The mayor of Rio de Janeiro has issued a decree to regulate the city’s 30 miles of coastline. Many residents fear it will change Rio’s beach culture as they know it.

A reveller of the Unidos de Vila Isabel samba school performs during the first night of Rio's Carnival at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, early on February 27, 2017.

So I did. 10 hours later, I woke up in Rio. Both beautiful and brutal, Rio De Janeiro is a city of impossible contrasts. A dynamic metropolis of 6.3 million Cariocas (residents of Rio) wedged into the ...