What should I avoid in Rio de Janeiro?

Christ the Redeemer is worth the trip in Rio de Janeiro, but go on a clear morning. By 11am in October, the summit of Corcovado often disappears into a damp, cool cloud that smells of wet forest, and you pay full price to stand shoulder to shoulder with tour groups on the Corcovado platform, staring into white fog. Check the summit webcam first, then book the Trem do Corcovado online the night before and take one of the first trains from Cosme Velho, which usually start around 8am. Ignore the men outside Cosme Velho station waving laminated cards for faster van tours; they tend to resell the official Largo do Machado vans at a markup. Sugarloaf works the opposite way: the cable-car queue at Praia Vermelha in Urca can reach an hour near sunset, so ride up around 4pm and wait at the top of Pão de Açúcar with a cold Brahma.

On Copacabana and Ipanema, the realistic risk is losing your phone, not getting hurt. Thieves on bicycles pick phones out of hands along Avenida Atlântica, so step inside a shop or a quiosque before you open Google Maps. Take a cheap second phone and R$100 in cash to the sand, nothing else. The maquininha scam is the one that catches first-timers on Posto 6 and beyond: a caipirinha seller types R$1.000,00 instead of R$10,00 into the card machine, angles the screen away, and you tap. That mistake costs about US$198 at the current rate of 5.0570 reais to the dollar, so read the maquininha screen yourself every single time. Chair and umbrella rentals at the barracas usually run R$10 to R$20, so agree the price before you sit down on the hot sand. After dark, the beach goes quiet and black. Walk the lit Calçadão promenade instead.

Escadaria Selarón, the tiled staircase between Lapa and Santa Teresa, is best before 10am, when the ceramic still feels cool underfoot and the crowd is thin. By afternoon the Selarón steps fill with selfie queues, and phone snatches on the lower flights are common enough to take seriously. The Friday street party under the Arcos da Lapa is loud, cheap, and fun, samba mixing with the smell of grilled queijo coalho from every doorway, but leave your watch and wallet at the hotel and take an Uber home rather than walking toward Glória. Centro empties after 7pm and all day Sunday, and those are the hours to stay out of it. Skip any favela tour sold as an open-jeep safari through Rocinha. If you want a favela visit in Rio de Janeiro, book a resident-guided walk in Santa Marta or Vidigal, and never walk into one alone.

At Galeão (GIG), walk straight past anyone in the arrivals hall offering you a taxi and head for the official prepaid taxi counters or the marked Uber pickup zone, since late-night arrivals are when that discipline matters most. In Tijuca National Park, the Parque Lage trail up Corcovado and the Dois Irmãos path have both had reported robberies, so hike with a guide or a weekend group. The Atlantic has its own risks: rip currents off Arpoador pull hard, and a red flag on a lifeguard post means stay out of the water. On the afternoon of 15 October the thermometer read 26.3°C at 77% humidity, and the sticky air felt like 30.2°C, meaning the noon sun on Ipanema burns faster than most visitors expect. One last skip: the Museu Nacional at Quinta da Boa Vista. A fire gutted it in September 2018, so check its reopening status before you cross town to São Cristóvão.