Brazil
Brazil customer reviews
We are very proud of the honest and detailed feedback that we get from our trips and are pleased to share reviews from past travellers. These are kept as up to date as possible. Please have a read through to get a real sense of the kind of experience that you might have on a family trip to Brazil.
Mowe Family (with children aged 13 & 17)
Travelled Summer 2025
Dear Charlotte. We had a great holiday in Brazil, the organisation was smooth throughout and all our guides were very friendly and knowledgeable. Rio was fun and had amazing food everywhere we went at reasonable prices (compared to the UK!) but huge portions. Not as horribly touristy as feared, but that’s the benefit of an early start time. Hotel good and great rooftop pool. Favela tour was interesting, especially as my son had studied this in geography, so much more realistic view.
Chill time in Ilha Grande and a slightly hippy hotel, but nice. Boat trip we opted to go private as it meant we decided on a stop for food, and the children didn’t want to wait until afternoon for lunch.
Advise considering evening can be cool in July, so wished I’d packed more trousers/long-sleeved tops.
Loved Paraty so beautiful and interesting and evenings just soaking up the atmosphere and trying restaurants was lovely. Good schooner trip with snorkel (we took our own, luckily as it can be an extra cost).
Iguazu Falls in both Brazil and Argentina were incredible! Even in a thunderstorm, so when they tell you you’re going to get wet it means soaked to your underwear! Some people had ponchos and we didn’t, but not sure it helps when you go under a waterfall!!
All the locals we met were friendly and despite the language barrier we managed with a mix of mime Google and smiles!
Thanks Charlotte again (and Molly for daughter’s birthday cake, which went down well). We are repeat clients for a good reason- another cracking holiday SMT!
Newbold Family (with children aged 12 & 14)
Travelled Summer 2024
Hi Sarah. Thanks for your message, and for all of your and Helene’s help organizing our trip to Brazil. We had the holiday of a lifetime and completely fell in love with Brazil. We wanted to get away with the kids on a holiday like they hadn’t been on before and would be an adventure they would always remember – the trip and itinerary delivered everything we wanted and more. Impossible to pick a favourite place, everywhere we went was very special in its own way. The flora and fauna of the Pantanal was incredible – we all utterly loved that. The Pousada was brilliant! Paraty was also amazing; hiking up Mamangua Peak was hard but so worthwhile – we loved that day (especially lucky to see dolphins on the boat trip on the way there).
All of our guides were brilliant. Special shoutouts to Andre in Bonito and Vitor in Rio; Andre in particular was so kind (especially when Ruby was car sick on one of the journeys!). We would all love to return to Brazil in the future to do other parts of the country we didn’t have time to visit!
Thanks again for all of your help and patience with our questions, we have been very happy with everything and will be back in touch if/when we want to organise something similar in the future (we have already recommended you to several of our friends!).
Vickers Family (with children aged 11, 11 & 14)
Travelled Summer 2024
Dear Sarah and Helene. Wow, Wow, Wow!!! Brazil was amazing!! Thank you to everyone involved in organising and supporting us. We had a fantastic time and enjoyed every place you suggested and sent us to. The travel arrangements all worked out perfectly, transfers arrived on time, knew where they were going and totally professional. All of the tours were amazing, with guides that were passionate and helpful. Your in-country team was great and really helped us out when flight times changed, organising everything promptly and without fuss, despite it being a Sunday. Thank you for such a memorable and totally amazing holiday.
Marsh Family (with children aged 13 & 16)
Travelled Summer 2024
Good Evening. We all had a fantastic time, thank you for arranging everything. The whole trip from start to finish went without a hitch. Our Rio guide was very friendly and knowledgeable. We all really enjoyed the sightseeing tour around the sights of Rio. The tour around the favela was really interesting and we would recommend it to anyone. It was good to show the children the other side of Rio and for them to get an insight into this. The children found the bike tour fun and it was good to see a bigger area of Rio. This was their favourite activity (apart from the beach) in Rio. Renata, again clearly knew her stuff and it was a nice walk. Being winter out there, there was little wildlife to be seen.
The best restaurant that we found was a Spanish tapas restaurant – Venga Chiringuito www.venga.com.br, just 10 minutes walk away from the hotel.
The jungle lodge was an unbelievable experience that we will all remember. Our guide was brilliant and it’s difficult to decide on what was the ‘best’ activity.
The hotel in Salvidor was lovely, as was the central area. Again, the tour was very interesting. The arrival time was late and the tour was early in the morning. This didn’t give us much sleep. It would have been nice to have had a couple of hours after the tour to explore the local area.
Praia do Forte was a lovely spot. The children had a surf lesson arranged via the hotel with Carlos. The children wanted to give specific feedback about how good he was, even though he didn’t really speak English, Google Translate is a wonderful thing! We also went whale watching, which again was an unforgettable experience.
It may be worth mentioning in the guide, that very few of the local people, especially restaurants, don’t speak English and the menus are in Portuguese. Google Translate was invaluable but you need to specifically download Brazilian Portuguese for it to work. The other thing was that most restaurants outside of Rio, use two card machines, one for the bill and the other for the service charge, which they ask you if you are happy to pay. This is not something that we had come across before.
Stockwell Family (with children aged 11, 11 & 14)
Travelled Summer 2024
Hi Sarah. The trip was fantastic. We thought the quality of the guides was very high and we felt the pace of the trip was good with some downtime. It was definitely worth paying the extra money for the hotel in Rio – breakfast outside was amazing for the people-watching. The hotel in Iguacu Falls was a lovely end to the trip. We got lucky with Iguacu as the weather warmed up and the walkway on the Argentinian side to see the Devil’s Throat had opened back up after a year a couple of days before.
Meander Family (with teenagers aged 16 & 18)
Travelled Summer 2024
Hi Sarah. Our Brazil trip was great. It felt pretty full on at times, but when you travel that far around the world makes sense to pack a lot in. When we arrived in Rio at about 6 am on the first day, it would have been ideal to have a room to sleep/relax in for a few hours, rather than have to hit the streets until our room was ready at lunchtime. But appreciate that would have come at an extra cost. But the hotel at Rio was well located and good quality. Highlights of the Rio part of the trip were probably the tour of the nearby Favella, and the Botafogo match. Excellent guide for the Favella tour and really interesting to hear all about the history/culture associated with them. And the football match had an amazing atmosphere before and during the game. Very impressed with Rio overall and could have spent a couple more days there.
The lodge in the Amazon hit the right balance of being properly off-grid, whilst still offering a good level of accommodation.
Salvador was good, but a one day stay was ideal. And then the beach resort was a nice mix of being relaxed but plenty of restaurant/bar options in a family-friendly environment. Some good snorkelling opportunities off the coast, and one of the boys was lucky enough to see a Sea Turtle dart past him.
Overall, a really good trip with lots of memories, and thank you for your recommendations and arrangements that made it all the more enjoyable. I would also add that with all the various buses/boats/plane connections over the two weeks, a guide was always there to meet us on arrival. This massively reduced potential stress levels in a country where you can’t speak the language!
Many thanks.
Scaravilli Family (with kids aged 11 & 14)
Travelled Summer 2024
Anna our guide in Rio was great, very nice and knowledgeable. Lovely to do Sugar Loaf and Christ with a stop at the market, which was great. Cycle tour was fun although only S and L managed it because C and I knackered from flight. The urban forest tour was nice. I think considering we then did lots of other beautiful forest walks not sure it added much … wondered if could have had a bit more time to explore Rio, eg Santa Teresa and the Museum of Tomorrow. Favela tour fantastic. Amazing insight. The boys enjoyed it too. Bit long (v talkative, enthusiastic guide!). Worth it though.
Hotel in Rio great location Ilha Grande fab. Hotel great. Food v good too. Very friendly staff.
Paraty – hotel fab. Town great. Boat tour good. Following day, sliding down rocks fun.
Pantanal – highlight of tour. Fab place. Great tours. Just one thing is that tours all decided for you before get there so no wiggle room if eg want to do fishing instead of horse riding say. Guide lovely and knowledgeable.
Bonito – waterfalls fab. Cave bit dull and would probably miss that out. The two waterfall tours were lovely but quite similar. Wondered if there was an alternative on the second day?
Iguazu – lovely. Not huge amount of guiding was needed but guide was nice and she found us a nice place for lunch. Was very helpful.
Hope that is helpful.
Thanks again.
Sent from iPhone
Paterson Family
Travelled May 2024 – Brazil & Buenos Aires
Hi Liddy. Thank you for your email. We had a wonderful holiday in Buenos Aires and Brazil with lots of high spots. Pretty much everything worked really well and the hotels were excellent – probably smarter than if we had booked them ourselves. All in all, this was one of the best holidays we have had with lots of highlights and the right blend of travel and relaxation. Thank you to you and Jess for organising this – I think this was our holiday 4 or 5 with Stubborn Mule and everything worked like clockwork as always. Many thanks.
Vivekananda Family (with children aged 6 & 8)
Travelled October Half Term 2023
Dear Liddy and Jess. Thank you for organising our Brazil holiday. We returned today and had the most fabulous time. Having it all planned by you so well in advance made it so relaxing for us there. We were really impressed by the quality of all of the guides. We really liked all the places we stayed – I think we had a slightly unique experience at Pequi as for the few days we were there we were the only guests, which was a real treat for us and gave us more flexibility with the activities. The hotel in Paraty was in a fabulous location and a beautiful and relaxing place to stay. All the transfers/ being picked up by the guides/ drivers happened seamlessly – they were all punctual and professional.
It was really reassuring to be greeted by the guides who knew our names and us knowing there’s from the documents provided – I think there was a change in guide at Iguacu as we had been told a different name on the documentation, we were very happy with our guide there too but one minor improvement would have been us being made aware of the change in advance of arrival.
We all enjoyed the activities – the food at the accommodation was excellent. Staff at the accommodations and drivers/ guides were very kind to the children who thoroughly enjoyed their trip.
Thank you again.
Brannigan Family (with children aged 9 & 15)
Travelled Summer 2023 – Brazil & Argentina
We had a really great time – thank you to you (Liddy) and Jess for your hard work in putting this together and being available for us. The guides were all great and some superb. The itinerary worked great and apart from the storm in Rio which closed the airport and kept us an extra day in Rio, everything worked very smoothly. We got to see a family of humpback whales off the coast in Praia do Forte which made me very happy and went to two football matches in Rio and Buenos Aires which made my son even happier. The hotels were all good too – especially in Rio and the hotel at Iguacu Falls, which was very special. Thanks again.
Bonhôte Family (with children aged 10 & 13)
Travelled Easter 2022
Liddy, Yes back in one piece with very jet-lagged boys but heads full of amazing memories. Got the heaviest of work days ahead but would love to give you a bit of feedback, though 99,9% positive (internal flights and always having to commute via Sao Paolo is probably the extent of the worst). We absolutely loved it; having lived in Mexico for a year, we are sort of used to the disparities and the feel of Latin America (though yes Mexico is in North America).
Oliver Family (with child aged 11)
Travelled Summer 2019
Helene – We had a fabulous holiday thank you so much for EVERYTHING. It really was amazing. A few bits of feedback for your future trips – the trip was wonderful and this may end up sounding critical (not AT ALL my intention)… the intention is more to help future travellers.
Your in-country team:
They were very helpful… Every single transfer was on time and the logistics worked seamlessly.
Rio:
Hotel was excellent – obviously a bog standard city hotel rather than “quirky” but lovely staff, superb location and breakfasts that meant you didn’t need to eat lunch. Being 10 metres from the beach was a lifesaver.
Bicycle Tour:
Was good. There was a confusion on pick up which the guide seemed to be wrong footed by. That put timings out so we ended up doing a shorter tour.
Rio Tour/ Sugarloaf/ Christo and Victor the guide:
Excellent. Victor was wonderful – kind, knowledgeable, passionate and perfect English. Highly recommend and I am glad we did the cultural tour – we would have missed a lot if we hadn’t.
Simone and the cooking was great fun – she is a joy! Also just FYI the museums in Rio are good for rainy days… Museum of Tomorrow and Rio Art are fab!
Manaus:
I think Manaus is underrated – it’s a wonderful crazy place with a great local food market and some interesting and the hotel was great!
Amazon Lodge:
WOW. Couldn’t recommend highly enough. What a place. What an experience. Quiet, beautiful, nice to meet other families too. Great guides, glorious buffets of local food, resident monkeys and the view from our room was the stuff dreams are made of. Perfect. The river pool was a highlight for my son and friends he made.
Paraty:
Beautiful place – gorgeous hotel. We were unlucky with the weather – and note the pool wasn’t heated so even for my son who will go in anything you couldn’t play in it. However the trips and guides were brilliant – sliding down rocks, going in waterfalls, visiting the rum distillery were wonderful and the climb up the big mountain in the fjords was bloody tough but SO worth it!
Picinguaba:
Here the weather finally defeated us. Glorious spot… although again worth being aware pool not heated so freezing if temp outside is low. Also the atmosphere wasn’t massively family friendly – its a bit more “zen”, yoga – the guy was a bit grumpy as we listened to the cricket via our phone – bear in mind we were the ONLY guests in the hotel in the rain!… so I am not sure it’s one I would recommend again; at least not in low season.
That’s all from me. Helene you have been amazing at every stage. Really. You made a big difference to us at a difficult time.
Young Family (with children aged 9, 12 and 14)
Travelled Summer 2019
Hi Caroline. We had an amazing time, thank you. The trip was really well organised, I really couldn’t believe how smooth everything was with all of the transport and tour guides. The Pantanal was really amazing, we could even have stayed longer. It really was great. The only thing I would mention that could possibly be improved is the transfer times for 2 of the flights.
Marks Family (with child aged 14)
Travelled Easter 2018
Thanks for a wonderful trip. So many highlights but I guess Iguassu was a top favourite with us all. We also loved the Pantanal and were really lucky with the wildlife here. We had a great guide (Raul) who had an extraordinary knowledge of all the flora and fauna and made it all so interesting. Whoever knew I could be so excited about insects?! Highly recommended. Can’t wait to go back and will be in touch about a trip to the north at some point next year. Thanks so much for your help with the planning.
Brazil in pictures
