During our week-long visit to Rio de Janeiro, we were keen to visit one of its notorious favelas. We considered going on our own. In the past, I’d entered similar neighborhoods solo, like the townships of Cape Town or slums in Nairobi, and never encountered any safety issues. However, on those occasions, I carried nothing but clothes and a bit of spare change. I understood that by bringing anything more, I wouldn’t so much risk losing it as effectively be offering it as a donation. This time, however, we wanted to bring our cameras—so we decided it would be wiser to join an organized tour.
Affiliation disclosure: By purchasing goods or services via the links contained in this post, I may be earning a small commission from the seller's profit, without you being charged any extra penny. You will be thus greatly helping me to maintain and keep enriching this website. Thanks!
Searching, we immediately came across a plethora of nearly identical tours to Favela Rocinha—Brazil’s largest favela with a population of around 200,000. Only one tour offered a different destination: the smaller and more interestingly located Favela Santa Marta. We felt this would offer a more unique and authentic experience, so we chose it.
Meandering among crowds of street partiers, we threaded our way through the festive streets of Botafogo to Tião Belo Square. From there, just above the affluence of coastal Rio, we could see a narrow stripe of tightly clustered hovels scaling a steep slope. We were at the base of Favela Santa Marta.
After a short wait in the park, we crossed the street to the petrol station—the tour meeting place. Our fellow tour companions began to gather—about fifteen people in total, most of them Argentinians, along with a couple of Europeans. Our guide soon arrived: an affable young woman named Julia. She wasn’t from Santa Marta herself, but she had been leading this tour for ten years, after being hired by the local guy who first started it.
After the introductions, which included no warnings beyond a reminder not to take photos in undesignated areas, we walked across the main road and up the hill foot to the Santa Marta funicular station. Installed in 2008 as part of a broader urban infrastructure project aimed at improving accessibility in the favelas, the funicular has become a vital link for residents. Just like the locals, we rode it for free.
To avoid exceeding the funicular’s capacity, we had to split into two groups. Half of us boarded and began the painstakingly slow ascent. At the first stop, we encountered what appeared to be a checkpoint, manned by a topless gang member holding a machine gun. The car came to a halt. No one got on or off; he simply stood at the door, inspecting us. He seemed to be in good spirits, barely able to suppress a broad smile across his face.
Changing to a second cable car, we reached the terminal. From the small terrace that was the station, we enjoyed a spectacular view of Rio’s natural and urban sumptuousness below the precarity of the favela as we waited for the others.
An incongruous, tall and solid, structure jutted out of the jungle above the favela. When she arrived in the next car, Julia explained that it was a police station. Although cops are deployed there to keep watch, they don’t interfere with the gang’s operations and enter the favela only in rare, extreme circumstances, which, according to her, had happened just twice in the past decade.
Descending on foot through the favela, we snaked our way through a maze of claustrophobically narrow, squalid paths and stairways. Cable bundles stretched overhead like jungle vines. The houses were packed together as tightly as the bare, unmortared bricks in their walls. Low Sampa echoed faintly from a few interiors, but all doors and windows remained firmly shut. As Julia explained, none of the houses had a dedicated address—they all shared a single one at the foot of the hill.
Only upon approaching the favela’s main square did we see any people—first, a smiling guy jogging up the stairs; then, a small group of men, absorbed in pulling the handles of a row of outdoor slot machines tucked into an alley; and finally, a sizable assembly gathered in the square itself.
Named in honor of Michael Jackson—after he filmed his legendary “They Don’t Care About Us” video there in 1996—the square was a small terrace overlooking the lower half of the favela and the vast city beyond. It featured a bronze statue of a dancing Michael Jackson, a bar, and a souvenir shop. Among the various people hanging out there was a band of lads who gave us a rather virtuosic percussion performance.
A few steps down from the square, we made another stop at the family home of the tour’s founder. On an old TV, his congenial parents played Michael Jackson’s music video—his mother proudly pointing out her younger self grooving in it—along with a documentary about Rio’s favelas. As they treated us to some homemade liqueur, Julia gave a presentation on the charity programs that receive a portion of the tour’s profits.
We were back at the foot of the hill by late afternoon. Motorbikes and bicycles were heaped together in the narrow parking spot at the highest point of the favela accessible by any kind of wheeled vehicle. As Santa Marta’s hard-working residents were coming home from whatever labor they toiled at in the city, our tour concluded.
Overall, it was an intriguing and poignant, yet heartwarming experience—one that made us lament the woes of humanity’s less fortunate, while also admiring their resilience. I wholeheartedly recommend joining this tour if you want to experience Rio’s other, unfancy side and contribute to the development of this marginalized community.
Additionally, you can also check out more tours to Rio’s Rocinha Favela.
Photos
View (and if you want use) all my photographs from Favela Santa Marta in higher resolution.
Accommodation & Activities in Rio
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!
