If you’re travelling to Rio de Janeiro, there are accommodation alternatives to the glitzy beachside tourist haunts. At The Little Slum Inn, you’ll get cosy furnishings and breathtaking views of Rio’s beaches and mountains, but you’ll also be smack bang in the middle of the grit and poverty of the favelas – the slums.

“This place isn’t for wimps. If you are uptight, you can stay at the Copacabana Palace,” co-owner and shantytown dweller Andreia Martins told Reuters. The jungle-covered hillside favela of Pereira da Silva is considered one of the safer slums since a police shootout with a neighbourhood drug lord seven years ago. The tiny hostel’s five rooms were booked solid during Rio’s famous carnival earlier this year, although the inn has no telephone and accepts reservation requests only by e-mail. “I’ve had to turn people away,” Martins said.