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.
130 km from Rio de Janeiro to Rio de Janeiro, about 3 h 28 of riding. The stops in between: Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between, Sítio Roberto Burle Marx and back through Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between. The line favours views over speed.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 19 km this is Rio-Santos Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
There is hardly any monument here, and that is part of what makes it powerful. The Valongo Wharf in Rio's port district is a sunken stone landing, unearthed in 2011 under the street when the area was being renovated, and it is believed to be the principal place where enslaved Africans arrived in the Americas. Historians estimate that hundreds of thousands of people came ashore at Valongo in the first half of the nineteenth century, after being shipped across the Atlantic in conditions that many did not survive. It was built in 1811 to move the trade away from the city centre, and was later covered by a new quay built for the arrival of a bride for the emperor. The stones lay hidden for the better part of two centuries.
Read the complete Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site 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 19 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 62 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 Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site. That is the ride.
Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site → Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between is 19 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 → Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.