04 Apr 2023
We were on a cruise ship traveling South America and stopped in eleven ports in Brazil. With many positive reviews and our concerns about safety of independent travel, we decided to sign up 8 tours including Rio Carnival and 2 Half-day private group tours in Rio de Janeiro. The owner, Marcelo, customizes each tour to fit our cruise schedule to show us the great cities. He was always available before I even book his tours and during the tours. He showed up at the Rio cruise port with his team of tour guides to greet us (easily over 200 of us) to ensure we have great tours. His guides are hand picked and everyone was professional and spoke excellent English . Don’t bother paying twice more for a ship’s excursion to see the carnival. We were in sector 9 open front box raw A - we could almost touch the parade performers and could see their face expressions.
We also took 2 half-day tour to see Christ Stature & Sugar Loaf Mountain with great Brazilian BBQ lunch on the first day and Ipanema Beach and Copacabana Beach on the second day. We were escorted to VIP entrance to skip long lines to get into train and rope way.
His website’s tour description is very clear what to expect. He has many pictures of the sites we visit.
All of his tour itineraries were carefully prepared - despite the two years of business closure due to the pandemic, he pulled off logistics to fulfill the demands.
I normally plan my own site seeing but this is a country I don’t speak their language and safety is a big concern. Every tour we took, it was well worth the cost.
I recommend his tours to everyone who visit Brazil!