Rio, booked properly.
Which way up Corcovado is worth the money. Whether the cable car needs a timed slot. What a favela walk should feel like. Every tour in Rio, priced, rated and compared.
Three ways up Corcovado. Only one of them is a train.
All Christ the Redeemer tickets →
The statue stands 710m up inside a national park, and how you get there decides the whole morning: a rack railway through the forest, a van from the city, or a full circuit that takes in Sugarloaf as well. These three carry the most travellers.
The red train from Cosme Velho
The Trem do Corcovado has been climbing this hill since 1884. It leaves from Cosme Velho, takes twenty minutes through Tijuca forest, and the clear mid-morning departures are the first to go.
Up from Copacabana or Largo do Machado
Official vans run the Paineiras road with a guide on board. Cheaper than the train, easier to combine with a hotel pickup, and the last stretch is the same escalators either way.
Christ, Sugarloaf and lunch in one sweep
The way most first-timers actually do it: statue in the morning, cable car for the late light, a churrasco somewhere in the middle. One booking covers both entry tickets.
Christ, Sugarloaf, a favela walk and a churrasco: Rio’s busiest days.
Every review →The tours more travellers in Rio take than anything else — and what each one is really giving you for the money.
1
6-Stop Highlights of Rio with Lunch
6-stop highlights of Rio in one day: Christ the Redeemer, Selarón Steps, Maracanã and Sambadrome area, Cathedral, Sugarloaf, plus lunch.
From · $130
Read our review →2
Christ the Redeemer Entry Ticket by Corcovado Train
from $45
3
Rio’s City Tour – Tickets for Christ, Sugar Loaf & Lunch included
from $159.9
4
Full Day: Christ Redeemer, Sugarloaf, City Tour & Barbecue Lunch
from $74.8
5
Rocinha Favela Walking Tour with Local Guide
from $36
6
Rio’s Full Day: Selarón Steps, Christ & Sugarloaf – Tickets & Lunch Included
from $159
7
Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf, Selaron & BBQ Lunch
from $69
8
Half-Day Rocinha Favela Walking Tour
from $35
Rio’s postcards, and what it takes to stand in front of each one.
The statue, the cable car, the rainforest above the city, the steps, the samba and the neighbourhoods most visitors only see from a car window. Six days, and the best way to book each.
Sugarloaf is two cable cars, and the second one is the point.
The first car lifts you to Morro da Urca at 220m, which is pleasant. The second crosses open air to the 396m dome, which is the reason you came. The system has been running since 1912 and the late-afternoon cars are the ones people queue for.
A favela tour is a walk through somebody’s neighbourhood.
Rocinha is a city inside Rio — schools, bakeries, banks, a motorbike-taxi network and around a hundred thousand residents. The walks worth booking go on foot rather than in the back of a jeep, are led by people who live there, and ask you to put the camera down around homes and children. That is the whole difference.
- 1Rocinha Favela Walking Tour with Local Guidefrom $36
- 2Half-Day Rocinha Favela Walking Tourfrom $35
- 33 Hour Rocinha Favela Walking Tour with a Local Guidefrom $37.28
What Rio costs, from a stadium seat to a chartered boat.
Every tour on the site sorted by what it actually charges. A samba night starts at $12; a tandem flight off Pedra Bonita has never been cheap.
Samba nights, stadium tickets, walking tours and the steps. Rio at street level, and most of it is the good part.
The full-day classics: both peaks with tickets, a Tijuca jeep, a favela walk, an Arraial boat day with lunch.
Private guides, helicopter circuits, hang gliding off the ramp, and the fast boats out to Ilha Grande.
Rio was built in the gaps between granite domes. Most of them have a trail.
Pedra da Gávea is 842m and ends in a graded scramble. Dois Irmãos starts inside Vidigal. Pedra do Telégrafo is an easy walk to a ledge that photographs like a cliff edge. Take a guide on the first two.
Off the ramp at Pedra Bonita, and two more things Rio does alone.
Beaches and viewpoints exist everywhere. Launching a hang glider out of a national park, a Monday street samba on the stones where the music started, and a staircase one man tiled for twenty-three years do not.
The Pedra Bonita Ramp
A wooden ramp at 510m inside Tijuca National Park, a run of three or four steps, and then nothing under you until the sand at São Conrado. Tandem only unless you are licensed, and it flies on the wind rather than the calendar — operators rebook rather than launch in the wrong conditions, so leave a spare day early in the trip.
- 1Hang gliding Hang gliding Experience Rotorfly★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,009 reviews
- 2Hang Gliding Adventure★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 760 reviews
- 3Experience Asa Delta or Parapente in the River★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 459 reviews
Monday at Pedra do Sal
A short flight of stone steps in the old port district, cut by enslaved and freed Africans who worked the salt. On Monday and Friday nights the roda sets up at the bottom, the beer is sold from cool boxes, and nobody charges to stand there. Come for the music, stay for the neighbourhood it belongs to.
- 1Pedra do Sal: Live Samba Night with Local Guide & Drink★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 183 reviews
- 2Live Samba Night at Pedra do Sal★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 45 reviews
- 3Afro Walking Tour – Samba and resistance (Pedra do Sal)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 16 reviews
The Selarón Steps
Jorge Selarón started retiling the staircase outside his house in 1990 and never really stopped, taking tiles sent from more than sixty countries until he died on the steps in 2013. There are 215 of them between Lapa and Santa Teresa, they are free and public, and they are busiest between ten and two.
- 1Rio’s Full Day: Selarón Steps, Christ & Sugarloaf – Tickets & Lunch Included★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,724 reviews
- 2Christ the Redeemer, Sugarloaf, Selaron & BBQ Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,428 reviews
- 3Rio’s Best_Corcovado, Sugar Loaf, Selaron, Cathedral and more★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 864 reviews
Rio has two Mondays: the working one, and the one at Pedra do Sal.
All samba nights →
Pedra do Sal: Live Samba Night with Local Guide & Drink
Read our review →
Pub Crawl in Lapa with Cachaça Tasting and Live Samba
Read our review →
Carnival Backstage Tour at Samba City with Cocktail
Read our review →Book these before you fly to Rio.
Most of Rio can be arranged from your hotel the evening before. These four cannot — they run on timed slots, fixture lists, the church calendar and the wind.
- 01Christ the Redeemer Entry Ticket by Corcovado TrainEntry to the statue runs on timed slots, and the rack railway holds a fixed number of seats per departure. The clear mid-morning trains go first.
- 02Carnival Backstage Tour at Samba City with CocktailCarnival moves with the church calendar — February some years, March others. Fix the week before you book anything else.
- 03Football Match in Rio de Janeiro – Guided with TransportationFixtures are confirmed only a few weeks out and the big derbies sell out, so the match decides the date rather than the other way round.
- 04Hang gliding Hang gliding Experience RotorflyTandem flights launch on the right wind or not at all, and operators rebook rather than fly. Put it early in the trip so there is a second chance.
When the cloud sits on Corcovado, go down to sea level.
Rio’s summer afternoons build thunderstorms, and the peaks disappear into cloud on plenty of mornings that started blue. Nothing at street level cares: the steps, the port museums, the stadium tour, the old Afro-Carioca quarter and the botanical garden all run in the wet, and the samba certainly does.
Out of Rio for the day
Arraial do Cabo34 tours
Angra dos Reis34 tours- Ilha Grande27 tours
Búzios36 tours
Petrópolis32 tours
Niterói6 tours- Every day trip →
The newest Rio reviews.
All recent →
Arraial do Cabo Wonderful Tour with Lunch Included
Read our review →
Búzios – Boat Trip Leaving Rio with Lunch, Transport and Tour Guide
Read our review →
Tour 4 ( 8 hours ) : Sugar Loaf , Botanical Garden , Favela and western beaches
Read our review →
Jeep Tour with Corcovado, Tijuca Forest and Sta Teresa
Read our review →
Canoeing Experience: Sea Kayak or Hawaiian Outrigger
Read our review →
Private guided walking tour of the Santa Teresa neighborhood
Read our review →
Private Guided Day Trip to Imperial City of Petrópolis
Read our review →
Discover AquaRio & Olympic Boulevard: Marine Life and Art
Read our review →