Brazil
Favela Tour in Rio
Every city with a hint of tourism has a city tour and a major city with a killer overdose of tourism has a city tour for almost every street.
Rio is no exception. There is a tour for every beach, every district and every demographic.
But more importantly there is a tour to introduce you to another Rio. Within the city there is another kind of city – the favela.
There are close to 950 favelas in Rio. The favelas (the Brazilian version of a shanty town) of Rio are well known for all the wrong reasons and never makes it into the tourist brochures. But these lawless communities – known as centres of the drug trade in Rio de Janeiro is full of life, diversity, history, and community.
Mostly placed on former public areas on the hillsides, Rio’s favelas are now home to 20% of Rio’s population, however they remain a mystery for most people who don’t live there.
Whilst exploring other parts of South America we had heard a lot about the notorious favelas of Rio – everything from ‘don’t go there it’s not safe at all’, to ‘yeah I stayed in a favela and it was great!’. We decided to form our own opinions by taking a Favela Tour.
After some quick researching I discovered Marcelo Armstrong’s Favela Tour. Marcelo had a wonderful record for providing tourists with a favela insight since 1992. Marcelo struggled at first to gain the credibility of local tour companies and hotels given the bad reputation of the favelas but managed to pioneer of tours in favelas in Rio. Now he is well-known for guiding visitors safety through the favelas and allowing a much better understanding of daily life for many locals in Rio.
It was a very last minute decision to start our first morning in Rio with a favela tour and after chasing down the mini bus that we only just managed to reach in time we were on our way and given an introduction of Rio’s favelas.
We soon arrived in Rocinha, where we were welcomed, told about the architecture, public services and carnival, followed by a visit to a local terrace to admire the breathtaking view over Rio. Marcelo then explained the security, local infrastructure and other aspects of favelas. Including a mention of our own safety and strict instructions to not take any photos of people.
We then drove down through the “Estrada da Gávea”, a former F1 race track and arrived at a local community school. This is the social project financed by the favela tour. Besides regular classes, the school teaches local kids initial computer skills, computer classes, capoeira and ballet classes. These projects have absolutely no support from Brazilian government policies and is a wonderful example of how tourism can help the local community.
We then finished our tour in Vila Canoas, walking through the community, and stopping for a drink in a local “buteco”.
The entire tour was extremely insightful and even though it was an extremely hot and sweaty morning we were extremely happy to have explored a very contrasting part of Rio to the classy Ipanema Beach where we were staying. There is so many fascinating aspects to the favelas of Rio and I strongly advise you to not rely on the opinions of others and to explore the hillside communities for yourselves and The Favela Tour is the easiest, safest and most insightful way to do so.
Contact Favela Tours
http://www.favelatour.com.br/index.html
3322-2727 / 99772-1133 / 99989-0074 (WhatsApp)
