Christmas in Brazil
Brazil is a great destination for Dec as it’s the summer season for the Southern Hemisphere.
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We spent the first few days sunbathing in an all-inclusive resort in Porto de Galinhas, a popular beach town an hour south of Recife. The second part of the trip was a visit to the bustling city of Rio de Janeiro.
Day 1 Itinerary
Places visited: Enotel Acqua Club
Enotel Acqua Club
A beach-front all-inclusive resort with a huge water park. No matter you are a beach or pool person, you can find a good spot here for sunbathing. The resort has a prett casual atmosphere but has all the amenities you would expect at a nice all-inclusive property. The food and drinks were excellent too!
Day 2 Itinerary
Places visited: Enotel Acqua Club - Porto De Galinhas - Enotel Acqua Club
Drinks 🍹 at Poolside
The pool side bar is one of our favorite hangout spots at the resort. Who doesn’t love bottomless pina colada and fresh coconut juice?!
Porto De Galinhas
Porto de Galinhas means "Chicken Port" in English. You might wonder why such a beautiful beach area has a weird name like that. In the late 19th century, Porto de Galinhas became a place where people traded slaves to work in the sugar cane plantations. To evade the control of the illegal transaction, slaves were transported together with guineafowl and code words were created by traffickers "Tem galinha nova no porto" ("There are new chickens in the port"), hence the origin of the name.
Today Porto de Galinhas is considered one of the best beaches in Brazil and frequented by beach lovers from near and far.
More Pool Time & Sunset
Day 3 Itinerary
Places visited: Piscinas Naturais Porto de Galinhas - Porto De Galinhas
Piscinas Naturais Porto de Galinhas
Porto de Galinhas is known for its nature-made pools not far from the coast line. During low tide, the crystal clear water is dammed in coral reefs, forming many natural aquariums filled with fishes and marine animals. You can swim or snorkel in those too.
The best way to get to those amazing pools is to book one of the local boat tours. (Our hotel helped us book one easily.)
Porto De Galinhas
Day 5 Itinerary
Places visited: Ipanema Beach - Restaurante La Maison - New Mariuzinn Copacabana
Ipanema Beach
Our rental villa is a short walk to Ipanema so we spent most of our time in Rio at this famous beach.
Even during week days, Ipanema is always crowded with tons of fabulous looking young people. It made us wonder if young people in Brazil has any work to do. After chatting with a few locals, we found out a lot of the people hanging out on beach are aspiring actors/actresses showing off their bodies in hope to be discovered by some talent agencies 😆.
Restaurante La Maison
Clubbing in Copacabana
You can’t visit Rio without checking out its night life in Copacabana. We simply had too much fun and forgot to take photos.
Day 6 Itinerary
Places visited: São Conrado - Christ the Redeemer - Braseiro da Gávea
Just Fly Hang Gliding
First time hang gliding! The view was wonderful and the tandem instructors are professional - we had a great time!
This is the operator we booked with: Just Fly
