Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro has a marvelous Botanical Garden! Besides being huge, it has collections of plants from different parts of the world including medicinals, edibles, and the beautiful torch ginger. It was founded two centuries ago and since then trees have become enormous, matured, and adapted well to the climate. It contains great numbers of the typical trees from the Atlantic Rainforest that one can find here in Brazil.

From here we moved to the Foresta de Tijuca, a large National Forest included within the City of Rio. This area was once completely denuded and dedicated to the planting of sugar cane and coffee. These crops were eventually abandoned and a forest was “planted” here, with the idea in mind of making a huge park which eventually became a national park. Here we had our lunch, accompanied by a number of coatimundis and hummingbirds. We had a nice walk in the forest, along a path where we could appreciate so many different plants. The afternoon for some of us ended at an incredible viewpoint from which we were just awed by the lovely view of the beach of Ipanema!