Botafogo Beach

This guide to Botafogo Beach in Rio traces decades of broken promises to clean the Guanabara Bay water it shares with Sugarloaf Mountain, starting with a governor's 1994 pledge and a 1999 deadline that came and went. You'll hear about a 2000 oil tanker spill, a sanitation program that shut down having missed its own targets, and a pollution-cutting vow made ahead of the 2016 Olympic sailing events offshore. A fisherman's blunt verdict about the water sets up the question the rest of the guide answers.