Riding Rio de Janeiro: the forest climb, the beach road and the coast heading west

Rio is one of the few cities in the world where a rainforest climb, a mountain lookout and an empty ocean beach fit inside a single morning. You can leave Copacabana at seven, be in cold forest air twenty minutes later, and be standing on sand with nobody on it before lunch. This is what the riding is actually like.

The climb into the Tijuca forest

The Tijuca is the largest urban rainforest in the world, and the road through it starts inside the city. Within a few kilometres the temperature drops, the light goes green, and the traffic disappears behind you. The surface is asphalt the whole way, tight and second-gear in places, with water crossing the road after rain.

The lookout everyone climbs for is the Vista Chinesa, a pagoda on a ledge above the forest with Ipanema, the lagoon and the Sugarloaf laid out underneath. Get there early: by mid-morning the small car park is full and the haze has come up off the city.

The beach avenues and Botafogo bay

Coming down out of the forest you land in the Zona Sul, and the ride turns into something completely different: the seafront through Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana, then round the bay at Botafogo with the Sugarloaf on your right and the Christ statue above your left shoulder. It is slow riding and you will not mind. Sunday mornings the beachfront lanes are closed to cars, which changes the whole character of the city.

West to Grumari and Prainha

Keep going west past Barra and Recreio and the city runs out. The road narrows, climbs over a headland and drops into Prainha and Grumari, protected beaches inside a municipal park where building is not allowed. This is the stretch that surprises visitors: forty minutes from Copacabana, and it looks like nothing has happened here since 1950. The corners are good, the surface is fair, and there is almost always a stall selling coconut water at the top.

What it is like to ride here

Rio traffic is fast and lane-splitting is normal and legal for motorcycles. Riders read it quickly, but the first hour in the city is not the place to learn. That is the honest argument for a guide: not the roads, which anyone can follow, but the ten decisions a minute that a local makes without thinking.