Tijuca National Park

In 1920, Belgium's King Albert I climbed to the summit of Pico da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro and pointedly ignored a stone staircase Brazil's president had ordered carved into the rock just for him. This guide follows that snub alongside a much older story: how these hills, stripped bare by coffee growers, threatened the city's water supply and were replanted by hand under an imperial order in 1861. Major Manuel Gomes Archer led that work, with a small crew of enslaved laborers whose names the guide gives.