Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden & Tijuca Forest Tour

Pedro was an amazing guide! The trip started with Pedro picking us up from our hotel, then going to the Botanical Garden, which was fantastic. We went through this quite quickly, as we told Pedro we wanted to spend more time in the national park rainforest. He took us two several waterfalls and, upon our request, took us through a number of hiking trails, including to an amazing cave in the forest. All throughout he was telling us about the history of Rio, which was super interesting. Excellent!

Public was our guide for second time in a tour in this trip. He made it great and pleasant. We”re a small group and he went far and beyond to Mae a memorable experience. He even took pictures for us. Great tour.

Appalling experience. Guide and van turned up 20 minutes late to our hotel in Copacabana, collected three more guests on the same avenue and headed for the botanical gardens. Just before parking, they u-turned as apparently they received a last minute booking from another group - so we headed back to where we came from, accruing one hour of delay through Rio peak hour. On the van our guide tried to convince us to pay extra to have a guide from the botanical gardens chaperoning us, despite we all paid for the guided tour already...We soon learnt why. The botanical gardens were amazing but the tour was a waste of time: our guide lost his way several time inside and could barely describe what we were looking at. We genuinely felt ripped off. The delay accrued from the start and with the poorly planned visit in the gardens prevented us from accessing the Tijuca forest at all, which is a national park and as such has a daily quota of vehicles which can enter it. Obviously, this quota was reached early in the afternoon, and one would expect from a serious touring agency that this possibility is forecasted, especially during peak season. With the same expectations, one would think a serious touring agency would consider switching the two attractions around to avoid disappointment or at least warn the customer about this eventuality. Clearly at this point one might have figured out that "C2Rio" is not as such. Our tour ended with our driver and guide further wasting our time shuttling us around parts of Rio we weren't planning on visiting, without offering us the option of being brought back to our hotel.

Don’t waste your time on this tour. Our guide knew nothing about the botanical gardens at all. He just kept saying “follow me”. We left the tour, along with several others, who were equally disappointed with the tour and the tour guide. The worst experience we had in Rio. Tour van was packed with more people than what it would hold.

First of all ,we arrived at our pickup point- Hilton Copacabana at 12noon.It took a little over an hour after all the pickups to begin the tour. Morever,it was not clear from the confirmation receipt that the tour didn't include admission fees to the gardens.I was not aware until my name was called at the gardens ,and we had to pay the admission fees . Lastly, we did get an opportunity to visit the gift shop at the gardens.When we inquired about the gift shop,we were told that it was the at the entrance, and we will not be returning or existing in that direction .Also inquired about getting some water, the tour guide told me that there were water fountains throughout the gardens which I did not want.I would have like to have the opportunity to purchase water .We left at the end of the Garden tours and return to cruise line.I would NOT recommend this tour.I could have done it on my own.