Day Trips from Brazil

Sixty kilometres into the Serra do Mar the breeze turns from salt to pine and imperial palaces glow butter-yellow against the cool air. Petrópolis served as Brazil's mountain capital when the emperor fled the coastal mosquitoes. Today it's a high-altitude playground of crystal chandeliers, foaming beer halls and chocolate shops that reek of burnt sugar.

No cars, no banks, just rainforest tracks that spill onto bone-white coves. From Rio you catamaran across the Costa Verde, watching the sugarloaf shrink astern. By mid-morning you're floating in water the colour of liquid aquamarine that carries a faint kiss of coconut and diesel, proof the city stayed behind.

A stone wharf town where Portuguese sailors once stacked African gold and modern visitors unload their stress. Paraty's historic centre is a chessboard of waist-high doorways painted indigo and ochre. When the tide climbs, seawater burbles through the old cobbles and washes the lanes in salt.

Rio's backyard massif climbs so fast your ears pop before the park gate. The trademark 'Organ' peaks spear the sky like cathedral pipes above elfin forest dripping in moss. Toucans shuttle between bamboo clumps and the air tastes of wet pine and damp stone.

What started as a fishing hamlet discovered by Brigitte Bardot is now 23 beaches stitched together by sand lanes that smell of salt and grilled squid. You'll leap from wind-scoured kite dunes to sheltered coves where the sea glows like liquid jade, every stop a different mood.

Quiet Atlantic forest valleys where roadside griddles sell heart-of-palm pasties and macaws announce themselves before you see them. Rivers here skate across flat granite shelves, carving natural waterslides warmed by tropical sun.

A 15-minute ferry hop drops you in Niterói under Oscar Niemeyer's flying-saucer museum cantilevered over the bay. The art inside is uneven. But the 360° sweep of Rio's skyline is masterpiece enough. Afterwards you can dust sand off your feet at Camboinhas' soft gray beach.