CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 141 km round trip from Rio de Janeiro - roughly 3 h 47 in the saddle. The stops in between: Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between, Sítio Roberto Burle Marx and back through Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between. It keeps close to the shore for long stretches.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 25 km this is Rio-Santos Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The entrance to Guanabara Bay is a narrow gap between two rock masses, with Sugarloaf Mountain on one side and the fort of Sao Joao on the other, and it is one of the great harbour views of the world. This stretch of shoreline, around Urca, Botafogo and Flamengo, is part of the area that UNESCO recognised in 2012 as a cultural landscape where the city and the natural setting have shaped each other. The words manmade shoreline refer to the reclaimed land along the bay, which includes the Flamengo Park.
Read the complete Mouth of Guanabara Bay and Manmade Shoreli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mouth of Guanabara Bay and Manmade Shoreli is where the day begins. Next is Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between.
Rio is the one big city where a motorbike ride can end in a rainforest. Floresta da Tijuca, now a national park, is one of the largest urban forests in the world, and it is also a replanted forest. In the nineteenth century the original Atlantic forest had been cut for coffee and charcoal, the city's springs were drying up, and the emperor's government started replanting the slopes. What you ride through today is a second-growth jungle that grew back from that effort.
Read the complete Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sítio Roberto Burle Marx.
Roberto Burle Marx changed the way the world thought about gardens. The Brazilian landscape architect, painter and plant collector, who died in 1994, designed the wave-patterned promenade along Copacabana beach, the gardens of the Ministry of Education in Rio, and hundreds of other parks and gardens, using native tropical plants in bold, abstract compositions. In 1949 he bought a former coffee estate in Barra de Guaratiba, in the far west of Rio de Janeiro, and turned it into his home, studio and laboratory, filling it with thousands of plant species collected on expeditions across Brazil. Sítio Roberto Burle Marx was added to the World Heritage list in 2021.
Read the complete Sítio Roberto Burle Marx write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 68 km into the recorded legs you reach Sítio Roberto Burle Marx. Next is back through Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between, late in the day. Next is Mouth of Guanabara Bay and Manmade Shoreli.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mouth of Guanabara Bay and Manmade Shoreli write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Mouth of Guanabara Bay and Manmade Shoreli. That is the ride.
Mouth of Guanabara Bay and Manmade Shoreli → Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between → Sítio Roberto Burle Marx is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sítio Roberto Burle Marx → back through Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between → Mouth of Guanabara Bay and Manmade Shoreli is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.