there are many hiking trails in the tijuca forest, with the most important being the trilha circular externa major archer and the trilha circular interna castro maia - at times overlapping, both trails give a spectacular tour of the forest, reaching many of the most famous points of interest along properly maintained routes with clear signals.

These two trails are concentric, with major archer trail being 35 km long and at a higher altitude then the shorter castro maya track only 15 km long.

Catro maya is a particularly popular route, as it incorporates caves, historical building, ruins, pic-nic areas, and restaurants along the way.