazil. Between July and October humpback whales pass along this coast to breed and a morning boat goes out to them. Or you do none of it, which is a perfectly good day here.

   • Sapiranga reserve
   • Castle ruins
   • Whales July to October
4. Day 14 · Finale

   One last swim, then home

   A slow morning, a last hour in the water and a late checkout where the pousada allows it, then the transfer to Salvador airport, which is under an hour from here and the shortest airport run of the whole trip. If you are flying home from Rio instead, we put you on the hop back. And if you have got this far and cannot face leaving, say so early: extra nights here are the easiest change we make, and the one guests ask for most.

   • Transfer to Salvador airport
   • Departure