In Rio and São Paulo, Go North : Paquetá no New York Times!!

"Beaches in the north could not be more different from Ipanema. Before visiting the club, I had spent most of the day on the Ilha de Paquetá, an island in Guanabara Bay easily accessible by a 45-minute, 4.50-reais ferry from downtown. (Although Paquetá is officially administered by the downtown Zona Central, it is actually the northernmost point in the city.) 

And while Ipanema’s streets are lined with fancy high-rises, boutiques and restaurants, Paqueta’s dirt roads, which are car-free (horse-drawn carriages cart visitors around town), feature 19th-century homes, stores that rent banged-up bicycles (5 reais an hour) and diners that offer up simple pleasures like fried fish or grilled ham and cheese. 

The crowds, too, are different. On the ferry to Paquetá, I sat in front of a nun who worked as a nurse at a hospital recently visited by the pope (“I kissed him twice,” she told me excitedly). I later spotted her on the beach; nuns are not frequently spotted amid the toned bodies of Ipanema. Neither are battered swan boats, rentable for 20 reais per half-hour. The backdrop, however — mountains in the distance, mesmerizing rock formations just offshore — is the same."

read the article by SETH KUGEL
In Rio and São Paulo, Go North - NYTimes.com: