Driving Through The Favelas To Reach The Mountain

dannystravels (71)in #life • 6 years ago

Hi I'm Danny! I'm travelling around the world! Follow my posts.

If the typical tourist landmarks are not for you, and you want to get off the beaten track then here are a couple tips that you wont find in normal tourist guides. Today: Two Brothers Mountain.

One of the most accessible treks is the Two Brothers mountain, which looks over Ipanema beach. If you've read the previous post on Pedra da Gávea then you would have seen this summit in the background of the pictures.

To start the trek you have to get a motor taxi which is a thrilling experience in itself. You drive up through the narrow winding streets of Vidigal favela. Driving through the favela on the back of a motorbike is a complete sensory overload, and gives you an insight into favela life.

It's only a 40 minute trek from the top of the favela to the summit, through the rainforest, this makes it an ideal trek if you want to catch the sun coming up.

Ipanema city lights slowly fade as the sun comes up

The sun breaks the horizon over Ipanema beach

The mountain range on the left is Pedra da Gávea

After spending the morning at the summit and enjoying the views we headed back down with the plan to hit the beach.

We stopped off halfway down to look at the awesome sight of Rocinha favela. It's impossible to know the exact number of people living here as it is so densly populated - but some say over 100k people.