Uru-Gays' Holidays in Brazil 2024/2025 Photo Essay
- Jack Richards
- Jan 6
- 2 min read
As avid travelers, we made a goal to spend the holidays away from home each year. The idea began in 2019 in Santa Marta, Colombia where we met before embarking on our hike to the lost city (a good story for another time). While we would have loved to keep the tradition to international destinations, we've mostly met the goal with staycations:
2020 – Travel restrictions (and Hudson) led us to a couple of nights at the Standard High Line.
2021 – We planned to be on the beach in Chile but flight delays landed us at a Laguardia Airport hotel with views of construction and then catching covid resulted in canceling the trip all together.
2022 – As part of our farewell to the US, we ventured down the Jersey Shore to spend time with some chosen family, just a couple of weeks before we made our move to Uruguay.
2023 – Holidays are extremely familial in South America and most of our friends were home. We opted for a couple of nights at Hotel Montevideo, a chic dog-friendly hotel with a gorgeous rooftop bar and pool.
Finally, in 2024 we were able to re-ignite the international tradition by getting more than just a few miles from home. We spent 18 days in Brazil!
I had been to Brazil twice in 2019 (March for Carnaval and December for New Years). January of 2020, I actually had a flight booked from Rio to Montevideo to explore Uruguay a bit but at the last minute decided to take a more relaxed holiday and stayed in Rio (pool-side) a few extra days—little did I know then that I was missing my chance to experience my future home...
Austin had never been to Brazil and was eager to explore our neighbor to the north. We started the journey in São Paulo for a few (rainy) days, then rented a car to drive to the colonial, coastal enclave Paraty, and then onward to Ilha Grande before finally reaching Rio de Janeiro where we spent a week enjoying the sites, the beach, and the biggest new years celebration.
The first half of the trip we were accompanied by my friends Rachel and Angela, foodies considering expatriation to Taiwan and then our friend Michael joined us for the final week in Rio as the start of his South American sabbatical from work.
Check out the photos below—about 7% of the total photos I took—for more details on our trip.
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