I’m not great at keeping track of the calendar. Before social media started reminding me, I barely remembered my own birthday, let alone festivities in distant lands. It wasn’t until we landed in Rio de Janeiro in early January that I realized—by sheer coincidence—we were just a month and a half early for the city’s legendary Carnival.
Our original plan was to head straight to southern Brazil and overwinter there. But since serendipity seemed to be nudging us in another direction, we decided to spend the intervening weeks at nearby beaches—Rio das Ostras, Arraial do Cabo, Cabo Frio—before returning to Rio to experience the crazy festival firsthand.
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In the end, we spent a week in Rio during the height of Carnival. While our first and last days were rather idle—lazing around in our accommodation and the bus terminal before heading to São Paulo—the remaining five days were packed with activity, a mix of partying and sightseeing.
In this post, I share our five-day itinerary along with links to more detailed posts on specific experiences, which might inspire you when planning your own time in Rio de Janeiro.
Before we start, two important lessons we learned the hard way:
- Be prepared for chaos—crowds flood the city, major roads shut down, and schedules go out the window. Expect long transit times. Stay flexible, embrace spontaneity, and don’t take punctual planning too seriously.
- Book your accommodation well in advance—prices skyrocket as the festival approaches. We booked a month and a half ahead, right after deciding to return to Rio, and rates were already about 500% higher than usual. When we checked during Carnival—out of curiosity—they had surged to nearly 1,000%. Use the interactive map below to compare accommodations across different platforms.
Stay22 is a handy tool that lets you search for and compare stays and experiences across multiple platforms on the same neat, interactive map. Hover over the listings to see the details. Click on the top-right settings icon to adjust your preferences; switch between hotels, experiences, or restaurants; and activate clever map overlays displaying information like transit lines or concentrations of sights. Click on the Show List button for the listings to appear in a list format. Booking via this map, I will be earning a small cut of the platform's profit without you being charged any extra penny. You will be thus greatly helping me to maintain and keep enriching this website. Thanks!
Day #1: Botafogo Beach, Sugarloaf Mountain, Copacabana
We started our week with a visit to Rio’s iconic Sugarloaf Peak. The closest we could get by bus was Botafogo Beach. After breakfast on the spot, we walked along the still-quiet beach, gazing at the imposing rock across the bay until we reached its foot at Praia Vermelha.
We had wanted to hike to the top, but then we found out that a fair deal of technical climbing was required. Since we had no climbing gear and I was suffering from an arm injury that didn’t allow too much risk, we took a different approach: hiking to the smaller peak Morro da Urca and taking the cable car from there. Here is the story of this trip.
After a few hours of view-marveling, we headed back down and walked to Copacabana for lunch and an afternoon stroll along the vibrant beach. During our previous stay in Rio, we had also visited the Fort of Copacabana at the beach’s south end—worth checking out if you’re into history. On this occasion, we wrapped up the day with some sunset drinks, enjoying a panoramic view of the entire beach from one of the bars at its eastern end.
Day #2: Central Rio, Lapa & Suburban Bloco
For the second day, we had planned another hike to the city’s most recognizable landmark: the statue of Christ the Redeemer. We hadn’t planned well. We took a bus that was supposed to bring us close to the trailhead by Henrique Lage Park. Instead, after hours of traffic jams on narrow detour streets, we got off in the city center before the bus turned back to where we had started from.
Having missed our time window for hiking to the peak, we decided to spend the day exploring the festive city center. Most thoroughfares were closed to traffic and flooded with merry, flamboyant, intoxicated party-goers. We walked around expansively, taking in the exuberant spectacle. We visited the city’s imposing Metropolitan Cathedral and Escadaria Selarón: the famed colorful stairway of 2,500 tiles. In the afternoon, we ended up in Lapa: the city’s bohemian party district, where we had already spent a night out during our first stay in Rio.
We settled at a sidewalk table of a bar and, engrossed, watched the pied parade. After several beers, slightly more drunk than tipsy, we returned home for some rest.
In the evening, we went to a bloco—a makeshift street party or parade held aside from the main Carnival all over Rio— in the suburban district of Pilares. It had more of a local feel than the parties in the city center, with us probably being the only foreigners there. Adults were drinking and dancing samba, while kids played in bouncy castles.
Day #3: Favela Santa Marta
On our third day, we went on a favela tour. Instead of joining one of the many tours of Favela Rocinha—Brazil’s largest slum—we opted for a stand-out tour of the smaller Favela Santa Marta.
To avoid yesterday’s traffic vicissitudes, we set off well in advance to ensure we arrived on time. Our meeting point was at the foot of the favela, near Botafogo Beach. Facing no unexpected setbacks, we arrived early and had a couple of spare hours to loiter at a raucous bloco party happening nearby.
The tour consisted of a few hours spent wandering through the favela’s narrow pathways, learning about its history, challenges, and the resilience of its residents. The highlight was attending a percussion jam performed by local kids in the favela’s central square while marveling at the panoramic view of the sprawling city below. You can read the full story of this tour here.
It was just getting dark when we returned to the more developed part of Rio. After some drinks and dinner around Botafogo, we headed home to rest before tomorrow’s bingeing.
Day #4: Carnival Bloco Parties
This was our proper partying day. We started at a bloco in Pistóia Square, near Marina da Glória in the city center. Named Bloco do Sargento Pimenta after the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, the gig featured samba remixes of the group’s anthems. It was engaging musically and jovial socially.
Several thousands of otherwise assorted people crowded the wide plaza before the stage to the point of near-asphyxiation. Dressed in all imaginable sorts of colorful outfits, consuming alcohol and pot and whatnot as if in a rave, they had come together to dance and revel, infected by the Carnival’s infectious joy.
A hilarious world was orbiting my head when the party ended in the early afternoon. Together with a group of locals we met on the spot, plastered, we headed to the next bloco at Flamengo Beach. We hit a wall shortly before it got dark. After a hearty plate of chicken, rice, and beans, we made it back home and conked out.
Day #5: Ipanema Beach
Recuperating from yesterday’s indulgence, we took it easy on our last full day in Rio. We spent the day at Ipanema Beach, strolling and enjoying a couple of caipirinhas at a kiosk bar, all while observing the parties from a comfortable distance.
