From the Jungle to the Beach and back to the City

Yesterday we took the bus for about an hour to a place from where we had a hike trough the jungle for about one more hour and a half. First we walked steep uphill along a path mostly used by the inhabitants of the old favela on the hill side. This is not one of the huge very crowded favelas like the one you find in the city centre but seems more to be old farm worker’s houses that by the growth of the city started to develop into a favela, but as it was in the jungle you did not really see it and we did not meet any people, just heard some in the distance and saw the tracks from the horses used for transportation along the muddy path. It was pretty muddy indeed, but my friend said it was dry in comparison to what it can be like.
We walked uphill a long way and saw the most beautiful plants and flowers, quite many of them I recognised as potted plants, but here they were everywhere, and huge. We didn’t see any monkeys but beautiful and colourful butterflies.




When we reached the crest of the hill we immediately noticed a difference in the air, the wind was fresher and clearer and further down the path, trough a opening in the vegetation we saw the goal of our hike. The beautiful beach of Grumari. Half an hour later we were there and had an absolutely lovely day on the almost empty beach and had some very well deserved beers.



Arriving at this beach

The way back became an interesting mix of means of transportation. Our original plan was to walk along the beach to catch a bus back to Ipanema. But we didn’t get very far until the staff from the beach bar where we had been sitting picked us up and took us a part of the way. From there we waited for the bus. But as no bus came we started looking for other ways of transportation and happened to hail a favela-bus. It took us along a part of the way, dropped us of at a bus-station where we got into another minibus. This minibus was filled with young gay guys from the favela. I don’t know if they or we were most surprised to find us in the bus. But we had quite fun.

We were not exactly clear about where they were going but had an idea of where we wanted to go so we kept watch along the road and were ready to tell them to stop at a suitable place. The funny thing is they were also very clear about that we most probably did not want to go with them into the favela so when they were getting closer they turned around and asked us if maybe we should get out there. Very good idea!!

Very fascinating to have jungle, beach, city and adventure in one day. Is Rio maybe something of a Kinder egg?