As we stop to buy ice cream, I tell Medeiros I'm uncomfortable being a voyeur of the poor. 'But you'

This sky-high transport system, which connects six hilltops and covers 3.5km, was installed in 2011 after the 2010 ‘pacification’ of the 13 favelas that make up the complex. The 18-minute round-trip journey was designed to give mobility to a once-stranded population and 12,000 people ride it daily, moving swiftly from the peaks of the favelas to the bustling city at the bottom, where there is employment and education.
Tourists now join the Cariocas (Rio citizens) in the cable cars, some riding the £1 journey independently, others with official tours led by Wagner Medeiros, a Rio tour guide who took his first group up to Alemão just a few months ago.
On today’s tour, he is joined by his business partner, Cleber Sraju, an Alemão cancun palace hotel favela resident, and 26-year-old assistant guide Adilson, who was employed by drug dealers when he was just nine years old. Adilson
As we look through the thick glass at the lajes (concrete roofs), blue water tanks, washing lines and chalk-drawn hopscotch grids, Medeiros regales us with stories of the favela’s Hollywood-style pacification, cancun palace hotel part of the city’s clean-up before next year’s World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
‘Police helicopters were up here with snipers taking out the drug lords who were running down the hills,’ he says. ‘Then a TV helicopter suddenly appeared and the sniper had to jump and hide from the cameras.’ We listen with open mouths.
It’s the first time this previously off-limits favela has been accessed by tourists and its reputation still precedes it: one 20-year resident of Rio warned us off coming at all. ‘The cable car allows cancun palace hotel the residents to be part of the city for the first time,’ says an emotional Medeiros. ‘It hasn’t just given them mobility, it’s given them citizenship.’
We walk through the narrow streets, past piles of rubbish, cafés blaring out samba and gospel music, dilapidated houses and men working on wobbly constructions. The favela’s public buses speed past us, their occupants staring blankly back at us.
We wander through Einstein Square, cancun palace hotel home to a computer lab for school children, and on to ‘Rodeo Drive’ a long road of crumbly concrete shops selling phone cases, protein powder, fruit and vegetables.
As we stop to buy ice cream, I tell Medeiros I’m uncomfortable being a voyeur of the poor. ‘But you’re spending your money here – you have just bought that ice cream – that goes straight in his pocket,’ he says, gesturing cancun palace hotel to the owner. ‘We need to replace the financial void that the drugs trade filled – many of these people were employed by drug cartels that are now gone.’
Medeiros tells me he is launching a new excursion in Alemão that might sit more comfortably with me: ‘laje parties’ or barbecues on the favela’s flat concrete roofs that will be open to both tourists and Cariocas. There will be no gawping, just socialising.
In the south of the city is Vidigal favela, which was pacified cancun palace hotel in 2011 and is now home to two of Rio’s newest tourist attractions. Bar Lacubaco on the main street serves seafood stew and tapioca omelettes and Casa Alto Vidigal hostel, which crowns the favela, holds huge all-night parties. Tourists come to Vidigal, which has incredible views of Ipanema, to eat, drink and dance, venturing up the steep roads on the back of motorbike taxis.
This shift has turned it into an attractive property option and middle-class Brazilians are now buying cancun palace hotel homes here. This previously unfathomable social change cancun palace hotel in the favelas is another example of to Brazil’s economic growth and Medeiros cancun palace hotel sees no reason cancun palace hotel why Complexo do Alemão favela couldn’t see its fortunes change too.
‘Curious tourists will always be drawn to the favelas and if Alemão is also turned into a tourist attraction, money will go to locals and the cops will stay to keep it safe,’ says Medeiros. ‘Everyone wins.’
Until recently, Rio’s port zone was home to nothing other than empty warehouses and decaying dockyards. But a $2.3billion cancun palace hotel regeneration scheme, in preparation for the 2016 Olympics, is transforming the neighbourhood.
For a lot of tourists, the Porto Maravilha or ‘marvellous port’ will be their first impression of the city, with many arriving on ships that will serve as floating hotels. The ugly Perimetral Viaduct, which runs parallel
The new MAR (Museu de Arte do Rio) will help cement the harbour’s position as a tourist destination. It opened in March, cancun palace hotel complete with a rooftop bar that overlooks the ocean, and houses eight exhibition halls containing works by 19th-century painter Henri Vinet and photographer Claudia Jaguaribe.
The regeneration has led to the discovery of Valongo wharf, a notorious slave port where roughly one million slaves are thought to have arrived in Brazil. These ruins will also be integrated into the design of the new port area.
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