apart from its enchanting geography and its enthralling culture, rio de janeiro is also famous for a less entertaining aspect of carioca life - a significant level of bureaucracy to wade through to complete most official processes.

not just restricted to rio de janeiro, the whole country is renowned for its bureaucratic process, which usually surprises visitors with the number of steps, forms and signatures that are needed for simple tasks.

however, by knowing what to expect, and what the most normal procedures are, any bureaucracy can be significantly reduced, and often even taken care on-line without spending time on lines instead that on a beach.

to accommodate the bureaucracy within brazil, there is a vast network of both state and privately-operated cartórios, or notary offices, throughout the entire country - in fact over 13,000 of these offices are in charge of helping citizens sort through a large portion of the bureaucratic steps.