Brazil: a hat-trick trip
AlamyAn introduction to Brazil
Brazil is at the top of its game: World Cup fever is ramping up, oil is fuelling a boom and the Olympics are on the way. Julian Evans goes on a hat-trick trip, tackling the classic star players from the new Copacabana Palace to the smartest Island striker. Vast, immeasurable, an overspill of cultures, climates and radical identities, Brazil, the fifth largest nation on earth, feels more like an incomplete planet than a very big country. From Rio de Janeiro to Manaus, for example, is 2,700km; the same distance London is from Morocco or Greece. The best way to understand the most influential nation in Latin America is to think of it as a slideshow of ever-changing views. Take Rio. Take the Copacabana Palace hotel, freshly refurbished to the tune of US$20million. Gone are the chintz and brocade, the swirly shagpile and the sense of stuffiness. The place has been given a lighter, more contemporary look and finally feels like what it is, a beach hotel, a fabulous glittering beach hotel. From my fifth-floor suite there is perhaps the world's most spectacular urban outlook: a beachfront highway, Burle Marx's four-kilometre snake of mosaic pavement, a scattering of kiosk cafes and palm trees, and the stupendous curling, vanishing length of Copacabana Beach, where the sand and the ocean are merely different sorts of light.
Pictured: Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro
AlamyCorcovado Mountain, Brazil
Drive to the top of the Corcovado Mountain and you look down on a city that is more seaside playground than purposeful conurbation. Only Cristo Redentor - Paul Landowski's 39-metre-high statue of Christ the Redeemer, arms outstretched above you - has a better view of the skyscrapers squeezed between the woods and water below. Or cross Guanabara Bay or Niterói and, from the 360-degree perspective of Oscar Niemeyer's flower-shaped Museu de Arte Contemporânea, contemplate Rio's cubist sprawl and grene primitivist hills across the water. Return and climb one of those hills to a favela - one of hundreds of slums in which 20 per cent of Rio's population lives - or go back to the beaches, to Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, and choose your view according to the number of the lifeguard station: Posto 9 at Ipanema is where the most beautiful bodies congregate.
Pictured: Christ the Redeemer statue atop Corcovado Mountain, overlooking Rio de Janeiro
AlamyThe favelas of Rio de Janeiro
What is truly remarkable about Rio is that until recently such a roll-call of views would hardly have been possible to see with ease or pleasure. From the 1990s onwards, the city was on the dive. 'Underwhelming,' I was told. 'Not so much the cidade maravihosa [beautiful city] as the cidade durão [tough city].' The crime statistics - 17 murders a day - and the films of José Padilha (Elite Squad and its sequel Elite Squad: The Enemy Within) about the drug wars and police corruption confirmed Rio's reputation. Above all, you never went anywhere near a favela unless invited. The favelas' historic atmosphere is caught on a flamboyant ceramic mural at the Escadarina Selarón in the Lapa district: 'Nobody robs, nobody hears, nothing is lost. Those who are wise obey those who give orders.' Cariocas - Rio's law-abiding citizens - watched floodlights go up on the big beaches and despaired. Then, decisively, in 2008, the state government began sending the army and the BOPE special police force into the favelas. The drug lords were driven out, with remarkably few deaths (although my guide, Marcelo, hinted delicately that to kill with a knife is 'very quiet'). Marcelo took me to Roçinha, a favela which was pacified in December 2011: an extraordinary place of up-and-down alleys (population 70,000), a fumy potion of garbage, chickens and clove cigarettes, birds' nest of illegal cabling at every corner. But crime had plummeted, Marcelo said, and with the economy growing fast, unemployment, too. And something democratic has emerged at Roçinha, now that the fear is receding: in these low-rise brick-and-concrete labyrinths stacked up the hills, most residents have a million-dollar view.
Pictured: Roçinha favela, Rio de Janeiro
Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro
Brazil's economy is booming almost everywhere you care to look, from the twinkling clusters of offshore drilling platforms you see as your plane descends, to the fashion for expensive orthodontic work that is one of the first things you notice after you touch down. Brazilians are fixing their smiles; many of them have a lot to smile about. In Rio, some things still don't work: if you want to use an ATM while you're here, make sure you tell your bank, otherwise the city's reputation for crime means they will block your card, assuming it has been cloned or stolen. But the Copacabana Palace, with its proper 25-metre pool and weekend brunches of caviar blinis and perfect scrambled eggs on the terrace, obviously works. So do other things. You can now explore the beaches and centre by renting an orange Itaú bike (the name of the sponsoring bank) for five reais (£1.50) a day; across the road from the hotel, you can sit and drink água de coco straight from the coconut and admire its Art Deco façade for even less. Be prepared to find a careless, last-minute spirit to the city, as though it is always being remade. Despite Brazil hosting the next World Cup and Rio the next Olympics, there is little sign of preparations taking place for either yet.
Pictured: Copacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro
AlamyIguazú Falls, Brazil
An hour's drive west of the city brings you through eucalyptus woods and shaded villages to a place you should not miss: the Roberto Burle Marx gardens at Guaratiba, probably one of the most beautifully laid-out sites in Brazil. Here the landscape architect, artist and ecologist lived from 1973 until his death, on a former coffee plantation that is not only a shaded, perfume-radiating idyll (the lake of mosaic lilies is unforgettable), recalling his legacy of hundreds of gardens around the world, but also includes a 17th-century chapel, an airy studio, a superb folk-art collection, and the spirit of an almost perfect quality of life. At 1,200km hop from Rio takes you to Foz do Iguaçu, whose existence depends on a single asset. It is reported that on seeing Iguaçu Falls for the first time, Eleanor Roosevelt exclaimed, 'Poor Niagara!' Formed by two earthquakes more than 150 million years ago, Iguaçu is a thundering, steaming cauldron of up to 275 falls, where the water can rise or drop by 30 metres, and smashes and pounds so unremittingly that it is almost impossible not to ascribe to them some irrational human character. Victoria Falls are higher, but Iguaçu delivers more than 50 per cent more water: the nearby Itaipu hydroelectric plant supplies 19 per cent of Brazil's energy needs - and 90 per cent of neighbouring Paraguay's. The Guarani and Tupi Indians first named Iguaçu, with total accuracy, from their words y and uasú, 'big water'.
Pictured: Iguacu Falls
The Hotel des Cataratas, Brazil
The Hotel das Cataratas, the only hotel inside the Iguaçu National Park on the Brazillian side, first opened in 1958 and was revamped in 2009 with its elegant hardwood floors and proud pink ranch-style design intact. From my bedroom overlooking the head of the falls (the Devil's Throat), I glimpsed day-trippers alighting from their buses and felt extremely lucky (the two million visitors a year to the national park all have to leave at the day's end). I was able to make the walk several times, at sunrise and at dusk and nearly always alone, to watch the parakeets on the islands in the stream, basking tegu lizards and the swifts that nest behind the torrent. Carioca who don't care for Rio's Carnival who can escape to the Cataratas. Once you have walked to the falls and back, you could happily idle away the day reading by the pool, where, from a position of prone relaxation, you would probably see a cascati catching butterflies in its beak (there are 800 bird species in the park), or a couple of languid black-and-white teyus, or a family of coatis (South American racoons) raiding the poolside café when the staff are not looking. You should also surrender to a deep andiroba massage in the spa wing, and in the Itaipu Restaurant afterwards sample a barely poached quail's egg, a melting steak tartare prepared from grass-fed beef, and a sole meunière.
Hotel das Cataratas is an ideal resting point, the falls providing a phenomenal panorama midway from somewhere to somewhere else. But the panorama made me realise that with a view the sense of personsal discovery is crucial - it's not dissimilar to the impulse you have when someone shows you their photographs: as Roland Barthes has pointed out, you immediately want not to immerse yourself in theirs, but to show them yours.
Pictured: the pool at Hotel das Cataratas
Ponta dos Ganchos, Brazil
My last stop was 1,000km south-east of Iguaçu. As I headed north from Florianópolis in Santa Catarina, the straggle of a state's capital's highway lined with dusty lock-ups and shiny, featureless car dealerships gave way to glimpses of ocean again, woods and fields specked with Brahman cattle. Then came a right turn to the fishing village of Governador celso Ramos and a sudden, unmarked track up between thick woods in the middle of the village.
On this forested point, between one bay and the next, Ponta dos Ganchos (Portuguese for 'point of the hooks') lies nearly invisible in eight hectares of eucalyptus, bamboo and palm. Twenty-fire pink-ochre bungalows are secreted among the trees and slopes. Mine is last in a line of five whose flat eco-roofs spill vegetation between tilted solar panels. It has a cool interior of carefully arranged spaces and in the right angle of its L, beyond the doulbe showers with huge heads and sliding doors to the world outside, a sauna and Jacuzzi next to a glass wall. The view to the west from the wide deck and private lap pool, over mussel and oyster beds and an enormous bay and a blue, hazy, far-distant range of hills is enchanting.
Pictured: Porta dos Ganchos
Ponta dos Ganchos
Ponta dos Ganchos is family-owned, run by Nicholas Peluffo and his sister Virginia, both of whom take pride in its tranquility and unostentatious luxury. Nicholas is delighted to tell me that in 2011 Ponta dos Ganchos was awarded the rarely given ISO 14.001 standard for sustainable development; that more than 90 per cent of the employees are trained from the neighbourhood; and it is always trying to bridge the traditional gap between what guests want and what suits management. Breakfast, for instance - with an optional tasting menu - is available all day.
The resort's designer was Nicolas and Virginia's mother, the architect Elianne Klenner, who died in her early fifties in 2011. Her legacy is not only in the rustic-modernist look and the level of comfort in each bungalow, but also in the unexpectedly homely ambience. On my first day I went fishing with Virginia and, having stayed out trying (and failing) to land a large grouper, we came back through choppy weather. The following morning I sat idling on the deck and experienced the feeling of somehow being at home.
Pictured: the shoreline at Ponta dos Ganchos
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Ponta dos Ganchos restaurant
The restaurant at Ponda dos Ganchos, which serves seasonal and organic food, is excellent, with a remarkable cellar of Brazilian wines. I was invited to dinner on the island in front of the beach with Miguel García, the general manager. Each night one couple crosses a wooden walkway to spend the evening here, at a stone-and-thatch hideaway, served by waiters summoned by radio. Two middle-aged men, initially shy at being thrown together like a honeymooning couple, find that by the end of a meal of incomparable oysters - gratineed, natural, and with cucumber, mint and olive oil - lobster, and lamb loin with tapenade crust they are old cronies, contemplating the lights glimmering on the shores in feathered darkness.
But it is also easy to be active without moving far. I hiked a few miles to Praia de Fora, a perfect Robinson Crusoe beach sheltered from humanity by whale-like fingers of pink basalt, and was rewarded for my effort with a spa treatment in a cliff-top gazebo on my return, gazing at the sunset through a screen of bamboos. There is snorkelling and diving; you can visit an oyster farm or a Portuguese fort, or contemplate the exquisite Nossa Senhora da Piedade church on the shore at Praia da Armação da Piedade, built in the 18th century by slaves using mud, shell and whale oil. Florianópolis island is strewn with nuggets of early Azorean settlements, such as the old port of Santo Antônio de Lisboa, still painted in bright, peasant colours and dedicated to fishing more than to visitors' needs.
Pictured: Ponta dos Ganchos
Rex FeaturesFlorianópolis Island
Nicolas believes Florianópolis to be one of the great secrets of the southern hemisphere: 'The best place to party, the most beautiful girls anywhere, beaches that no one outside Brazil has heard of.' He wanted to show me what it had to offer. At Recanto dos Brunidores we sat by the water with pastéis of prawns, oysters and ceviche, grouper tartare with local red peppercorns and bacalhau (salt cod) croquettes, helped down with glacial, astringent Pêra-Manca wine, followed by a pâté of sea urchin with cream and cognac, and for a main course, moqueca of simmering prawns, mussels, oysters, squid and the tenderest octopus.
From these excursions I returned each time to sit on the deck and watch the bay. What was so alluring about this particular view? Its rarity, perhaps, and its vast but balanced scale of sea and sky against a minimal human presence, as the fishermen punctually checked their nets.
There was something else, too. Ponta dos Ganchos is at a point of balance between the undisturbed past and the developed future. With Brazil's economic boom, new developments are planned (though not yet licensed) along the coast, and so this fine view conveys not only an enchanting beauty but a quality even more precious: the outline of something potentially irretrievable.
Pictured: a beach of Florianópolis, Santa Catarina
Neil GowerGetting to Brazil
GETTING THERE Scott Dunn (020 8682 5030; www.scottdunn.com) offers tailor-made itineraries to Brazil from £3,795 per person, including three nights at Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, two nights at Hotel das Cataratas, Iguaçu Falls, and three nights at Ponta dos Ganchos in Florianopolis on a bed-and-breakfast basis, return flights from Heathrow to Rio de Janeiro with British Airways, internal flights and transfers. Ponta dos Ganchos (00 55 48 3953 7000; www.pontadosganchos.com) has bungalows from about £415 per night, including breakfast and a welcome drink. Copacabana Palace (www.copacabanapalace.com) has doubles from about £380, including breakfast, through Orient-Express (0845 077 2222). Hotel das Cataratas (www.hoteldascataratas.com) has doubles from about £250, including breakfast, through Orient-Express.
Pictured: a map of Brazil
Published in Condé Nast Traveller March 2013.