Honeymoons & Milestones

01

Rio de Janeiro

Day 1–3

3 nights

Short and early, on purpose. Rio is where the jet lag wears off and where the two big views get ticked without either of you standing in a queue at the wrong hour. Three nights is enough to feel the city without letting it set the tone for the whole trip.

1. Day 1

   Landing, and nothing asked of you

   Met inside the terminal and driven to a room with the sea in the window. There is no programme. If you are awake at six in the evening, Arpoador is a ten-minute walk and the whole beach applauds the sunset, which sounds like something invented for tourists until you are standing in it.

   • Airport pickup
   • No programme
2. Day 2

   Both mountains, at the right hours

   Corcovado early, on the cog railway through the forest, before the coaches turn the platform into a scrum. The middle of the day is yours. Then Sugarloaf in the last hour of light, which is the one that matters: two glass cable cars, the bay going gold underneath you, and the city switching its lights on while you are still up there.

   • Corcovado
   • Sugarloaf at sunset
3. Day 3

   A day with nothing in it

   Deliberately empty. Most couples spend it between the sand and a long lunch in Leblon, some go up to Santa Teresa for the ateliers and the little yellow tram, and a few ask for the helicopter loop over the bay, which we will book but would not put in the plan uninvited. Dinner somewhere with no view and very good food, which in Rio is usually the better trade.

   • Unplanned
   • Helicopter on request

02

Ilha Grande

Day 4–7

4 nights

The strongest card on this trip. An island with no cars and almost no roads, an hour off the coast, kept undeveloped for a century by a prison that only closed in 1994 and now part of a UNESCO World Heritage site. More than a hundred beaches, and the only way to any of them is a boat or your own feet. Four nights, because three is the number people regret.

1. Day 4

   The last road, and then none

   Two hours down the coast, then twenty minutes across the water to Vila do Abraão. Your bags go to the pousada on a handcart because there is nothing else on the island to put them on. The rest of the day is the village beach and the slightly disorienting business of not hearing a single engine.

   • Speedboat crossing
   • No cars
2. Day 5

   A boat that is only yours

   Not the schooner with sixty people and a sound system. Your own boat and a skipper who takes you where the water is clearest that morning: the Lagoa Azul early, before anyone else is on it, then coves along the north coast where you will be the only two in the water. Lunch is grilled fish at a shack on a beach with four tables.

   • Private boat
   • Lagoa Azul early
3. Day 6

   Lopes Mendes, the long way round

   A boat to Pouso and then twenty minutes of forest trail over the headland, and the trees open onto three kilometres of white sand with nothing built on it at all. No road reaches it, which is exactly why it stays that way. Boards under the trees if you want them, a boat back in the afternoon, sand in the bag for the rest of the trip.

   • Forest trail
   • No road access
4. Day 7

   The day you stop planning

   Nothing booked. Walk to Feiticeira and the waterfall behind it, take a water taxi to whichever cove looks best from the pier, or do not leave the pousada at all. In the evening the village has no street lighting to speak of, which is worth knowing before you look up.

   • Nothing booked
   • No street lighting

03

The Rio Negro

Day 8–12

4 nights · riverboat

The part that sounds adventurous and turns out to be the intimate one. A small riverboat with an air-conditioned cabin, a naturalist who works with you two rather than a group of thirty, and the black water of the Rio Negro, which has almost no mosquitoes because of its acidity, a detail nobody believes until they are sitting on deck at dusk without being bitten.

1. Day 8

   Onto the black water

   The flight north, then straight from the airport onto the boat, which casts off while you are still unpacking. The first evening is spent moving upriver with a drink on the top deck, the forest closing in on both sides, and the sound of the engine being the last mechanical thing you hear for four days.

   • Flight to Manaus
   • Straight aboard
2. Day 9

   Anavilhanas at first light

   Four hundred islands in the middle of the river, and at dawn the channels between them are glass. You go out in a small boat with your guide while the parrots are still deciding whether to get up. Later, a walk in the forest with someone who can tell you which tree the boat you are sleeping on was made of.

   • Anavilhanas archipelago
   • Dawn boat
3. Day 10

   Dolphins, and the people who live here

   Pink river dolphins surface where the channels meet, on their own terms and without anyone feeding them. In the afternoon, a visit to a riverside family who will show you a cassava house and let you make a very bad piece of tapioca. In the evening the guide takes a torch out onto the water and finds caimans by their eyes.

   • Pink dolphins
   • River family
   • Night boat
4. Day 11

   The last night on the water

   The day the boat stops somewhere quiet and stays there. Swim off the side in water the colour of strong tea, fish for piranha off the back with a stick and a bit of beef, and eat dinner on deck. After dark the crew cuts the generator for a while, and what happens to the sky when they do is the reason we put this stop last.

   • Swimming off the boat
   • Generator off
5. Day 12 · Finale

   The Meeting of the Waters, then home

   Back downriver past the point where the black Rio Negro and the sandy Solimões run side by side for kilometres without mixing, which is the sort of thing that sounds made up until you are looking at the line. Then Manaus and the flight home, or on to the coast: many couples add three or four nights at Praia do Forte rather than flying straight back, and it is an easy connection.

   • Meeting of the Waters
   • Beach extension possible