Day 2. Rio de Janeiro
After breakfast at the hotel you will meet your yoga instructor at the lobby. Wear comfortable clothes as you are starting the date with a mindful yoga lesson. He will take you to Praia Vermelha (the Red Beach) where you have a yoga class right on the beach! After soaking up energy from the powerful ocean and the rising sun, you will start for a very special place in Rio with your guide, Sugarloaf. A cable car ride will take you up to Urca Mountain, the stop between ground level and Sugarloaf. Once arriving at the top of Sugarloaf mountain you will see the captivating beauty of Rio from a different angle. To your left you can see Copacabana beach stretching out into the distance, and on the horizon the faint outlines of Two Brothers and Gávea mountains. Below you is the intimate Red Beach, while to your right you can see across Guanabara Bay to Niterói and, nearer by, Botafogo and central neighborhoods, with the unmistakable silhouette of Christ the Redeemer casting its eternal gaze over the city. From this point we gain a different perspective on Rio, and can truly appreciate its beauty. After descending the mountain by cablecar, you will head into the Historical Center with its colonial architecture including many old churches still in use. The cobbled streets and bright colours are a stark contrast to the whitewashed, sunsoaked streets of Ipanema but in many ways are part of the authentic, nearly-forgotten historical Rio, and one can almost feel the hustle and bustle of hundreds of years ago when these streets were filled with merchants and citizens of the Portuguese Empire, locals, immigrants.
