South America · Atlantic Coast
Silver Shadow sails the South American Atlantic coast from the grand boulevards of Buenos Aires to the electric carnival of Rio de Janeiro — twelve days of ports, culture and coastline culminating in the world's most extraordinary celebration.
About This Voyage
“Every voyage has a destination. This one has a crescendo — and the crescendo is Rio de Janeiro at Carnival.”
Silversea has spent thirty years perfecting the art of the inclusive luxury voyage — the ship where nothing is extra, where the wine poured at dinner is the wine worth drinking, where the suite is measured in square metres that feel residential rather than marine. Silver Shadow carries 382 guests across 194 suites, each with ocean views, butler service, and the understated confidence of a ship that does not need to announce itself. The service is Italian in heritage and instinct: warm, attentive, precise.
The Rio Carnival voyage departs Buenos Aires in the third week of February and arrives in Rio de Janeiro on February 27, 2028 — in time for the climax of the world's most famous celebration. The route follows the South American Atlantic coast northward through Uruguay and Brazil, calling at ports that trace the continent's colonial and natural history: the Baroque cathedral squares of colonial Brazil, the islands and inlets of the Paraná coast, the forested archipelagos of the Atlantic south. Each day adds a layer to the journey. Rio, when it appears on the final morning, is the culmination of everything — and the city in Carnival week is unlike any other place on earth at any other time.
Departing February 15, 2028, arriving Rio de Janeiro February 27. Available through Martins Travel with preferred suite allocation and Carnival event arrangements in Rio.
What Is Included
Port by Port
Each port of call has been chosen to reveal a different facet of the journey — arriving by sea as travellers once did, and departing enriched, never hurried.
“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Buenos Aires is the city that spent a century trying to be European and produced something entirely its own: the tango, the asado, the political passion, the magnificent avenues of the Recoleta, the bookshops of the Palermo neighbourhood that stay open until midnight. Silver Shadow is berthed at the Puerto Madero terminal — the converted grain warehouses of the old port, now a district of restaurants and galleries overlooking the Río de la Plata. Embarkation in the afternoon; the ship's butler has prepared your suite. A Welcome Dinner in the main restaurant as Buenos Aires's lights illuminate the wide river. The ship departs at midnight, the Río de la Plata — the widest river estuary in the world, 220 kilometres across at its mouth — opening ahead.
Aboard Silver Shadow · Buenos AiresMontevideo, Uruguay
Montevideo is the smallest, quietest and, by many measures, the most liveable capital city in South America. The old town — the Ciudad Vieja — occupies a peninsula above the Río de la Plata, its art nouveau and neoclassical architecture shaded by plane trees and punctuated by the Mercado del Puerto, the great iron-roofed market hall where the gaucho tradition of open-fire grilling reaches its apotheosis. Silver Shadow berths at the cruise dock by morning. A private guide leads a walking tour of the old town: the Palacio Salvo, the Teatro Solís, the Plaza Independencia with its underground mausoleum of José Artigas, the national hero. Lunch at a family-run parrilla in the Mercado. The afternoon: the Rambla, Montevideo's 22-kilometre seafront promenade, and the art museums of the Prado. The ship departs at sunset.
Aboard Silver Shadow · MontevideoPunta del Este, Uruguay
Punta del Este is South America's most celebrated resort — a narrow finger of land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Río de la Plata, its beaches dividing between the calm river side and the wild Atlantic surf. In February it is at the height of its season: Argentine and Brazilian families, artists, financiers and fashion designers, the restaurants booked weeks ahead. Silver Shadow anchors in the bay. The ship's tender delivers you to the harbour, where a private car is waiting. A morning at the Casapueblo — the extraordinary whitewashed building sculpted over forty years by artist Carlos Páez Vilaró on a cliff above the Atlantic, now a museum and hotel. Lunch at a seafront restaurant on Playa Brava. The afternoon: the sculpture of La Mano emerging from the sand, the lighthouse, the perfect promenade in the February sun.
Aboard Silver Shadow · Punta del EstePorto Belo, Santa Catarina, Brazil
The coast of Santa Catarina is the least discovered section of the Brazilian littoral — a state of German and Italian immigrant heritage, with beaches that rival any in the country and a pace of life that has not yet caught up with the tourism industry's awareness of them. Porto Belo is a small fishing harbour on a peninsula surrounded by emerald sea: the water here is warm, clear and coloured by the Atlantic's meeting with the mineral-rich rivers of the Serra Geral. Silver Shadow anchors in the bay. A private speedboat takes your party to the island of Bombinhas, across the inlet, where a beach of absolute perfection awaits a packed lunch from the ship's galley. The afternoon: the colonial town of Porto Belo itself, the eighteenth-century church of Nossa Senhora do Porto Belo, the daily fish market at the harbour.
Aboard Silver Shadow · Porto BeloParanaguá, Paraná, Brazil
Paranaguá is the port for the Paraná coast — and specifically for the Superagui National Park and the Ilha do Mel, the forested islands and Atlantic rainforest of the Serra do Mar that constitute the last significant remnant of the Mata Atlântica, the Atlantic Forest that once covered the entire Brazilian coast and now survives in fragments of extraordinary ecological richness. Silver Shadow anchors in the bay of Paranaguá. A private excursion by boat through the estuarine channels of the Guaraqueçaba Ecological Reserve: river otters, scarlet ibis, black caiman, and forest that reaches to the water's edge in an unbroken canopy. The colonial city of Paranaguá itself — one of Brazil's oldest ports, with a Jesuit church from 1578 and a fishing market that has been operating without interruption since the seventeenth century.
Aboard Silver Shadow · ParanaguáIlhabela, São Paulo, Brazil
Ilhabela is the largest island in the southern Atlantic — a place of 360-degree beaches, 300 waterfalls visible from the sea, and primary Atlantic Forest covering its mountainous interior. It is also the town where Brazil's most celebrated sailing race, the Regata Ilhabela, takes place each year. Silver Shadow anchors in the narrow channel between the island and the mainland. A morning hike in the forest reserve to the Cachoeira da Toca waterfall — one of the island's most spectacular, an 80-metre cascade into a natural pool — led by a private guide from the island's ecological reserve management team. Lunch at a beachside restaurant on the north coast. An afternoon at anchor in the Enseada bay, swimming in water of twenty-eight degrees, the forest behind, the ship ahead.
Aboard Silver Shadow · IlhabelaIlha Grande, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Ilha Grande — the Great Island — sits in the bay of Angra dos Reis, 150 kilometres southwest of Rio, and is one of the most beautiful islands in Brazil: car-free, forested to the waterline, surrounded by over a hundred beaches of which fewer than twenty are accessible on foot. Silver Shadow anchors off the village of Abraão on the island's north coast. The ship's Zodiacs and tenders take you to Lopes Mendes — a 3.2-kilometre crescent of white sand, consistently ranked among the finest beaches in South America — which is reached by a forest path through Atlantic rainforest thick with butterflies. A picnic lunch on the beach from the ship's galley. A late-afternoon snorkel over the coral gardens of Sítio Forte with the ship's marine naturalist. Return to Silver Shadow at sunset as the forested mountains turn dark.
Aboard Silver Shadow · Ilha GrandeBúzios, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Búzios was a fishing village until Brigitte Bardot arrived for a holiday in 1964 and the world followed. It is now the most fashionable resort on the Brazilian coast: a peninsula of twenty-three beaches, each with a different character, connected by a cobblestone promenade lined with restaurants and boutiques. The atmosphere in Carnival week is particular — a warm-up for Rio, the music beginning, the caipirinha at the beach bar at midday, the sense of a country building toward something. Silver Shadow anchors in the bay; the tender takes you to the Orla Bardot. A private yacht excursion around the peninsula by day, visiting the remote beaches on the Atlantic side accessible only from the water. Dinner at a restaurant on the Rua das Pedras — the cobblestone heart of Búzios — as the evening warms toward midnight.
Aboard Silver Shadow · BúziosRio de Janeiro, Brazil
Silver Shadow arrives in Guanabara Bay at dawn on Day 9 — and the arrival at Rio is the arrival that every arrival since has been measured against. The bay itself: 412 square kilometres of enclosed tropical water, mountains rising from the shore on all sides, the Sugar Loaf on its granite plug to the south, the Corcovado with Christ the Redeemer on the ridge to the west, the city spread around the entire circumference in a continuous panorama of extraordinary beauty. This is the bay that caused the Portuguese, arriving in January 1502, to mistake it for the mouth of a great river — Rio de Janeiro, the January River — and the name survived their error. Four days in Rio during Carnival week: the Sambodromo on the nights of Day 9 and Day 10, where the escolas de samba parade before a stadium of 90,000 people in costumes that have taken a year and ten million reais to create, the music so loud it is felt rather than merely heard. Day 11: the Carnival street parties — the blocos — which fill the Lapa neighbourhood, the Santa Teresa hilltop, the beachfront of Copacabana with crowds that make the Sambodromo look intimate. Day 12: a final morning. The Corcovado by private car before the crowds; Christ the Redeemer with the bay spread below in the early light; a last coffee at a table by the sea. Disembarkation with private transfers to Galeão International Airport, the city still dancing behind you.
Aboard Silver Shadow · Rio de Janeiro / DisembarkationThe Onboard Experience
The Vessel · South Atlantic
Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro
Silver Shadow carries 382 guests across 194 all-suite ocean-view cabins, each with butler service and Silversea's characteristic warm Italian hospitality. Four restaurants, inclusive beverages, complimentary excursions and gratuities. The ship is sized for intimacy — small enough to feel personal, large enough for genuine elegance.
Destination · Days 9–12
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Rio Carnival Sambodromo parade — 90,000 people in a purpose-built stadium, twelve escolas de samba competing across two nights, costumes of extraordinary elaboration, music that has been rehearsed for a year and explodes in a performance of approximately ninety minutes per school — is the largest and most extraordinary spectacle in the annual calendar of human celebration. Martins Travel arranges Camarote access.
Destination · Day 7
Angra dos Reis, Brazil
Lopes Mendes on Ilha Grande is reached only on foot through Atlantic Forest — a 3.2-kilometre crescent of white sand with no development, no vehicles, no infrastructure beyond the sea. It is consistently ranked among the finest beaches in South America. Silver Shadow's tenders and Zodiacs give access in the morning before the day-trippers arrive by ferry from the mainland.
Private Enquiry
This voyage is presented as a point of departure. We will tailor the suite category, pre- and post-voyage arrangements, private shore excursions, and any special occasion wishes to your exact preferences. A Martins Travel cruise specialist will respond personally within 24 hours.