“Favela” is a Brazilian word that means urban slum. You can find them all over Latin America, but they are particularly prominent in Rio. Here, they are easy to spot: thousands of makeshift concrete buildings, painted in bright colours, lining the hills in the centre of the city. On the other side of the road next to Rio’s richest neighbourhood, thousands of people live an incredibly different lifestyle. Despite recent government efforts to clean up these places in light of Brazil hosting the world cup and Olympics, it still essentially holds no power in the favelas, where drug lords control the people, who don’t pay for electricity or any kind of tax.

View of Rocinha from the beach side

For this reason, it is very dangerous for foreigners to visit the favelas by themselves. Taking a tour, however, is a really great way of gaining a bit of insight to…