when French starlet Brigitte Bardot and her Brazilian boyfriend breezed into Buzios this sleepy fishing town was put firmly on the global glamour map What you’ll find is a collection of three small towns — Ossos Manguinhos and Armação de Búzios — known for their frenetic nightlife Pedro Gabriel Miziara / Unsplash View Buzios Tours With such beautiful landscapes it’s no wonder that Rio locals love hang-gliding and paragliding And they’ve introduced both adrenaline activities to Buzios Panoramic flights depart the low Sierra behind Tucuns beach out over the gentle curve of the bay and the turquoise ocean Sweeping views of the entire Búzios peninsula The tour includes an optional pre-flight hike in the forest and flights last for anything between 10 minutes and an hour Buzios still feels villagey on Rua das Pedras – which translates as Cobblestone Street The colorful old cottages that stood here back when Brigitte Bardot visited with her boyfriend in the 1960s have long since morphed into boho boutiques and cafes Restaurants cluster over the water – perennially popular spots for sundowner cocktails there’ll be a crowd in town and things become more of a squeeze Roberto Huczek / Unsplash This open-sided restaurant overlooks Praia Brava beach attracting idlers after breakfast who stay for lunch It’s easy to see the appeal: the food is excellent – spicy lobster-moqueca stews If you’re not starving you can graze on Brazilian tapas (called petiscos) – ranging from cod balls to fresh scallops and oysters summon a bottle of crisp Argentine white or an ice-cold Under the same ownership as Privilege Ibiza, Privilege Buzios is one of the most upbeat with four bars where the good-looking crowd stands several feet thick You’ll find it on the Orla Bardot waterfront – and you’ll know you’ve found it from the thump of deep house music Head on in and you’re all set for a great night out in Buzios Sign up to our newsletter to save up to $800 on our unique trips See privacy policy Felipe Ferreira / Unsplash Long before it was a busy beach resort Professional surfers still visit regularly and four of the 20 beaches are highly ranked among international greats where a surf camp offers classes for all ages and levels including absolute beginners who start off standing on their boards on the beach Praia da Tartaruga is on every visitor’s list It’s an ideal place for snorkeling and one of the best places in Buzios to encounter turtles There are seafront kiosks selling straightforward snacks chilled beers and strong caipirinhas that make for perfect beach days Top tip: hang around until the day fades and on Praia da Tartaruga you’ve got front-row seats for Buzio’s best sunset Charles Assuncao / Unsplash Brazilians love their adrenaline sports – and this adventure park There’s go-karting (and mini go-karting for young ones) There’s plenty more – from rolling around a pool inside a giant plastic ball walking on pencil-wide rope bridges suspended between posts or whizzing down an albeit modest zip-line One of the most scenic spots in Buzios is the Orla Bardot a seafront walk that follows the stunning coast – everyone’s idea of the perfect afternoon stroll At the end of the walkway is the statue of French film star Brigitte Bardot created by Sao Paulo-born sculptor Christina Motta Bardot – at the height of her fame following roles in European movies such as And God Created Woman and Contempt – helped shine the spotlight on the town when she rocked up in 1964 balanced on a hill above the Praia dos Ossos beach It dates from the 1700s – the colonial architecture is a reminder of Portuguese settlers who made a home here The centuries have done little to diminish its allure and the faithful come every Saturday afternoon for Mass You don’t need to step inside to enjoy the place – just sitting outside Try to hang around until the day softens to evening: the sunset from here is quite an event This is an updated version of an article originally by Sarah Brown See & Do 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Brazilians it is as much a family-friendly destination as it is a place for the jet set to be seen A small but glamorous former fishing village just two hours’ drive from Rio de Janeiro its standing as the weekend getaway resort for wealthy Cariocas (the vernacular for Rio residents) is rooted in the 1960s when the actress Brigitte Bardot hid from the press in Búzios with her Brazilian boyfriend the actress is immortalised by a bronze statue on a seafront promenade renamed Orla Bardot is hardly the sort of place one would choose to hide In high summer – from January until the end of carnival season in late February – the population can swell from 10,000 to three or four times that It is also much more upmarket than in Bardot’s day: the main drag along the Rua das Pedras is filled with boutique shops Houses that cost $150,000 when Bardot visited could now fetch more than $3m Located on a peninsula jutting into the Atlantic the 8km stretch of beaches that surround the town are also popular with golden-skinned surfers and European holidaymakers you are just as likely to see toddlers in its cobbled streets as you are to glimpse the glitterati And despite growing numbers of fashionable Italian German and Swiss visitors drawn by the favourable real-euro exchange rate the best houses are usually snapped up by Brazilians This is a place where the menus are not in English or Russian as in so many other high-end holiday resorts but in Portuguese (and occasionally Spanish for the long-established Argentine presence) a property consultant in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo but it’s kept most of the important natural characteristics.” That said the rapid growth of Brazil’s economy and housing market in recent years has caused prices per sq metre in prime Búzios locations to more than double in the past five years average house prices in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro rose by 159 per cent and 194 per cent respectively according to Brazil’s FipeZap real estate index Búzios’s proximity to Rio de Janeiro makes it popular as a place to have a second home High-society Brazilians and politicians favour homes on the beachfront or in the hills a little farther out of town and fashionable with those who want to escape the crowds of tourists in the summer Ici Le Paradis estate agency is selling a five-bedroom house with a pool and views of Manguinhos beach for $3m and the trendy new food hotspot Porto da Barra a waterfront boardwalk filled with bars and restaurants There are some beautiful old fishermen’s houses (mostly now holiday lets) in the old town and near the harbour slightly smaller constructions are within gated communities or “closed condominiums” as they are known and are priced between $365,000 and $645,000 These are built to cater for Brazil’s middle class which has grown by 13 per cent in the past decade according to the Getulio Vargas Foundation Barbosa Imóveis is selling a four-bedroom condo for $417,000 while Imo Búzios is offering a two-bedroom flat near Geribá beach for $195,340 A five-bedroom house is on sale for $3m With the spotlight on Brazil for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games and may do so further with increasing numbers of buyers in nearby Macaé a flourishing city used as a base by petrochemical workers and only a short drive from Búzios “People who live and work in Macaé come to Búzios on the weekends as it’s considered the number-one cosmopolitan town in the area,” says Stella Avellaneda of Ici Le Paradis “Many people who own apartments in Macaé also buy in Búzios for [use during] the weekends.” It stands to reason that foreign interest there will spill over into Búzios head of research at Savills who included Búzios in a report highlighting locations that attract local rather than global wealth says that the mainstream foreign property and holiday market are just starting to notice Búzios “It’s a great example of somewhere that has built a solid infrastructure for the wealthy buyers that are drawn to it but which has retained its beauty and sense of tranquillity because so many of its buyers are local.” ● Búzios is just under a two-hour drive from Rio de Janeiro ● International buyers can purchase freely in Brazil but require a government tax number (a CPF) $500,000: A modest three-bedroom cottage close to the town centre $1m: A condo with four to five bedrooms in Geribá with access to shared facilities and possibly a private pool Brazil (AP) — Carivaldina Oliveira da Costa was the steward of history in her Brazilian community on the northern coast of Rio de Janeiro state and for two decades fought for their land rights as descendants of escaped slaves she was the matriarch who signed off on all decisions of her community Uia worked tirelessly for the roughly 700 families to be recognized rather than marginalized “I would like to be half the person she was: a good-hearted warrior woman who battled and always taught us what was right and wrong,” said Nally Uia was born in Armacao dos Buzios in 1941 when it was just a district of a seaside city discovered by Amerigo Vespucci It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that a visit by French actress Brigitte Bardot bestowed Buzios with celebrity cachet and kicked off its transformation into the elite escape comprised of 23 glistening beaches Uia’s mother had told her stories – stories she’d heard from her own mother – of a bygone era It was a time when Portuguese ships unloaded enslaved Africans at an outcropping called Father Vitorio Point They were marched to a hilltop church to be christened casting off names they received on the opposite side of an ocean Still today there are vestiges of slaves’ quarters None of this appears in the history section of Buzios’ official website “Before Brigitte Bardot came to discover the place there were people here: fishermen and people who didn’t even know they were in quilombos Brazil was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery though not until a century later did a new constitution for the first time recognize their right to the lands they occupied Often disconnected from urban life even within city limits quilombos have relatively high poverty and can be confused by outsiders with other poor neighborhoods And securing title is a years-long process Brazil’s national statistics and geography agency in April released its estimate of how many quilombos exist nationwide — almost 6,000 — as well as their locations The number of people living within them remains uncertain; the agency planned to count them for the first time in the 2020 census but the pandemic forced its delay until next year for decades weren’t certain of their origins banana and fruit trees on their land to feed themselves and at age 13 she set off to Rio de Janeiro She was a child helping to raise other children in an apartment visited by politicians of the day where she married and for almost four decades helped support eight children working as a maid She quit not long after founding an association to fight for Rasa’s traditional rights sparked by historical research her brother conducted in Portugal traveled across the state for conferences and seminars Rejane remembers Uia pacing out the boundaries of Rasa with a representative from the government's agrarian reform institute which has been processing the community’s claim for 16 years “She brought something to Rasa that no politician would bring: self-confidence who lives in a nearby quilombo and is Rio state’s representative in the National Coordination of Black Rural Quilombo Communities Uia’s advanced diabetes was attacking her vision before she contracted the coronavirus She was admitted to hospital with a symptom believed to be associated with high blood sugar Nally says what hurts most is she hadn’t an inkling she was about to lose her mother Her death certificate cites COVID-19 as one of the causes Buzios’ mayor decreed three days of official mourning describing her as a pioneer and a leader in quilombo residents' fight restrictions on activity due to the pandemic meant it wasn’t possible to carry out an official ceremony and took it as a call to continue her work “We have to carry that legacy and pass on to young people what our mother passed to her kids Almost all their residents have long since died and most of those residents’ descendants have moved away But Brazilian authorities now are trying to preserve some of these communities and tell their story – both as a sombre reminder of the evils of slavery and as a new cultural attraction for tourists Quilombos were essentially communities of active resistance formed by escaped African slaves who were first brought to Brazil in the mid-1500s Quilombos were established over the centuries until slavery was abolished in 1888 but some of the more populous ones tried to cooperate with each other to protect their freedom Most Quilombos were established in the remote hinterland but not all of them: Two were located in Armação de Búzios approximately 175 km east of today’s Rio de Janeiro and a docking point for slave ships from Africa Many of the slaves were taken onward to the locations north of Armação de Búzios One of the few remaining live descendants of members of the Quilombo in Rasa is Dona Cecília Carivaldina de Oliveira Although slavery was abolished before she was born Dona Cecília lived many years in the Rasa Quilombo and heard eyewitness accounts of battles for land She is still active in preserving the Quilombo culture retelling the stories and recalling preparations for the annual carnival celebration and religious festivals Tourism officials and foundations are taking note of the cultural legacy of the Quilombos working with local groups to create an ecological/ethnic route that highlights the region’s history A Quilombo preservation project in Baía Formosa focuses on reviving African traditions allowing visitors to dig deeper into the culture of Afro-Brazilian slaves “The idea is to take the tourists there and say: Look and we were expelled from that place and now we seek to return there because it is our right,” says Beth Fernandes president of the Quilombola Association of Baía Formosa volunteers are aiding the construction of a new cultural space which will include a replica of a Quilombo kitchen creating traditional African recipes The Quilombo settlements in Armação de Búzios could attract more foreign tourists who are already coming to the city in large numbers according to a study by the Tourism Ministry While most tourists still come to Armação de Búzios mainly for its beaches they should also give a thought to the people who made the city what it is today “We only talk about the beaches and the money that circulates here but then I ask you: what do we say about our people?’’ “We cannot forget how much suffering our people went through so that all this is possible.”