(Safely) visiting the fascinating 'favela' slums of Rio

[EnLinea Media]

Rio famously boasts one of the most spectacular natural settings of any major world city, a charismatic interplay of ocean with dramatic plunging hills (the most dramatic and reknowned, of course, being Sugarloaf and Corcovado). And though a good deal of it has a prosperous enough air, there has always been much poverty here, too, and since the late 19th century, many of those dramatic hills also became home to sprawling, unofficial slums – originally built by decommissioned soldiers and freed slaves, and greatly enlarged in recent decades by peasants moving in from the country. Today these favelas number some 600, and are home to nearly 12 million. keep reading