The story behind our signature 'Rio & Beyond' journey

Rio & Beyond is our new two-week overland guided journey through Rio de Janeiro state. It is an immersion into the culture and lifestyles of southern Brazil, set against a sparkling backdrop of natural wonders. This is the story of how it came into being... 

A few months ago, I sat down with a blank sheet of paper. In the middle of it I wrote the words "Why Brazil?" and swooped a wobbly oval around it.

This is where the journey starts.

For a few furious hours of activity, I went into the deepest dive possible on all things Brazil. Trying to park all the imagery and connections I've built up over the past dozen years since my first visit, I wanted to truly understand its story afresh, from all angles. I wanted everything down and connected, culture, history and music intertwined, lifestyles, character and ecosystems linked together.

The end result looked like an absolute mess. Utter chaos.

But actually, what was on that bit of paper didn't really matter. We can't do what we do by looking at the internet, no matter how clever AI and Google get.

What mattered were the two words I wrote at the start...

Holiday planning nearly always starts with the where. Where are the best places to go in Brazil? Iguazú, Rio, the Amazon, a bit of beach, perhaps the Pantanal and a side order of Salvador.

From the 'where', we get the why. Iguazú = waterfalls. Rio = Christ the Redeemer and the beaches. Amazon = jungle. Pantanal = jaguars. Only in Salvador do we get to the people, and even then they are often reduced to caricatures of the Afro-Brazilian culture. I'm not joking here - I've looked around and counted the number of photos of local interaction across more than 50 trips available online. I counted five, all of which were performative cliches.

And yet, last year the Brazilian tourist board published the results of a survey which showed that experiencing the culture (42%) was the number one motivation for British people travelling to Brazil. Food (22%) and the Brazilian people themselves (16%) were high up the list too.

So why are local people, like the lovely Luana below, and their rich, vibrant, colourful and complex culture, too often edited out in favour of the obvious physical beauty?

Don't they know you can have both?!

Brazil is a huge country, the fifth biggest in the world. Visiting all those places listed above would take you to just about every corner of it. Manaus is 1,700 miles from Rio - Greenland, Greece and North Africa are closer to London than that. And lining up internal flights without positioning nights in a city takes surgical precision.

The risk is that you spend a good chunk of your precious holiday time 'island hopping' across thousands of miles; airport transfers, airport food, security, baggage handling, another airport transfer and a wildly new setting to figure out. Just as you settle into one corner of the country, you're off again, whisked to a different extreme.

All of which is fine and many a happy holiday has happened in this way. But it doesn't really feel like a journey of discovery to us. There's a difference between 'travel' and 'travelling'. To us, those sorts of trips feel too much like the latter and not enough of the former. It's not kind on the environment, nor on you.

So... a question hangs in the air here: what would happen if we started with the why?

My sheet of paper didn't stay blank for long.

Culture comes in many forms. The Europeans brought slaves to set off the Gold Rush and Coffee Boom, leaving a legacy of colonial architecture, rural lifestyles, languages and religious practices which remain to this day, and a marginalisation of indigenous and black people that still stings.

The African influence is even more widespread, from Candomblé and Umbanda spirituality, to samba and myriad lesser-known regional strands of music and dance. The national dish feijoada traces its roots back to African stews. Carnival only became Carnival when the elites saw that the non-whites were having more fun.

Nature comes in many forms too. From the obvious - the Amazon Rainforest, the 4,600 miles of coastline and the world's largest tropical wetlands - to the cerrado savanna, the temperate grasslands of the pampa, the semi-arid caatinga shrubland and the remaining tracts of Mata Atlantica rainforest that survive along the coast.

But here's the thing. None of that really mattered. The important thing was having an open, questioning and ambitious mindset. Not starting with the usual guidebook list of places to 'tick off'.

Then, if we really wanted to get to grips with Brazil, we needed some Brazilians...

If there's one thing I have learned doing this job is that the best way to create truly exceptional, original, authentic and downright bloody brilliant trips is to do three simple things:

1) Find the right people

2) Ask the right questions

3) Shut up and listen

Ultimately, I didn't end up filling the paper. They did - the native Brazilians, the adopted Brazilians, the people who love and know Brazil intimately, the friends of friends of friends who love what we do and just wanted to help.

We build our trips around local people and their communities first. They are the ones who give you privileged access to the incredible places of Brazil - the where - and open doors to a whole load more interesting locals, who take up the baton with their grain of sand. 

You gain access to wonderful places to hike, explore, sleep in, eat at and travel through that you'd never find without them. The Atlantic Rainforest, the sculpted mountains, the coffee fazendas, the far-flung villages lapped by the tropical waters, the cobbled bohemian neighbourhoods and the clearest rivers you'll ever swim in. The "how on earth did they find this place??" lodges you'd never find on Booking.com.

All of which led us to Rio, and beyond.

We narrowed the search down to Rio de Janeiro state. It is here where our scribbled tangle of culture, nature and variety shines the brightest, and where our network of people is strong.

The idea in Rio isn't to take you into the city just to get you out, into the 'beyond'. No, it's to make it truly amazing and authentic. To go above and beyond, because why would you settle for the usual run of things? 

You don't need our guides to take you up to Christ the Redeemer or the Sugar Loaf. You'll spend a chunk of the day sat in traffic and gain little in the way of cultural insights. Much better is to make that super easy for you to do for yourself. Instead, it means we can let the local guides flex their superpowers and give you the real story.

That means going behind the scenes to see carnival floats being created, a gem of a spot hidden in plain sight. It means squeezing into your guide's favourite bar to feel the force of a traditional samba circle, surrounded by happy, friendly Carioca locals and not another tourist in sight. And it means meeting people like Luana, movingly sharing the story of Rio's oft-forgotten African heritage, bringing to life the full colour and joy of modern-day culture.

Then we did something no one ever does.

We turned inland from Rio. We went up into the Serra do Mar - the coastal mountain range which runs thousands of miles across Brazil. We went deep into the Atlantic Rainforest, an ecosystem pound-for-pound more diverse than the Amazon. We swam in those crystal-clear rivers, hiked below those sculpted peaks and ate coffee risotto whilst staying at a 19th-century coffee farmhouse. We saw monkeys, toucans and the ever-popular leafcutter ants. We saw strangling vines, huge kapok trees and exotic palms. Nature sparkled as we travelled. 

Whilst being driven between bases, we glanced at scenes from the everyday out of the window - a man and his way-too-young-to-be-on-his-own-horse son casually travelling by horseback, glimpses of workaday towns, preparations for local festivities, families flying kites and a kingfisher perched above a pond. Nothing performative, everything authentic.

From there came the return to the coast, the return to civilisation and foreign voices in Paraty, a colonial-era town that tells the story of Brazil, from boom to bust and back again. But we didn't just stay in the town, no matter how ridiculously photogenic it is. We hiked to remote golden beaches, kayaked across the tropical bay, ate grilled fish with our toes in the sand and played football on the beach - the village square - in a tiny village which time has forgotten.

Yet people remained at the forefront. That's the real key. That's what I think you should look for and ask about when concocting your travel plans. That's what we want to keep front and centre for you.

In the countryside, through my guide, I listened to Ivonete tell stories of Old Brazil. He grew up right there on the farm, two hours from Rio and seemingly two hundred years back in time. He has devoted his 50 years to looking after the farm that his great-grandfather began way back when and has seen it all. 

He is a living embodiment of the roça culture that prevails here, tiny, self-sufficient farms growing bananas, manioc, corn, beans and seasonal vegetables. Life moves to the rhythm of the land. People are humble and welcoming, bound by a sense of community. Clay-walled houses carry a heady aroma of coffee, woodsmoke and sun-warmed earth.

This is what we should be doing. Finding these gems, those hidden gems and the wonderful people who imbue them with their spirit. 

And to the 84% of people who didn't mark 'Brazilian people' as a priority for their trip to Brazil, I invite them to reassess their priorities. Because it's the people who will fill your own paper with stories. It's the people who will forge the connection with the places you visit. It's the people you will fondly remember - even if you forget their names - for years to come.

From why to who to where... all that remains is how. How can you follow in our footsteps and experience this side of Brazil for yourself? The answer is right here: 

Rio & Beyond: Brazil's Hidden Highlights

The journey can be enjoyed as shown, or embellished with some of these other famous parts of Brazil. At the heart of your travels will be an immersive overland two-week journey, with no internal flights or days lost to travelling, built around local communities and people as a gateway to incredible nature.

Now it's yours, treat it with care and I hope you love it as much as I do...