Praia Vermelha

Praia Vermelha — Red Beach — is a small cove in Urca, Rio de Janeiro, wedged between the Morro da Urca and the Morro Cara de Cão, with the Sugarloaf cable car station at one end.

The name is descriptive. The sand here is coarse and distinctly reddish, unlike the fine pale sand of Copacabana and Ipanema a few kilometres east, and the difference comes from the granite and gneiss of the hills immediately behind rather than from anything carried along the coast. It is one of very few coloured-sand beaches in a major city anywhere.

The cove faces east into Guanabara Bay and is enclosed on both sides, which makes it the calmest beach in the city — no shore break, shallow entry, and swimmable when Copacabana is closed by surf. That combination and its small size make it a family beach in a way the ocean beaches are not. The two hills either side are granite inselbergs of the same formation as Sugarloaf, worn round rather than cut.

The Pista Cláudio Coutinho, a paved path, runs from the beach around the base of the Morro da Urca beneath the cable car, through Atlantic forest with marmosets in it. Urca itself is a quiet 1920s residential quarter built on reclaimed land, and it is one of the safest and most pleasant parts of Rio to walk in. Copacabana and Ipanema are ten minutes east and are entirely different beaches — open ocean, fine pale sand, and a shore break this cove does not have.

Three hundred metres of coarse red sand between two granite hills, enclosed on both sides and calmer than anywhere else in Rio — swimmable when Copacabana is closed by surf. The Pista Cláudio Coutinho runs from the end of it through Atlantic forest with marmosets in it, and Urca behind is one of the pleasantest quarters in the city to walk.