From Curitiba, I rode along the coast towards Rio de Janeiro. The BR-101 is a popular coastal road with bikers as it has some good curves and goes through occasional small beach towns. It’s really pretty along the coast here in South Brazil.

I ended up riding into Rio at about 20:00. I usually try to be off the road before dark but the coastal road was much slower going than I had anticipated. I had already booked a hostel online a few days earlier since Rio is a really popular city with the World Cup going on. Tons of tourists here and with that comes a big increase in price. I was paying $100USD/night for a spot in a 9 bed dorm room.. crazyness!

I stayed in Rio for just 2 days/3nights. This place certainly deserves more but with the inflated prices and over abundance of other tourists, I didn’t want to stay that long. I’ll just have to come back another time 😉

Of course, no trip to Rio is complete without going up to see old J.C. himself:

To get to the top you take a train. It’s a pretty quick ride and has some good views on the way up.

The other necessary thing to do in Rio is to check out the beaches. Copacabana and Ipanema beach are world famous and really do live up to their reputation.

Cariocas (people from Rio) are serious about their health and appearances. Everyone’s got their beach body maintained all year round here. I saw thousands of people running along the beach sidewalk. I could totally get into that mentality here.Overall, Rio seems like a great place to visit and probably an even better place to live. This place certainly lives up to it’s hype. As I mentioned before, I’m gonna have to come back here again someday 😉