Rio de Janeiro Tours in December 2026

Excellent, well organized short trip taking in Iguazu Falls, Paraty and Ilha Grande as well as Bs As and Rio. Would suggest a little longer in Rio. Leader was well informed and experienced so added to enjoyment.

Great selection of experiences from city to sun travel. UNESCO and world class experiences at Iguazu Falls, the town of Paraty and Christian the Redeemer. Interesting history of the Spanish explorers, the immigration of Italians and the slave trade. The different beach vibes on Ilha Grande and Rio de Janeiro; quiet and laid back to dynamic and fast paced. Our guide was experienced and accommodating, making it easy to enjoy the trip.

Our leader ingrid run the tour perfectly even taking over when some of the local guilds were not up to scratch and made sure everyone got to the airport . checked if anyone needed to go to the shops

We certainly got to see a few of Brazil's incredible highlights - Ignazu Falls and a jaguar in the Pantanal were particularly special. Brazil is a huge country and this means that several days of the trip are devoted to transfers - 8 internal flights and quite a few bus journeys! A caipirinha at sunset was a good way to recover from the long distances we crossed.

Our tour leader Ingrid was absolutely superb and worked extremely hard to make the most out of our trip. There were some fabulous highlights but a few things that made the trip less-than-ideal. One is just how much you have to travel to see everything. We understood this before we started, but the reality of travelling internally in Brazil was that there were no direct flights available between locations, which meant that a full 5 days of the trip was spent on air or bus transport, making the itinerary tiring and the time available to explore locations very limited. And some of the local guides were not so good, in one case not even realising that tickets for a national park could be bought cheaper and far more quickly on line in advance, adding extra time and expense. And one had only superficial sensitivity to wildlife, getting frustrated with us when we exhorted her not to physically handle a wild animal. Very disappointing was a late decision not to allow optional travel into the Pantanal, which was to have been my highlight of the trip. The reasons given and very late decision were not entirely convincing. On balance, overall it was a fair trip with some memorable experiences, but I could not recommend spending this amount of money on what amounts to nearly half the trip sitting on public transport. The itinerary is too much to realistically pack into 2 weeks. In this case less ambition would have been more opportunity. For context, I've travelled a lot with Explore over many years and this is the first trip that has over-promised and under-delivered.