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Tour Rio 3 — Corcovado, Maracanã, Sambódromo, Sugar Loaf and Beaches of the Southern District of Rio. Duration: 8 hours

Cor­co­v­ado and Beaches

Cor­co­v­ado – The first offi­cial expe­di­tion to the Cor­co­v­ado Moun­tain was headed by Dom Pedro I, heir to the Brazil­ian throne at the time. The Art-Deco statue sit­u­ated at the top of the 710 meters high moun­tain was inau­gu­rated in Octo­ber 12, 1931 by then-President Getúlio Vargas.

The “Cristo Reden­tor” Statue is cer­tainly the most vis­ited and admired mon­u­ment in Rio de Janeiro with its mag­nif­i­cent 360° panoramic view of the city. With the recently inau­gu­rated esca­la­tors and panoramic ele­va­tors the two hun­dred steps climb to the top can thank­fully be avoided.

The cog train ride through the Tijuca rain for­est takes about 30min each way dur­ing which vis­i­tors can appre­ci­ate the exu­ber­ance of the native flora.

Mara­canã

Mara­canã — The biggest sta­dium of the world at the time of its con­struc­tion, today it is still famous for its impos­ing ellip­ti­cal frame­work which is almost cir­cu­lar. Dur­ing the fifties, it was not only one of the most lux­u­ri­ous sta­di­ums in the world, but it was also well known for its func­tion­al­ity and security.

Mara­canã was built to host the 1950 world cup which Brazil sur­pris­ingly lost to Uruguay. This match was wit­nessed by the (unof­fi­cial) record atten­dance in soccer/football his­tory of approx­i­mately 200.000 people.

Although the sta­dium was already known as Mara­canã (the name of a small river that runs nearby), in 1964 it was offi­cially named after Jour­nal­ist Mario Filho who greatly sup­ported its construction.

Offi­cial Record Atten­dance: 183.341 peo­ple – Brazil x Paraguay; 1969

Sam­bó­dromo (Sambadrome)

Sam­bó­dromo — In 1928, Rio gave birth to what would some­day be the heart of Car­ni­val, the samba school. But it wasn’t until 1930 that then-Brazilian Pres­i­dent Getulio Var­gas, gave the samba schools an offi­cial place in Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties and the Samba Parade was born. The three schools to per­form that inau­gural year were Esta­cio de Sá, Estação, Primeira de Mangueira, and Portela.

In 1984, the Sam­bo­dromo, a per­ma­nent struc­ture on avenue Mar­ques de Sapu­cai was built specif­i­cally for the samba parade.

Sam­bo­dromo (also known in Eng­lish as Sam­badrome or Sam­bo­drome) is the “sta­dium” of samba. It con­sists of a 700 meters long parad­ing avenue (the samba run-way) and sev­eral inde­pen­dent con­crete struc­tures for the spec­ta­tors (the so called sec­tors) along both sides of the Sambodromo´s parad­ing avenue.

The Sam­bo­dromo was designed by Brazil’s world-famous archi­tect, the mod­ernist Oscar Niemeyer. Purpose-built for the Samba Parade and inau­gu­rated it can seat around 80,000 peo­ple, which is already far too few for the ever grow­ing Rio Car­ni­val Parade.

Lunch – Por­cão Rio’s – NOT INCLUDED

Sugar Loaf

Sugar Loaf –The name “Pão de Açú­car” was given by the Por­tuguese because in the ancient sugar mills after the sugar cane was squeezed, the liq­uid was put to drip into a cone-shaped mold that formed the cakes of sugar shipped to Europe.

Italian-made Cable cars car­ry­ing up to 25 peo­ple, intro­duced by the engi­neer Augusto Fer­reira Ramos in 1912, take vis­i­tors to the top of the moun­tain in two stages of about 3 min­utes each. The first stop is at Morro da Urca, a smaller moun­tain in front of Sugarloaf.

Pão de Açú­car also hosts shows, with many bands fre­quently play­ing on the top of the moun­tain. If you want to enhance your Rio expe­ri­ence, there is an optional heli­copter ride leav­ing from the Sugar Loaf. The short­est ride lasts 7 min­utes fly­ing over Cor­co­v­ado, Sugar Loaf and South Dis­trict beaches.

The tour ends with a relax­ing return drive to the Hotel along some of the beaches of the south­ern dis­trict of Rio de Janeiro.