Along with its natural beauty, Rio is also known for its striking favelas — informal settlements built atop one another in the surrounding mountains. Favelas make the news for all the wrong reasons, often linked to drug wars and entrenched poverty. Yet these vibrant communities define Rio as much as the city’s famous beaches, samba festivals, and air-conditioned shopping malls. With the help of Mèrola, a Rio-based travel concierge, we arranged a tour of Vidigal, one of the city’s best-known favelas.

Favela tours are perfectly safe, but they do require a certain amount of trust. Trust that your local guide is well-known and respected within their community, and trust you’ll all survive a moto-taxi thrill ride as you speed along a bumpy, narrow road, high into the hills.

Having driven past Ipanema and the ritzy neighbourhood of Leblon, Mèrola’s driver brakes at the main access point to Vidigal. Greeting us is a guide named Russo, who proudly grew up in Vidigal and continues to call it home. A busy gathering spot for a community of 30,000 people, the intersection is a vibrant scene of motorbikes, kids, dogs, street vendors, and shirtless men enjoying the shade of a leafy tree. Russo orientates us with a map of painted tiles depicting a maze of dwellings and pathways, explaining that the favela was founded in the 1940s and formally recognized as a neighbourhood in 1981.

Russo guides us to a bar with one of the best views of the city below. Residents of the city’s favelas might not have much, but their views over Rio de Janeiro are priceless. Awaiting us in a small square is a youth capoeira class, eager to demonstrate Brazil’s energetic hybrid of dance and martial art. Their instructor explains that the school was established to provide meaning, community, and opportunities for favela kids, steering them away from crime and life on the streets.

We shake tambourines and are invited to join the roda, a circle where two dancers square off with each other. My kids cartwheel over their kids, all with big smiles. Connecting through the language of drums and dance, it’s an authentic moment of cross-cultural connection. We take a group photo with the class, say “tchau!” and begin our steep descent. Along the snaking, narrow alleyways, we learn about Vidigal’s art and community projects, pick wild herbs, and greet curious residents leaning out their windows. We peer into tiny homes among tangled electric wires, jackfruit and mango trees, exposed plumbing, litter and street art. Russo invites us into a local’s home for a traditional lunch of feijoada, rice, meat, kale salad, fried tapioca and banana. And caipirinhas, of course, because Brazil’s national lime cocktail is never far from a tourist’s hand.

Russo proudly tells us his son studies graphic design and lives in the popular neighbourhood of Copacabana. Vidigal might be a humble start, but it is by no means a dead end. It’s a half-hour walk down the hill before we reach the same intersection where we started. My kids are disappointed there won’t be another moto taxi ride; we parents are less so. Not all favelas invite tourists to visit and interact, and some are dangerous no-go zones for both tourists and locals. Yet Vidigal presents an ideal opportunity to break out of the tourist bubble and get an authentic carioca experience. Cultural encounters in poorer neighbourhoods range from meaningful to exploitative. When it’s done right, as it was today, everyone benefits.

As we transfer to a boat, we spot a wide variety of birds and bright-red crabs, keeping an eye out for capybara. We exit the shallow mangrove opposite the fishing community of Guaratiba and berth on a white sandy beach opposite an inlet. Greeting us with fresh caipirinhas (and fresh juice for the kids) is Jardel, a master steakhouse chef preparing the beach BBQ of a lifetime.

Over a charcoal grill, Jardel prepares mouthwatering picanha (Brazil’s famous grilled rump steak) with the care of an artist, along with grilled queijo (cheese), bread, and vegetables. Soaking in the warm, shallow seawater, this delicious scene is a world away from the crowded beaches we know in Copacabana.