Day 1 –  Departure to Rio

Today you leave for a country which will leave you gasping with its beauty and a city unlike any other on Earth – Rio de Janeiro, where you will land at Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 2 – Rio de Janeiro

Welcome to the South America’s most beautiful city

You will be welcomed and greeted by your guide or The Earth Trip representative on arrival at the waiting area at Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport. You’ll then be transferred to your hotel in one of Rio’s beautiful beach neighborhoods – the best places to stay: Rio is forest and ocean – spread out from a gorgeous old baroque centre, with sleek suburbs lining, five-mile long, lazy surf pounded beaches set against forest-swathed hills.

Rio is a city that invites you to swim, surf, cycle and hike in the gorgeous hills; to endless beautiful views that leave you gasping. After settling-in you’ll take a city tour – to the Christ statue watching over the ocean. Look out for capuchin monkeys in the trees. You’ll finish with sunset over Sugar Loaf mountain, Rio at your feet.

Mid-range

Brazil Holidays • Brazil

Windsor Excelsior Copacabana

Convenience and refinement by the ocean for those who want to enjoy unique moments in the...

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 3-4 Ibitipoca Mountain

After breakfast you will transfer to Ibitipoca mountain. With myriad streams and rivers a range of micro ranging from cloud forests to rocky escarpments, lowland forests and savannahs, it is a unique wildlife destination. Ibitipoca is one of the last homes of the biggest monkey in the Americas, the woolly spider monkey together with rare maned wolf, pumas and endangered birds including the Vinaceous-breasted amazon, Stripe-tailed Yellow-finch, Blue-winged Macaw and the endemic White-bellied warbler.

At Ibitipoca you have a choice of stay in three stunning locations – the beautiful Portuguese colonial main ranch house set near a rushing mountain stream, the rainforest reserve lodge and the mountain hut, situated in the heart of the cloud forest.

Superior

Brazil

Engenho Lodge

If you stay at Engenho Lodge or Casa Carlinhos, you will feel the atmosphere of the...

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 5-6 Ibitipica to Foz de Iguacu

An early drive to Rio airport and a short flight brings you to the world’s most spectacular waterfalls. Spanning almost two miles, made up of 275 separate cataracts and set in steaming forest these falls are so spectacular that when U.S first lady Eleanor Roosevelt first saw them she simply said ‘poor Niagara.’

You will stay in the only hotel inside the park. So you will have the waterfalls for you and a handful of fellow guests after the busy daytime crowds have gone. Sunset and dawn are the best times for spotting wildlife. The falls sit in the heart of twin national parks half the size of Wales with wild jaguars and more than four hundred species of birds including Harpy Eagle. Listen out for the guttural roar of troops of howler monkeys and if you’re lucky you’ll see them swinging through the trees in front of Iguaçu.

Our guide will take you on the park trails on the Brazilian and the Argentinean side of the falls including along a boardwalk which reaches right out over the Iguaçu River to the ‘Devil’s Throat’ – a deep cleft at the centre of the falls where every second one and a half million litres of water roar over a sheer cliff surrounded by rainforest.

Deluxe

Brazil

Hotel das Cataratas

Hotel das Cataratas is a luxurious, colonial-style hotel located within Brazil's Iguazu National Park, offering exclusive...

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 7 – Iguaçu to Pantanal

Today you will leave early for your flight to Campo Grande and the Pantanal. You will be met at the airport and transferred to your beautiful ranch house accommodation in the heart of the wetlands. The Pantanal are the world’s largest inland wetlands – South America’s counterpart to the Okavango and the Serengeti: where creeks overflow with Brazilian alligators, water birds and capybara – which look like guinea pigs as big as real pigs. There’s an eagle on every other tree, the sky is filled with metre-long indigo parrots and soaring storks and there is nowhere in the world where you are more likely to see big cats.

Mid-range

Brazil Holidays • Brazil

Private: Pousada Piuval- Pantanal

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 7-8: Pantanal

You will spend your next two days enjoying morning (for a near guarantee of seeing jaguars in the wild), evening and night safaris (spotting big cat eye shine in the flashlight beams), together with giant anteaters, metre-long hyacinth macaws, jabiru storks and hundreds of caiman-crocodiles.

Mid-range

Brazil Holidays • Brazil

Private: Pousada Piuval- Pantanal

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 9 – Pantanal to Pirenopolis

Today you will fly to explore historic Pirenopolis. This beautifully preserved baroque village is one of the forgotten treasures of central Brazil – cobbled streets of terracotta-roofed pink, blue and yellow cottages cluster around pretty Portuguese churches. Rugged hills cut by streams and waterfalls rise behind, and the whole area sits in extensive Cerrado forests wild enough for ocelots and rhea.

You will have the afternoon to explore the town at leisure.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 10 – Pirenopolis to Brasilia

This morning you visit the Vagofogo reserve – a pioneering private conservation project initiated in the 1990s to preserve Brazil’s most threatened natural habitat – the cerrado. This scented, flower-filled tropical woodland is home to 856 bird species of which 30 are endemic and 56 threatened. You will spend the morning walking Vagofogo’s beautiful trails, before leaving for Brasilia.

Brazil’s astonishing Jetson age capital is a shimmering city of cubes, triangles and brilliant white domes set around a vast lake and laid out in the shape of an aeroplane. You will enjoy a late afternoon city tour and the chance to eat in one of the capital’s many excellent restaurants.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 11 – The Chapada dos Guimaraes Table Top Mountain

This morning you fly to one of the Cerrado forest’s impressive table-top mountains, the Chapada dos Guimarães. This ancient cave-pocked escarpment rises dramatically from the  surrounding plains and is covered in cerrado forest Birdlife is rich. Mammals, such as puma, jaguarundi, giant river otter and black-tailed marmoset can also be seen with time and patience and there are numerous lookout points over plunging waterfalls and rugged mountain ranges.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Days 12-14: Cristalino Jungle Lodge

This morning you fly to Cristalino Jungle Lodge – the best wildlife-spotting destination anywhere in the Amazon rainforest. Cristalino is a private reserve almost twice the size of Manhattan, abutting a vast swathe of Amazonian lowland forest. Because it has been a protected reserve for nearly three decades the wildlife has no fear of humans and is easy to spot on trails, on the myriad rivers and from the observation towers. Only at Cristalino will you see 9 species of monkeys, tapirs, peccaries, giant otters and some 600 species of birds including nesting Harpy Eagles. The wildlife guiding and facilities are world class and the accommodation – in glass-fronted lodges, the most comfortable in the lowland Amazon.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 15 – São Paulo

Brazil’s biggest city will is the best place in South America for fine dining, shopping, museums, galleries and nightlife. You will have a full day to explore it at leisure.

Stroll along the city’s skyscraper-lined main avenue, Avenida Paulista. Then take a cab to Luz to see Brazilian art in the Pinacoteca and Estação Pinacoteca galleries. Browse the plush boutiques of the Jardins neighbourhood – for Latin America’s best fashion and jewellery. Dine at Alex Attala’s Two Michelin Star D.O.M restaurant with a menu of Amazon ingredients served with European culinary panache. And swing to the samba in the Ó do Borogodó bar before heading to bed with the rhythms of Brazil still tingling in your ears.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast

Day 16 –  End of Tour

You will be transferred to Guarulhos International Airport to fly home. Travel time to the airport is approximately 90 minutes.

• Board Includes:
• Breakfast